Whether hilariously dissecting life’s anomalies as a stand-up, or taking such stand-out roles as care assistant Hannah in Ricky Gervais’s Derek and his dead wife in After Life, south London-based Kerry has the world at her feet
By Ben West
Most people would be pretty thrilled to forge an impressive career in acting, working alongside the likes of Ricky Gervais and Christopher Guest.
A career as a stand-up, with stints on Live at The Apollo and sharing the stage with such giants as Micky Flangagan, would equally delight many.
Kerry Godliman has managed to combine both vocations, to form an unusually versatile and successful body of work.
Her journey started at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, where she studied acting, but perhaps without fully possessing the self-discipline required. When she launched herself on the world as an actor, she found the precarious wait for jobs unsettling, prompting her to muse about working in comedy.
“I always wanted to do comedy,” she says. “I had a crack of being an actor but after a couple of years, doing stand up as well seemed to make sense as an actor’s life can be very up and down.”
In her comedy routines she’s talked about juggling her stand-up and acting careers with bringing up two young children, Elsie and Frank, with her husband, actor Ben Abell. So it’s fitting that when she talks to me she is juggling again: simultaneously conducting another conversation and also ordering a coffee on a rest stop as she travels en route to the next gig on her current tour.
As an actor, she got small parts in such tv programmes as Miranda, Extras and Getting On, and replaced Olivia Colman in the National Theatre’s production of England People Very Nice. But the time it was taking to progress and the time between jobs frustrated her, and so she enrolled on a course on stand-up at London’s City Lit. But is there any point doing a stand-up comedy course? Aren’t you born a good comedian, it’s not something you can learn?
“Even if you’re born with a gift for comedy, a course gives structure, gets you out of the house,” she says. “You start to meet people and network, learn to structure your set, and how to get gigs.”
The course certainly paid off, because she began to get gigs, and her 2011 Edinburgh show, Wonder Woman, won rave reviews and since then her stand-up career has blossomed. She’s appeared on the BBC’s Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week and Jack Dee’s Referendum HelpDesk, and also The Great Ormond Street Hospital Comedy Gala. She is a regular on Radio 4 with appearances on The News Quiz, The Now Show and Just A Minute.
She supported Micky Flanagan on his Out Out tour, leading some observers to dub her the female Micky Flanagan. What’s her view on that?
“I have no strong view,” she says. “It’s flattering, as Micky is great. But people like to put you in boxes, don’t they? Working class boy, working class girl, I can see why people do it, it’s a shorthand, like ‘she’s a down to earth, working class voice’, but sometimes it’s not helpful.”
Audiences love her straight talking brand of quick wit and bewilderment, and humorous examination of the human condition. She asks such pressing questions as ‘why is there a Buddha at the garden centre?’ or ‘why collect my children’s teeth?’.
She touches on her home life, with teasing observances about her family. Does that ever cause her any guilt or unease?
“I never say anything insensitive,” she says. “Occasionally I read that another comic won’t discuss their family and it can make me think a bit. But it never really concerns me. I don’t think I say anything exposing. I’m not at a fame level where it should be worrying, but if I found when my kids were older kids at school were saying things, I might reign it in, but they’re little now.”
I ask her how she collects material for her shows.
“Just scribbling down ideas when I’m out and about,” she says. “And when there’s a deadline, fleshing it all out. It starts with observations, then I bolt on stuff and build it. With stand-up I can say what I want, it’s empowering.
“I got my initial inspiration when my mum and dad used to take me to comedy shows. I saw Billy Connolly and Victoria Wood when I was about 13. I watched them on tv also and I used to watch Morcambe and Wise and the other 1970s tv everyone watched. But I was especially inspired by Victoria Wood, she seemed to make it seem like it was all possible.”
Touring can be a mixed bag.
“Sometimes I like touring, sometimes I don’t,” she says. “It depends on what mood I’m in. I don’t want to leave the kids, to go away, but also it is nice to be in different parts of the UK. London is not the be all and end all.
“It’s flattering when people come to see you, but driving back from bad gigs when you’ve tanked, when you feel you’re wasting your time, wondering whether it’s worth it, hasn’t been so good.
“Some comedians say audiences vary geographically, but I don’t find that. Having done so many towns I can’t predict how the audience will react. There’s a home counties vibe maybe, though, more subdued. I just think they’re a Radio 4 crowd, just enjoying it in a more subdued way.”
What’s best, playing large or small venues?
“I’ve done the 02 Arena, it’s like sharing your inner thoughts in a canyon. It’s bonkers. But I’ve also played really small venues in Edinburgh. It’s lovely doing rooms like the Comedy Store or the Hammersmith Apollo as they’re so well set up. But last night it was just 200 in a little theatre in Chorley. It was perfect. It’s not just the scale of the room but how it is set up.”
On the acting front, Ricky Gervais transformed things when he cast her as care home manager Hannah in his Channel 4 comedy-drama, Derek, where she stole the show.
Jay Richardson in The Scotsman points out that ‘like Martin Freeman in The Office and Ashley Jensen in Extras, stand-up and actor Godliman ought to be Derek’s breakout star’.
Indeed, her performance in Derek, Gervais has remarked, ‘may be the finest piece of character acting I’ve seen’.
She says: “Derek was a lovely experience. It felt special to a lot of people, people were very moved by it. It seemed to be on a different level to just comedy, and people connected to it, it resonated.”
Gervais picked her again to feature in his latest series, Netflix project After Life, which is outstanding despite the chronic overuse of the ‘c-word’.
More prestigious work has followed, including her own Radio 4 show, Kerry’s List and a part in Sky 1 sitcom Carters Get Rich. But a real highlight for Kerry was being signed up to the Christopher Guest Netflix film, Mascots, filming in Los Angeles for five weeks. Guest, a comedy hero, hired her without an audition, which she believes is because of her work on Derek.
She found filming Mascots something of an overwhelming bolt from the blue, but performing stand-up in Blackheath, which she’ll be doing in December, will more than likely be a bit less of a shock to the system, not least because she knows the area well.
“I used to live in Lewisham, and I have lived in south east London for 23-odd years,” she says. “I lived in a part of Lewisham that fancied it was part of Blackheath, Belmont Hill.
“I now live in a part of West Norwood that is experiencing a similar gentrification. I come from west London, Greenford, but south London is my home now. I passed the line where you’ve spent more time in south London than where you came from. It’s a good place to be.”