Inbetweeners' Simon Bird justifies filming show and says it 'wouldn't be made today'
Simon Bird's career was launched by The Inbetweeners, and he's still best known for his portrayal of Will McKenzie to this day.
But be that as it may, he doesn't think the show would be made nowadays.
The much-loved sitcom ran from 2008 until 2010, and its popularity eventually led to two big screen spin-offs.
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The show followed the trials and tribulations of four adolescent misfits and their failed attempts to drink and have sex, basically.
It was also riddled with plenty of X-rated humour that Bird reckons wouldn't have got the go-ahead these days.
"I honestly think it wouldn't be commissioned today," he told The Telegraph.
Asked whether he thought the sexism in the show would make it unpalatable today, he replied: "Yeah, and the casual homophobia.
"I rationalise it to myself by saying that at the time it was an accurate representation of the way teenagers talk to each other.
"Is that still the case now? I assume not.
"Although the programme was set in the 2000s, it was based on a pilot set in 1990, so even in the 2000s it wasn't really an accurate reflection of how teenagers spoke."
Bird is now 38, and he has a wife and two kids. He's a middle-aged man... Let that sink in.
He was reunited not too long ago with his castmates for a doomed reunion special, which aired on New Year's Day in 2019.
Safe to say it didn't go down with fans anything like as well as the show itself, and Bird admitted that money was the motive.
"That was just a terrible idea from the get-go," he said.
"We all knew that. We all had suggestions about how it might be possible to do one that wasn't totally embarrassing. Those suggestions were not heeded.
"Frankly, we got paid quite a lot to do it, and there was a certain amount of pressure from Channel 4."
All these years on from the show, Bird said he still gets people shouting 'briefcase w***er' at him in the street a couple of times a week - though the days of people stealing his glasses seemed to have passed.
As for the supposed similarity between Will's voice and that of our most recent prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Bird said: "No, I don’t see that at all.
"I'm absolutely baffled why anyone would see any similarities at all between this privately educated, socially awkward, out-of-touch caricature and … ah. Scrap that."
Topics: TV and Film, The Inbetweeners
Jake Massey