The British director lifts the lid on an impressive career.
To bastardise the old saying beloved of film and telly folk: never work with children, animals or actor-producer workaholics with infamously punishing fitness regimes and daily schedules.
But on a pair of back-to-back American movies, British director Simon Cellan Jones has done exactly that.
After an illustrious career mostly spent making quality UK and US television drama, from Our Friends in the North and Cracker to David Simon’s Generation Kill and Russell T Davies‘s Years and Years, the 60-year-old has spent much of the past three years in bed – in strictly professional terms – with Mark Wahlberg.
The first fruits of his partnership with the Hollywood superstar is Apple TV+ comedy-action flick The Family Plan.
Wahlberg plays a suburban dad forced to take his unwitting family on a “fun” road trip to Las Vegas after his past life as a government assassin comes back to bite him (with extreme prejudice).
The second is Arthur the King, to be released in cinemas on 22nd March, in which Wahlberg is an ageing iron man who buddies up with a wounded stray dog during a 435-mile endurance race through South American jungle.
The latter, explains Cellan Jones from his home in Somerset, was shot before The Family Plan, and was his first film gig in two decades following his TV projects.
“Suddenly, I was in the right place at the right time. But then, with The Family Plan, which is a slightly bigger movie, I think – I hope – I was the first choice for it.
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“It’s a new world for me,” he acknowledges. “You’ve got more time, you’ve got a bit more money. But it’s really exciting when you say you want to do a chase sequence, 20 stunt men and a week to do it. And if you can work it out with your [filmmaking] partners, we can make it happen.”
Presumably, the seal of approval after the first film from the extremely rigorous Wahlberg – the father of four gets up in the middle of the night to work out and pray – helped the Englishman land The Family Plan gig?
“Big time. He’s a producer on The Family Plan, so he’s basically my boss. He’s one of those few people who just gets stuff done with one phone call.
“People spend ages trying to put a movie together, and suddenly Mark lands and, because of his acting prowess, but also because of his clout as a producer, stuff just happens like you wouldn’t believe. It’s amazing.”
All that said, the lure of Hollywood hasn’t made the director forget his UK TV roots. In between his Wahlberg gigs, Cellan Jones also had the bandwidth to direct Netflix’s London-based thriller The Diplomat, which has just been nominated in the Best Television Series – Drama category at the Golden Globes.
The Brit, though, has put in his own hard yards to get to this point. In his early 30s, he worked on Our Friends in the North (1996), the classic, decades-spanning saga the helped launch the careers of Daniel Craig, Gina McKee, Mark Strong and Christopher Eccleston.
“That show was probably the most life-changing thing for me,” he acknowledges, “because we worked with great actors, who I still see nowadays.
“I only did half of it. But it was so epic, it was about two years of my life. And that’s where I said to myself, ‘Yeah, I can really do this.’”
It was the start of years of experience that have stood Cellan Jones in good stead on these big-budget American projects – not least because Arthur the King also stars another fiercely gung-ho all-rounder.
“Bear Grylls was brilliant,” he says of the British action man who plays himself in the film.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, acting held no fear for the outdoorsman, survivalist and head of the Scouts. “Oh my God, he just came in and he just did it. The man’s a nutter, but also has his head screwed on very clearly.”
The Family Plan is streaming now on Apple TV+ – you can sign up to Apple TV+ now.
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