There’s much more to Shaun Williamson than being ‘Barry from EastEnders’

ACTOR Shaun Williamson is used to people seeing him only as Barry Evans, his former EastEnders character.

The actor cheerily admits the role has left him typecast as a loveable but hapless man forever, and it stopped getting him down long ago.

Now, Shaun is content to do theatre work, any telly that comes along and whenever he can sneak off and do obscure jobs for peanuts, he does!

“When I can afford to, I always go and do something for under 200 quid a week, something that nobody would ever consider casting me as!” laughs the likeable and not at all hapless Shaun.

“For instance, I did a play called Farragut North at Southwark Playhouse, with Jeremy Irons’ son, Max, in which I played a really very dodgy American politician.

“Let’s face it, I have a face like a mass murderer, but just never get those parts!

“I also did a film in Budapest with Adrien Brody, called Houdini, and I played quite a shifty spy.

“But I was cast by a German director who didn’t have a clue who I was.

“He simply cast me on the strength of my screen test, whereas an English director would never have cast me. So expect to see me in obscure Czech art movies!”

Apart from Barry, of course, Shaun was a hit on TV as himself well, a woefully-inept version of himself in Ricky Gervais’s Extras.

Williamson is actually a very smart, well-read chap, and it’s all down to having not done his homework during his schooldays.

“I’m a big reader and writer, even have a literary agent!” he laughs. “All I’ve managed to sell so far, though, are humorous training films for companies.

“We all know what it’s like to sit through training films, packed with technical stuff, so I’ve written some humorous ones.

“I’ve also written dramas and sitcoms, and I’ve come close to getting a Sunday- night drama commissioned.

“At the moment, I’m writing something about a teacher who goes to teach English at a girls’ school in Pakistan.

“With the one that almost got commissioned, it looks like I’ll have to go the long and tiresome route of turning it into a novel, hoping it does well and then someone else says: ‘We feel this would be a good idea for a TV series.’

“I would say it’s the same territory as something like Call The Midwife, it’s that kind of thing.

“In my own reading tastes, I like all sorts of writing. For instance, the book about Charles Manson by Vincent Bugliosi, who was the prosecutor, is amazing.

“I believe it’s the first book where, even in the middle of the day, I’ve gone downstairs and made sure the back door was locked!

“Another wonderful read is Sophie’s World. I’m into all this reading and writing now because I totally wasted my education.

“That was silly, so now I am making up for lost time.

“I was lucky enough to be part of an all-conquering quiz team, and I’ve won loads of Mastermind-style quizzes. I’ve become an egghead, and I love it!”

There’s a literary bent to his current stage venture, too.

Anything Goes was partly written by PG Wodehouse, the man who brought us Jeeves and Wooster.

It involved several great writers, not least the incomparable Cole Porter penning the classic music.

“PG Wodehouse was one of the original writers, and it was updated by a guy called Russel Crouse, so that it is a lot slicker and more pleasing to the modern audience,” Shaun explains.

“And Cole Porter was legendary for topical songs. He wrote hundreds of songs to entertain at parties, about whatever was in the news.

“They were all about scandals, prohibition, bang-up-to-date topics.

“Today, the 30s are long gone but the songs are so good that it’s irrelevant. They are timeless.

“And it’s great fun to do Anything Goes, I Get A Kick Out Of You, love affairs galore, being chased round a ship by the cops, it’s great!”

Not bad, and a million miles from hapless Barry.

See Shaun on the Anything Goes tour of Britain and Ireland, throughout the year. Dates can be found at https://seatplan.com/london/anything-goes/