Jamie Demetriou is juggling. A lot. Never mind that he’s got a major new movie on the way, The Moment – a mock-documentary starring the irrepressible Charli XCX. He’s also become a father for the first time. His baby daughter is just seven weeks old, but somehow he’s looking good on it. “It’s a Mediterranean thing,” he assures NME (his mother is English, his father Greek-Cypriot), when we join him over Zoom. “It’s olive oil. It’s the sun that shone on my ancestors. But, no, touch wood, she’s pretty good and gorgeous, which also helps.”
For years, the north London-raised Demetriou has been quietly working his way through every great TV comedy this past decade. A quick glance at his CV features appearances in Friday Night Dinner, Toast Of London, Sally4Ever and the recent iterations of Alan Partridge, This Time With… and How Are You? It started, he says, when Friday Night Dinner creator Robert Popper hired him to perform various voices at a table-read for one of the episodes. Word spread, and he spent the next two years speaking from the sidelines. “I think people were like, ‘He will do a lot of work for £25.’”
Once in a while, he’d get thrown a bit-part as a ‘thank you’. Then, in 2016, he landed a memorable role in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s phenomenon Fleabag, as the dentally-challenged bad date, known affectionately in the credits as Bus Rodent. The fake teeth, he says, did “a lot of the work” – today, sporting a red jumper and baseball cap, he looks a world away from that character – but it flicked a switch. “I think that it just gave me a taste for how good it can be.”
Not content with being a voice in other people’s comedies, Demetriou created his own: Channel 4’s Stath Lets Flats, in which he played the awkward-but-loveable English-Cypriot lettings agent Stath. Spanning three seasons, the show won Demetriou a hat-trick of BAFTAs in 2020 – including Best Male Performance In A Comedy Programme. Ever since, he’s been plagued by the notion of whether to bring Stath back. “To be completely honest, I do have ideas for future iterations of Stath that really excite me… but there is a world in which, maybe, it is correct for me to just leave it where it is,” he reveals. “It’s really just holding my nerve and making sure that the decisions I make, I make because they’re exciting decisions.”
The last season came in 2021, and Demetriou admits he had “a pretty full-on breakdown” trying to write it, to ensure it wasn’t a repeat of season two. “I realised that [season three] just had to live in a new tonal gear… the set pieces were a bit more surreal, the scenarios were occasionally a bit more heightened, that was my justification for a new show. But then you go, ‘Why is series four going to be worth making?’ And I think I’m still trying to answer that question while raising a baby and trying to work on other things so that I’m not forever known as the guy from the letting agencies sitcom.”
The chances of that are receding rapidly. Just premiered in Sundance last week, The Moment is set to be one of the most talked-about movies of the spring. With Charli playing herself, it’s a satirical swipe at the music industry – a mock-doc set during the lead up to her ultra-successful, zeitgeist-defining ‘Brat’ tour. “It’s a warped reflection on a very specific experience that she’s had,” says Demetriou. “The grotty corners of it, the highs of it, and how there are some shitty ironies to be explored. Things that are totally imperfect, and as a result, are funny.”
“The Moment is a warped reflection on a very specific experience that Charli’s had”
Demetriou plays Tim, her nice but slightly ineffectual manager. “I think that he’s someone who’s just about sufficient at his job. People who are medium-good at what they do is an area that I quite enjoy, comedically. I suppose there’s something quite mundane about someone being a six out of 10 at their job.” He promises Tim is nothing like Charli’s real long-term managers, Twiggy Rowley and Sam Pringle, who are responsible for steering the pop pioneer to global phenomenon these past years.
While Charli is currently scratching the acting itch (she’s also in two other Sundance titles, The Gallerist and I Want Your Sex), Demetriou admires the fact that she’s decided to deconstruct her own success in The Moment. “I, personally, really struggle to make a call as to the direction to turn when things are going well for me. And I think that the decisive nature of going, ‘I’m going to make a film like this’ [is great]. As opposed to going down the avenue that a lot of people in her position do – i.e. putting out a live tour show, a live album, or doubling down and doing the same thing again.”
Being courageous when everyone simply wants you to deliver the same formula is exactly what he’s faced with Stath Lets Flats. “I really think that the era we live in now, you’re so much more aware of what it is people want from you, because they’re telling you every day (if you’re on social media) – and you do start to question whether the things that you want to do are what you should be doing, because everybody’s asking you for another series of Stath. Should I give it to them even though I don’t really know what to do? And the answer is: ‘No, because I don’t think they’d enjoy it anyway.’”
If you’re getting the sense that Demetriou is at a crossroads, he probably is – perhaps slightly dazed trying to navigate success. “For a long time I would talk about wanting to be an actor… I think largely because it was one of the only things I was any good at school,” he says. “Before that, I just always enjoyed doing stupid sketches at home with my sister. But I think that deep down, I thought that it wasn’t something that actually happened to people. If you’d nestled into my brain as a teenager, I would have been like, ‘No one’s actually an actor. That’s just an illusion.’ So I never stop pinching myself about that.”
For years, the closest he got to stardom was the fact his father once hired a young George Michael to work in his restaurant (“he washed pots in my dad’s kitchen”). After taking shows to the Edinburgh Fringe out of uni, Demetriou did stand-up for a decade, only dropping it during COVID. “I never went back to it. And as a result, I think my virginity has kind of grown back. Now I watch stand-ups… how do they do it? Despite the fact that I literally did it. I did it for so long, but it really feels too scary to me now, for some reason… I don’t why.”
Instead, like Charli, he’s flexing his acting muscles. A role as a Mattel exec in mega-hit Barbie was followed, last summer, with a part alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in The Roses, the remake of the 1980s blackly comic tale of martial discord, The War Of The Roses. Then, in the autumn, he popped up in Jay Kelly, the George Clooney-led comedy about a movie star in full-blown mid-life crisis, appearing as a tourist in the film’s key scene, all set on a moving train racing through the French countryside.
Typical of the Hollywood experience, Demetriou was on the shoot for nine weeks, during which there was a lot of downtime – watching others pass their time playing basketball. “I’m not a sportsman,” says Demetriou, who reveals he’d sit in his trailer, spying through a crack in his blinds as he saw the likes of co-star Adam Sandler shooting hoops. “One day, I plucked up the courage to go and do it. And I did something I don’t even think I’ve seen in basketball outtakes, which is that I went to take a free throw, and I shot, I mean, double the height of the basketball net. I just literally launched it into space and just walked back into my trailer!”
Sports may not be his thing, but in what feels like another smart move, he’s just nailed down a part in the forthcoming Netflix-backed miniseries of Pride And Prejudice, written by author and podcaster Dolly Alderton. He’s playing Mr Collins, the clergyman said to be “violently in love” with Jane Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet. “There’s so many ways to skin that character. And that challenge freaked me out. I was really, really, genuinely surprised when I got the part.” Nevertheless, he’s delighted by what unfolded. “I really do feel like I’ve taken part in something that doesn’t resemble anything I’ve done before.”
In the end, that’s what it’s all about – reinventing, refreshing. His partner’s father is Steve Coogan, a master of exactly that, and more than once Demetriou’s work has drawn comparisons with the Alan Partridge creator. But comedy can be a minefield career these days, at a time when jokes are often picked over and analysed for political correctness. Does he recognise that? “I don’t think it’s a difficult time for comedy. I think it’s a difficult time for comedy, TV and film, because comedy exists in a way more digestible form on social media.” There was a time, he says, when TV and social media content “could just happily live side by side”. These days, as attention spans get shorter, he feels like a 10-part comedy series is “a less enticing prospect for a channel to invest in.” And then there’s the fact too many of those in positions of power just want to play it safe. “I really think that there is room for comedy to exist if commissioners are willing to take risks on backing shows that they genuinely enjoy themselves.” It’s a sentiment worth listening to – and worth backing.
‘The Moment’ is in UK cinemas from February 20
IMAGES:
Photographer: Pip
Grooming: Sven Bayerbach