Graham Clark, who portrayed Gary Webster in EastEnders in the 1980s, jokes that he has grown up to be a ” nepo-dad” after his 22-year-old son, Freddie, accepted him for a theatre job.
Forget about nepotis: Gary Webster is a nepo-parent in this situation.
Gary, 61, is set to play his son Freddie, 22, in the role he was given by the young actor.
From September 30 through October 26, both father and son will appear in the play Blessings at London’s Riverside Studios.
Gary jokes, “I’m the nepo dad,” while speaking about Freddie and his wife, Wendy Turner, 58, author, and animal welfare activist. When Freddie was cast, he claimed that his father was lying on his backside and doing nothing. They might want to look at him, perhaps.
Gary – whose TV credits include Ray Daley in Minder and Graham Clark on EastEnders – is used to acting being a family affair. In fact, it’s what brought him and Wendy together.
In a panto in Cambridge in 1997, they first met as Robin Hood and Maid Marian during the photo call to promote the film.
I had been sleeping until the early hours of the morning because Wendy had flown in overnight from New York. Both of us were exhausted. However, fortunately, the theater had unloaded the car. We were taken back to London after the photos were taken, and we both slept through the night.
We’d better keep quiet about this because we don’t want it to spread, I said when I woke up. “
Wendy is confident that her husband and son will shine in Blessings because they were married in 1999 and are proud parents to Freddie, who graduated from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in May, and Jack, who works in corporate finance.
She continues, “I’m assuming they’ll be brilliant on stage together.” I had no reservations when I first heard about the news. I did cartwheels around the kitchen, and I was thrilled.
And Gary, who has written a film and appeared in a number of plays recently, including 12 Angry Men and Dial M for Murder, says the story, which centers on a working-class family’s daily routine in 1969, is similar to most families.
However, Freddie found acting through an open mic night rather than his parents’ showmanship.
When he recalls playing acoustic guitar at an open mic night, “That’s when I realized I wanted to be in front of the camera.”
He is now looking forward to playing Gary’s father, who is well-known. “The icing on the cake,” he says, “is to my father playing my father.”
Wendy, a patron of Animal Aid, is about to begin working with her sister Anthea Turner on an Amazon documentary about non-verbal testing in partnership with the organization.
Recalling how her dad Brian unwittingly brought them together in 2021 after a rift – by mastering WhatsApp on his new mobile phone – Wendy says: “I was teaching him how to send photos via WhatsApp to Anthea.
She called right away to find out how he had handled it. I then told him, “For God’s sake, pass me the phone!” in a conversation that created so much confusion.
Anthea and I were suddenly conversing.
Soon, they were discussing a gift for their parents’ 67th wedding anniversary and e-mailing each other about their documents. When they both returned from their visits to Stoke-on-Trent, Wendy says, “When we saw each other, the years just melted away.”
Unfortunately, they also lost their 91-year-old mother, Jean Turner, to pneumonia the same year.
Wendy, whose father now lives nearer the sisters in London, continues to resent the fact that she has fallen out with Anthea. “What family, from princes to paupers, doesn’t have dramas along the way? We are the same as everyone else.
Source: Mirror
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