2002: White Teeth - An everyday story of Willesden folk

An everyday story of Willesden folk

White Teeth, Zadie Smith's cross-cultural novel set in north-west London, is coming to our TV screens. David Gritten reports

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Brought to life: Charlie Creed-Mills (who plays Ryan) and Naomie Harris (Clara) 

By David Gritten

12:01AM BST 31 Aug 2002

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The scene inadvertently typifies Zadie Smith's astonishingly successful debut novel White Teeth: 10 or 12 characters huddled together watching a video in a cramped living room. In their ranks are white, Asian, black, straight, gay, adolescent and middle-aged people; they are Smith's multicultural, multi-generational story made flesh.

It is no surprise that her best-seller, published in 2000, would swiftly be adapted for the screen. Hollywood studios expressed interest; but White Teeth is so complex, intricate and stuffed with memorable characters that it seemed more logical material for television.

So it has turned out. White Teeth was originally due to become a BBC drama series, but now it has landed at Channel 4, which is compressing a £3.5 million version of Smith's novel into four one-hour episodes.

"Zadie's own wish was that it should be a TV series rather than a film," says executive producer Suzan Harrison. "She felt that on television, it would receive a fuller treatment."

Harrison and her production colleagues at Company Pictures originally asked the astonishingly talented Smith (who wrote White Teeth when she was 21) if she wanted to adapt her own novel. "But she didn't, really," Harrison recalls. "She wanted to get on with her next novel, and didn't want to go back over the territory." (This next novel, The Autograph Man, has just been put on the longlist for this year's Booker Prize, even though it is not published until the end of September.)

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Adds Nicolas Brown, who is producing White Teeth: "Zadie openly admitted she didn't know much about writing for film. She's smart enough to know what she doesn't know."

Enter Simon Burke, who has adapted Tom Jones and Sons and Lovers for TV, and written episodes of Chancer and Liverpool One. Zadie Smith is supportive of the TV version. She drove with its producers around Willesden, north-west London, where White Teeth is set, pointing out the locations that inspired her in writing the novel. She also volunteered to be a hippie extra in the "End of the World party" scene from the novel's opening pages, and ventured her opinions about casting and Burke's script. "We agreed she could be as involved as she wanted," Brown says.

White Teeth tracks the fortunes of two Willesden families, one of them Anglo-Jamaican, the other Bangladeshi Muslim, over a 25-year period that culminates in the millennium. The TV version abridges the action slightly, and draws to a close in 1992.

The best known actors in the cast play the two patriarchs of these families, who were comrades in the Second World War: the distinguished Indian actor Om Puri (East Is East) is Samad Iqbal, a man who sends one of his twin sons back home to India to be educated in the Muslim tradition; Phil Davis (who starred in Mike Leigh's High Hopes) is Archie Jones, a bemused, passive Englishman.

We first encounter him in his late forties, when he meets Clara, a beautiful Jamaican teenager, at the End of the World party and marries her, thus changing his life.

"This story is a kind of collage of various communities and cultures," says Om Puri, who for the past five years has commuted between acting assignments in Britain and his home in Bombay. "Being an immigrant is especially difficult for older people if they arrive here later in life. If they're young, or they're born here, it's much easier to assimilate. Samad comes to Britain at the age of 45: he's already ripe in his values and his conditioning. It's difficult for him to adjust in a new culture."

Davis, dressed as Archie in a drab grey suit with matching grey shoes, observes: "He's somewhat elusive. It's part of the joy of playing him. He's a man who doesn't change. Archie doesn't have much of an arc. He's a piece of driftwood floating on the sea of life.

"He meets this young girl and marries her. You think this will invigorate him. But it doesn't. He just carries on with life. He adores her, but he's not a passionate man. And he is dull."

The crowd of characters squashed into the tiny living room are not on a film set. It's a real house: a pebbledash semi-detached in Kenton, a rarely considered part of north-west London, slightly further out in the suburbs than Willesden itself. It was taken over by the White Teeth production team, and furnished and redecorated to look like Samad's home.

All the wallpaper is patterned; some of it even shimmers. The front room curtains are orange. Some rooms boast a small chandelier. Carpets are in dizzying swirls of clashing colour, and knick-knacks cover all available surfaces. Upstairs, the room belonging to Samad's rebellious teenage son Millat is quite different; it is a gloomy symphony in black, with posters of rap group Public Enemy and the films Reservoir Dogs and The Godfather.

The video being watched by the group was sent from India by his other son, Magid. Samad fondly hopes Magid will come to have "the soul of a Muslim and of Bangladesh, a soul which has returned to the old ways".

But the video message suggests otherwise: Magid, dressed in a smart suit, waistcoat and bow tie, is clean-shaven, and talks in the cultured tones of a worldly, upper-class Englishman. This unexpected twist causes general hilarity in the group, but his father is crushed.

The style of the TV adaptation, directed by Julian Jarrold, reflects Smith's rich, teeming novel. It darts frequently between dozens of locations (houses, schools, drinking dens), most of them in or close to Willesden; and it boasts a huge cast of 55 characters, largely unknowns representing a wide range of experience, background and ethnic origin. Perhaps the plum role goes to Christopher Simpson, who plays Samad's twins - the genteel Magid and streetwise bad-boy Millat. But Om Puri and Phil Davis were the key casting choices.

"No one we could think of could play Samad anywhere near as well," says Suzan Harrison of Puri. "There's an authority he brings to every role. Archie was trickier in some respects. In the book, he doesn't do or say that much, yet he's a presence. We needed someone who was charismatic in a sort of grey way."

It remains to be seen whether the essence of Zadie Smith's novel can transfer to the small screen. Yet Harrison and Nick Brown are in no doubt about the power of the material.

"It's a fantastic tour de force for a young writer," says Harrison. "It also describes a world we live in here in Britain, but which is revealed as new. Not since [Hanif Kureishi's] Buddha of Suburbia has a world been revealed that way. There's a lot of wisdom in it."

• White Teeth begins on Sept 17 on Channel 4.

Miss Moneypenny is no longer a secretary, Naomie Harris says

Miss Moneypenny is now a highly-trained adviser who only types if she is accessing top secret files, the Spectre actress says

Harris and her boyfriend were spied enjoying reflexology and shiatsu treatments at Champneys Photo: REX FEATURES

By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent

7:00AM BST 20 Oct 2015

In the old days of Bond, she may have been a flirtatious young assistant poised to take down notes or fulfill the whims of visiting spies.

But the Miss Moneypenny of 2015 will not be wasting her time with secretarial duties, it appears.

The next incarnation of Moneypenny will not be a secretary but a high-level “adviser”, who will only be seen typing if she is busy looking at top secret classified files, the actress who plays her has said.

Naomie Harris said her character is now an equal “friend” to Bond after finding her feet in a research-based role.

Later this month, she will appear in Spectre, the 24th Bond film, as the pair cope with the difficult aftermath of M’s death.

Harris joined the franchise as Eve, appearing as an agent in the field in Skyfall before apparently being relegated to a desk job and renamed Moneypenny.

If you see me at a computer screen, it’s because I’m accessing top secret files

Naomie Harris

Instead, the actress told the Radio Times: “By the end of Skyfall my character realises that she doesn’t have the stomach for killing people and being shot at.

“I imagine her to be someone very academic and thorough, better suited to being behind a desk doing research.

“She’s happier now, she’s found her feet and anyway she’s not M’s secretary; she’s more like an advisor.”

Cast members of new James Bond film Spectre revealed: Naomie Harris, Lea Seydoux, Daniel Craig, Monica Bellucci and Christoph Waltz  Photo: REX FEATURES

Harris reportedly spent several months learning stunt driving and gun training for her role in Skyfall, and was instead offered a typing course for Spectre.

“If you see me at a computer screen, it’s because I’m accessing top secret files,” she said.

The actress said she considers the modern Moneypenny as "very bright", a "tomboy" from the Home Counties who was recruited by MI6 while at university.

She told the magazine she had gone along to her first Bond audition "for a laugh", believing she was "too old" for a traditional Bond Girl role and lacking the "right...assets".

Miss Moneypenny appears in Sony's 'Made for Bond' advert

Sony's new advert features Miss Moneypenny as she shows off James Bond's new camera and smartphone in a dramatic scene set in Londonx

By Telegraph Video, video source Sony

3:20PM BST 13 Sep 2015

Sony has released a new advert which features Miss Moneypenny as she shows off James Bond's new technology.

^{She lifts her hood up to reveal herself during the chase (Sony)}

In the video, Miss Moneypenny is chased along London's Southbank by a a group of bad guys.

^{Miss Moneypenny is chased along London's Southbank (Sony)}

She uses the Sony RX100 IV camera to capture super slow motion surveillance before she eventually tries to deliver Bond's Xperia smartphone.

Watch this video to see the action unfold with Miss Moneypenny.

Bond 24 Announcement see it LIVE here

Bond 24 Announcement

Bond 24 title and cast announcement: as it happens

As details of the new James Bond are announced, we bring you the latest 007 news, rumours and fan reaction

Daniel Craig in the 23rd James Bond film Skyfall Photo: Sony Pictures

By Rebecca Hawkes

8:58AM GMT 04 Dec 2014

New details on the 24th James Bond film – including the title and the final cast – are due to be announced this morning at a live press conference streamed from the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire.

Principal photography on the film is due to start on Monday December 8; the press conference, attended by both new and returning cast members, begins at 11am today.

Here's what we know so far. Daniel Craig returns as 007, and he's already promised that Bond 24 will "reclaim some of the old irony" of vintage Bond. Sam Mendes directs, after steering Skyfall to a global box office of $1.1 billion.

Skyfall screenwriter John Logan has written the script, allegedly with some help from playwright Jez Butterworth. Ben Whishaw returns as Q and Naomie Harris is still Moneypenny, while Ralph Fiennes officially takes over as M. And shooting will take place in the UK, Rome, Morocco, and Austria (not necessarily in that order). The release date is October 23, 2015, in the UK and November 6 in the US.

But many questions remain, and we'll hopefully have answers after the announcement. Who is Christoph Waltz playing? Could it possibly be Blofeld? Is Lea Seydoux, French star of Blue is the Warmest Colour, the only new Bond girl?

Are the rumours that Andrew Scott – aka, Sherlock's Moriarty, playing a villain? (Seems a little on the nose to us.) Is Sam Smith singing the theme song, as some reports would have it? Or has he been outgunned by Lana Del Ray?

More importantly, what on earth is it the title? And will it make sense (like Goldeneye), or have historians debating its meaning for years to come (yes, you, Quantum of Solace)?

In any case, we'll be bringing you the latest news and rumours throughout the day, and will keep you updated on the fan reaction once the announcements are made.

Naomie Harris interview for Skyfall: RIP the Bond girl

Naomie Harris stars as a gun-toting MI6 agent in the new James Bond film Skyfall. She tells Nisha Lilia Diu about being the first self-proclaimed 'Bond woman'.

Naomie Harris Photo: JO METSON SCOTT

By Nisha Lilia Diu

2:13PM BST 25 Oct 2012

‘I hope you’re not a lesbian.’ With these words Ian Fleming introduced himself to his future girlfriend, Blanche Blackwell, in 1956. He then kissed her passionately before she had a chance to reply. I’d have liked to see him try this approach on Naomie Harris.

The latest Bond girl certainly has the beauty, glamour and hint of danger that Fleming so loved in a woman. But she has something else, too: an iron will. Reclining on a cream sofa in a suite in Claridge’s, a silver tea tray on the table before her, she’s recounting her negotiations with Michael Mann (the director of Heat and Public Enemies) after he cast her in Miami Vice six years ago. The script called for a sex scene, which he’d got word Harris objected to.

‘He called me for a meeting in his office and he was sort of embarrassed. He just said, “So how do you feel about this nudity thing?” And I said…’ she drops her voice to a low, menacing tone, ‘“Well, I don’t really want to do it, Michael.”’ She sounds terrifying. ‘And he went, “Yeah. OK.”’ I bet he did.

‘We wanted someone who could really match up to Bond – and she’s got it,’ Barbara Broccoli, the long-time producer of the Bond films, tells me. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the film franchise and, to quote Harris’s character, Eve, it’s a case of ‘old dog, new tricks’. Skyfall’s publicity materials, for the first time in Bond history, talk not of the film’s ‘Bond girls’ but of ‘Bond women’. Guess whose idea that was?

When Harris presented an award at this year’s Baftas she was given a few words to say that contained a reference to herself as a ‘Bond girl’. ‘I just said, “Well, I’m going to change that to Bond woman.”’

Broccoli agreed with her. ‘It’s outdated,’ she says. It’s been a long time since Bond girls wiggled around in barely there outfits sighing, 'Oh, James!' every five minutes. And Eve is another significant evolution away from that. She’s a field agent taking the same risks and making the same sacrifices as 007.

‘I think the women in the film have evolved like women have evolved in society – and about time, too,’ says Broccoli. Given that 40 per cent of senior leadership positions in the CIA are currently held by women, she’s not being fanciful.

I should add that there is a second, almost comically sexy female character, played by the actress Bérénice Marlohe, who goes around making breathy statements about fear in a French accent and plunging neckline. And then there is Javier Bardem sporting a peroxide-blond bouffant as the baddie, Raoul Silva. It is still Bond, after all.

Harris, 36, has performed in so many accents – as a gypsy queen in the Pirates of the Caribbean films and the Jamaican immigrant, Hortense, in the BBC adaptation of Small Island – that I’m not sure what to expect on meeting her. It turns out she has an exceedingly smart voice, a little gravelly on account of a sore throat, and the kind of elaborate good manners that could put you on edge if she weren’t so straight-talking.

‘I have to say that I much prefer regular acting to all this action stuff,’ she says, tugging primly at the hem of her white broderie anglaise dress. ‘Normally, I’d do a scene in a room talking – rather than this, which is me smashing through a window, firing a shot, the scenery collapsing. And if a piece of scenery falls on your head you can’t be like, “Ouch!” Because if you mess up they have to start all over again.’

Harris has been acting for 25 years. She first appeared on television when she was nine years old, but it was taking the lead role in Channel 4’s White Teeth in 2002 that really got her noticed.

She and Zadie Smith, on whose novel the series was based, were in the same year at Cambridge University. ‘She was cool. I was nerdy,’ Harris has said in the past. ‘She was beautiful and clever and knew everyone. I’d have my head down and go home to my mum every weekend.’

Cambridge was not a happy time for Harris. ‘I thought I’d be talking about my subjects until three o’clock in the morning, having these passionate debates,’ she says, stirring her tea and laughing gently. Instead, she met lots of binge-drinking Old Etonians who ‘threw up all over the college grounds and went skiing in the holidays. It was a real culture shock.’

Contrary to appearances, Harris is not the product of an expensive education. Her Jamaican mother, Carmen, was just 18 when she became pregnant. Her Trinidadian father left before Harris was born. But Carmen had ambition. She took a degree in sociology and became a successful screenwriter, working on EastEnders for 13 years.

‘I grew up with EastEnders just constantly on,’ says Harris, whose mother told her, ‘You can achieve anything you want.’ But when Harris won a place at Cambridge, Carmen responded with anxiety. ‘She said, “You won’t fit in. It’s not the kind of background that you’re from.” She was right. But I’m so grateful I went.’

Looking back, Harris says, ‘I was too much of an innocent when I went to university.’ She had been ‘obsessed with the Bible’ as a child – something that inadvertently led to her becoming an actress.

The young Harris would insist on acting out the creation story when her mother’s friends came round. So Carmen enrolled her in theatre classes. She was so good she ended up spending all her school holidays filming episodes of ITV’s Runaway Bay and Simon and the Witch for the BBC, ‘while my friends were sneaking out to meet boys’.

She says she was ‘very religious from the age of about eight to 15’. Are her mother and stepfather religious (Carmen remarried when Naomie was 11)? ‘Not at all. But they sent me to a Church of England school and there was a service once a week, and I loved it. I still pray a lot. I still believe in God. I just don’t believe in any set religion. I like to believe that we all pray to the same god.’

Was religion the reason she objected to sex before marriage when she was a teenager? She laughs. ‘That was more to do with reading too many Jane Austen novels and being really naive. I don’t feel that way anymore.’

She won’t tell me if she’s in a relationship – ‘I never say’ – but she does say that her father’s absence has ‘almost certainly’ affected her attitude towards men. ‘I do think it’s made me wary of commitment.’

Her father lived near her family home in north London but she only saw him once, by chance, when, aged seven, she was walking home from school. She recognised him immediately from old photographs she’d seen, ‘and also he looks very much like me’.

Did he speak to her? ‘He just said, “I’m your father.” And I remember I had a little artwork that I’d made, which I was carrying home, and he wanted to give me his number but he didn’t have any paper – so he ripped off a corner of my artwork and wrote his number on that!’ She laughs, still a little dismayed.

She saw him again recently at a friend’s insistence. But, she says, ‘If you’ve never had a relationship, can you really manufacture it at 35? I’m not sure that you can.’

Harris is very close to her mother, who is now a reiki healer. ‘She does a lot of EFT – emotional freedom technique – as well. It was developed to cure people of phobias. You tap on your meridian points as you relive your fears and it kind of cleanses you of the experience. For me, it’s been incredible. Now I’m much calmer going in to auditions.’ If she weren’t an actress, Harris would like to be a healer herself. ‘I think there’s nothing more amazing than helping people every day.’

She recently bought a home on the same street as her mother, stepfather and two teenage step-siblings in Finsbury Park, where she grew up. ‘I loved it there. It was so multicultural, so I never had any sense of not belonging.’

Appearing in Small Island was an eye-opener, though. The story centres on Gilbert Joseph, one of the many thousands of Commonwealth soldiers who fought for Britain during the Second World War. Arriving in England to help with the postwar rebuilding effort, he doesn’t get quite the hero’s welcome he has envisaged.

‘It really made me think about my grandparents’ experience,’ says Harris. ‘They both died when I was quite young, so I never spoke to them about coming to England. I felt like I was retracing their footsteps, learning about what it must have been like for them. I had no idea about the level of racism people suffered when they came over to this country.’

Last year she appeared on stage opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle’s rapturously received Frankenstein. She’d worked with Boyle before, in 28 Days Later, which was a huge hit in America and ‘transformed’ her career. Boyle said of her at the time, ‘She is phenomenally talented. She should be a star. She can bring anything you want to the table.’

That versatility will come in handy in her next project, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, in which she plays Winnie Mandela from the age of 19 through to her seventies (Idris Elba plays the man himself). For now, though, it’s all about Skyfall – a film its director, Sam Mendes, is describing as ‘Bond with a capital B’.

The finished film is being jealously guarded but the footage released to the press reveals some classic Bond moments: 007 straightening his cuffs after leaping on to the back of a truck; Bond sending fruit stalls flying in a high-speed car chase through an Istanbul market. Not to mention some clever surprises: Q returns to the franchise as a fresh-out-of-college technological wunderkind (played by Ben Whishaw). And Eve is seen attempting to assassinate Bond – on M’s orders. ‘Yes!’ exclaims Harris before adding enigmatically: ‘M’s past comes back to haunt her in this film.’

Not so long ago, being a Bond girl was seen as the fastest way to end an actress’s film career. Eva Green (who starred in Casino Royale) and Gemma Arterton (in Quantum of Solace) have shown that the curse can be resisted. But I doubt Naomie Harris will even be giving it a thought. She is, after 50 years, the first Bond woman.