Premiere Magazine – January 1998

An on-set diary by Richard E. Grant

How did Richard E. Grant – the waggish British actor known for roles in The Player, Hudson Hawk and Withnail and I – find himself playing Clifford, the neurotic road manager in the Spice Girls’ movie? Did he believe it was his duty as an observer of the human condition to decipher the pop-culture phenomenon – equal parts feminist empowerment and Playboy bunny scampishness? Was it a burning need to understand how these Pied Piperesses and their credo of Girl Power have clawed their way from hardscrabble beginnings to number-one hits in 32 countries? Or was it the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with serious dramamtic performers like Secrets and Lies’ Claire Rushbrook, who was cast to play his unrequited love interest, Deborah, the personal assistant? It was none of the above. When Grant scribbled down “Call agent re: Spice Girls” on a message pad in his kitchen back in December 1996, the words “It may never happen” could not begin to quell his eight year old daughter’s paroxysms of anticipation. For in the Grant household, “I have worked with Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman – twice” does not command the same respect as “The Spice Girls all go to bed by 8…8:30 at the latest.” Grant, an acclaimed diarist as well as an actor, unveils a hard-hitting expose of the laughter (and, yes, the tears) that lie behind the mascara (and beneath the spandex) of Spice World.

June 8, 1997
God Bless the Child

Subterranean spritzers of panic have been my constant companion since a preproduction lunch a month ago when my question “Will we rehearse?” was met by the response “Not really necessary…Girls don’t have time.” William Hunt Menswear has fitted me for five different coloured suits in what they call “’60’s style,” by which the designer means shark-fin collars and pants as tightly fitted as a shark’s ass.

Five different colours because the plot of Spice World is simple: The movie depicts five action packed days in the lives of the girls, leading up to a major concert. Tomorrow is the first day of shooting, and I could not pass the most basic exam in Girl Power. Thankfully, my daughter tutors me on the salient biographical-anatomical details of each Spice, then cross-examines me by pointing at posters, cards, and assorted memorabilia that decorate her Spice shrine (formerly playroom). “Remember to remember everything tomorrow! G’night!” she says, and I realize I have been dragooned into playing into playing Brian Epstein in this generation’s retort to A Hard Day’s Night.

Prior to the release of their number one debut single, “Wannabe,” my child regularly dressed in Laura Ashley little-girl gear, but since then has transformed overnight into an eight-year-old slattern.

I lie awake conjugating and declining my new language: Emma Bunton is the Goldie Hawnette they call Baby Spice; Geri Halliwell is Ginger (occasionally Sexy) Spice; Victoria Adam’s persona is the high fashion Posh Spice; and – here’s where it gets tricky – Melanie Chisholm in the tracksuited Sporty Spice, and Melanie Brown is Scary Spice. On the eve of production, it seems my school-playground credit is nearing its zenith, and I wonder whether it will have plummeted to its nadir by the movie’s January release. Clearly a concern for the producers, who are moving it into multiplexes ASAP.

June 9, Early morning
A Taste of Ginger

I’m cooling my heels in a fuck-off-size Winnebago that could accomodate a family of fifteen. The car park outside the country estate of Loseley Hall is congested with trailers, trucks, and enough equipment to convince you that a military invasion is imminent. Ginger (redheaded ‘n’ busty), who has been vacuum-packed into a shiny black outfit and platform shoes, emerald-eyes her way into my ‘Bago and asks, “Who else is in here with you?”

When I respond to this hormonal bungee jump, “No one,” she draws closer and produces a startled “But why? Won’t you be lonely?” To which I find myself replying that having a trailer this size, all to yourself, is what your contract aspires to! She shakes her head like I’m insane and says that all the girls are sharing one trailer. This is my first reality check – despite their reputed one-year-sudden-megawealth, they have not opted for ye olde tried-and-tested divadom.

The welcome absence of any snootiness or sneering as I enter the communal makeup bus is totally disarming. As is the sheer combined energy force. Mel B., a.k.a. Scary Spice, was born without a volume-control button and is firecracking away in her Leeds accent.

“Give us a feel of yer bum?” she commands, and lets rip a throttling laugh that provokes everyone into instant party mode. Since I’ve just cracked 40, offering up my cheeks for Mel B.’s delactation at 9am momentarily blinds me to the fact that I am old enough to be her father. “You’ll do” is the kind of aprobation that if bottleable would cure any midlife crisis.

Victoria, displaying full-frontal Gucci as she gets into her Posh Spice costume, is incredibly innocent looking before her vamp makeup is applied. Mel C. actually projects a very feminine first impression, thanks to loose dark hair and Liverpool dipthongs, prior to her ponytail and tracksuit makeover into Sporty Spice. Traditionally, makeup and hair folk provide the running commentary in the early morning, but they are comparatively mute in the gals’ company.
I am bombarded with questions. “Who have you worked with? Who have you liked the most/least? Are all your friends famous? How long have you been married? How old’s your daughter? Do you always have to get up this early? Will it take forever to film? Are you a Spice Girls fan? Have you been circumcised?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course, yes!

June 9, Afternoon
Five Naturals and the Funeral of My Artisitic Credibility

The usual etiquette of “Quiet on the set…And action!” is bypassed as the girls and I shoot the first scene at a pizza box-littered table in the estate’s main hall. The division between their “acting” and just “doing what comes naturally” blurs while I try my Snaford Meisner best to capture Clifford in all his shark-suited glory. After the first take, Geri leans in wide-eyed and says sotto voce, “I believed you.”

This blindingly mundane revelation puts my four years of university and drama school into short-sentanced perspective. Clearly my stunned eyeballs beg confirmation, as Geri reiterates. “Honest, I really did believe you.”

“Tell us about your wife” sounds like Dr. Livingstone being invited to bath in the cannibal’s pot.

“All right,” I respond. “If you tell me when you really felt you were truly famous.”

“When we were asked to switch on the Christmas lights in Oxford Street,” they respond nearly in unison. Each then anecdotes upon the tear-inducing buzz of being mobbed, applauded, and honored to do this traditional “duty”, which is akin in corny wholesomeness to being the grand marshal of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

My tot’s reaction to the camcorder footage I smuggle home, feeling like a hunter returning with the kill, is like watching her biting into an unsweetened chocolate square. The real Spice Girls camping about “off air” does not correlate with the fixed images she has of them in their pop videos. She is not impressed. I am, however, provided with some solace the following day, when some of her friends surreptitiously ask whether they could tough me, so long as I had touched Them.

June 18,
It’s a Spice World and Welcome to It

Shooting today at the London Docklands: motorboats, dodgy weather, and hoards of zombie-eyed fans everywhere. “Why aren’t these kids at school?” These “kids” are a Dickensian throwback, with old-young faces and voices like wrecked carburetors, that mechanical device in which vaporized fuel is mixed with air to produce an explosive mixture – which just about describes what happens today, when Spice World meets street life. The first clue comes when a seriously drunk thug pushes past me and says, “Fuck you cunt,” for not speaking to his “little one.” Never having seen this human before, I stupidly try to apologize while security personnel grapple him away.

The scene involves Sporty Spice’s being accidentally thrown overboard. The crowd is not fooled for a moment by the stunt doubles standing in for the girls. And while they wait for a glimpse of a real Spice Girl, they start an impromtu choral yell: “Geriiiiii, Geriiiiii, Emmaaaaaa, Emmaaaaaa!” This blatant favoritism, even among the catcallers, makes me feel bad for the absentee names. At dusk, the girls do an impromptu meet-and-greet walk-around to appease the huge crowds behind the metal fencing. The girls’ attempts to quell the zoo-feeding time hysterics fail and a miniature riot ensues between the public and the police.

I return home to find my daughter stuffing tights down her tank top to approximate Geri’s “Dolly Partons.”

June 21, Morning
Heavy Is the Head That Wears the Spice Tiara

We arrive on set to find that the front page of a tabloid features an ex-boyfriend of Mel B.’s who claims he was “worn out by her six-times-a-night lovemaking demands,” with nude snaps to prove his “proximity.” Without missing a beat, Mel B. retorts, “More like ten, matey!” Not a day goes by without some salacious story appearing in print, and I expect all papers to be banned, shredded, or declared off-limits. But the girls seem inured to it and will read out loud and laugh at the latest “revelations.”

A week later, another runs an eight-page spread of Geri’s pre-Spice topless shots. On any other set, working with any other actor, it would be a case of “Don’t mention the doodlies in front of you-know-who.” Not Geri, who laughs it off and calls the article “a load of tired old tits.” Touche.

June 21, Afternoon
Home Girls

Saturday afternoon, Emma B., a.k.a. Baby Spice, has injured her foot in a platform-shoe fall and has worked through the pain by having it ice-packed between takes all day. Picturing the young blond having her pick of escorts, fashionable parties, and dinner reservations lined up, I ask, “What are you doing tonight?” “Going home to me mum” is not the forlorn phrase you’d expect to hear from a post-teenage multimillionairess, but is precisely the quality that defines her.

The last time they had a full weekend off, each one came back with a mundane illustration of how celebrity affects her life. Mel B. went to visit her folks in Leeds and says she ordered a limo to pick up the family to go out for a meal. When she got through to the car service, the dispatcher on the phone hacked, cackled and said, “Oh yeah? Pull the other one love.”

Similarly, Victoria, a.k.a. Posh Spice, tells of being asked by her mum to go supermarket shopping together. Their mother-daughter contretemps (“Mum, I can’t”; “‘Course you can”; “Can’t”) concluded with their getting mobbed, and hustled out a back entrance by store security. “I still haven’t got used to it. It’s really, really weird,” Victoria says. “Especially for my family.”

Despite a year of topping the charts in 32 countries (with “Wannabe”) their incredulity at the unrelenting media coverage comes as a surprise. My question “But surely you must have-?” is cut short by their response: “When we’re together, sure.” “But it’s got that no matter where we go on our own, or however we disguise ourselves, people spot us. It’s insane.”

And now that they have confided in me, I am expected to undergo a similar act of hazing: a twenty-question interview for their official monthly Spice Girls fanzine.
“Do you really write all the copy yourselves?” I ask.
“‘Course we do” says Geri, before launching into her first question: “Do you fart on-set?”

My answer of “Regularly” is the catalyst for her revelation that “a cow farts enough per week to fill up a hot-air balloon. Not many people know that.”

June 22,
Too Cool for This Cat

Even though it’s the middle of summer, today arrives cold, gray, and wet as an incontinent granny’s knickers. The girls and I are crammed together inside their Winnebago, and we are actually rehearsing a scene all ordered and serious, until Geri returns from having her hair bouffanted. She bangs open the door and yells, “Hey, girls! It’s Jooooooools Holland!” Which causes instant hysteria and the immediate end of rehearsal, as they ask the jazz pianist and late-night TV host for his autograph. It’s hard to reconcile their 40-odd multimillion-dollar commercial deals with the five gigglers cavorting on the floor. In Holland’s presence, the biggest pop stars in England immediately turn into the teenage girls who worshipped him when he was the keyboardist for Squeeze. The past couple of days have been chock full of celebrity cameos, and the girls have only asked “people they really, really like” to be in their movie.

Roger Moore entered the studio the day before, dry as a martini, and broke the unmistakable anticipation from the crew by inquiring, “Do I owe anyone money here?”

Elton John arrives to rehearse the brief verbal exchange (joking about getting to wear the latest designer gear first). He then air-kisses the girls and is off. On his way out, I ask him why he’d agreed to play himself in a scene. He replies, “They are what they are. No side. No pretense. Just wild, unstoppable energy.”

June 22, Afternoon
Mira Sorvino, Watch Your Back

A generator blows. And, during the technical delay, I dedicate myself to “research” by watching the video of This is Spinal Tap. Upon catching me having a moment of quiet reflection in my trailer, Geri says, “I’ve heard about that movie. Can I borrow it?” I think this might be the best “alternative” preparation for their planned world tour.

“What’s your favourite film, Reg?” she asks, and for the remainder of the shoot I will be known as Reg. Having expected to be called Old Spice, I find the clever knickname formed by speaking my initials as its own word is a welcome alternative.

“Some like it Hot,” I respond. When the drag comedy draws a blank look, I try a different tack. “Marilyn Monroe?” does not register, either.

“I’ve never seen her in a film,” offers Geri.
“What’s yours?” I say, keeping up my end of the conversation.

“Natural Born Killers.” Not the answer most mothers of young Spice fans want to hear. Nor Pulp Fiction, the first choice of fitness ueber-wench Mel C. I find myself sorely tempted to share these intimacies with a particularly fierce matriarch at my daughter’s school who is convinced that my new friends are a menace to society. While picking up our kids at school, she has said, “They have gone too far: can’t sing, can’t dance. It’s a fact.” My only regret is that she was not on hand for the afternoon when the girls and I sat around between takes doing dorm talk, and one of them asked, “Have you ever got ‘hard’ during a love scene? Victoria wants to know because she wants to be an actress.”

July 13,
And Live From the Albert Hall

The grand-finale concert sequence. Five thousand Official Fan Club members, cast-and-crew families, and assorted Spice fanatics have coveted free tickets for this quasiconcert. Five songs in all, mimed to playback. Average age of the audience is about ten, and there is the intermittent whiff of prepubescent…how shall I put this?…gas.

The Spice Girls loyalists instantly explode the sound barrier as Geri struts forth in a Playboy Bunnygirl-Betty Grable red bathing suit ‘n’ tail feathers. She runs an impromptu quiz to fill the gaps during technical breaks. Mel B. is rigged out in leopard-skin suit. Emma in Babydoll sequinned minidress, Mel C. in a tracksuit, and Victoria in a body-dipped black-vinyl catsuit. All greet the crowd as if to the Hall of Fame born.

“We’re making history here!” shouts Mel B.

“I was two years unemployed. This is my dream come true,” adds Mel C.

“My mum can’t stop crying,” Emma says.
Geri chimes in, “Spice up your life!”
And then Victoria: “When I realized we were playing Wembley [Stadium] on my birthday next year, I thought, Bloody Hell, that’s gonna be us!”

Within the space of a year, they have travelled from wanting it so bad, to getting a little, then having too much. However, watching them perform reminds everyone why we are making this film. While totally disarmed and seduced by their no-nonsense ordinariness and collective good cheer, today I have become a convert and watch as the girls cross over into icon country: Spice World.

Postscript

While busy this fall premiering George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying and writing a novel, I miss the antics of life in the spice lane. I would see pictures in the papers of the girls meeting Nelson Mandela and hugging Prince Harry. And I make a note: “Call agent and inquire whether Oasis is making a movie and whether they need a manager.” Then I get hold of my senses and remember the Spice Girls’ ongoing tabloid feud with the Gallagher brothers. I am a diarist, after all, and not a turncoat. Besides, the last thing I need is five pairs of platform boots up my well-fondled fanny.