Jack Whitehall is JP

1 September 2011

"an inflated sense of entitlement"

Jack Whitehall didn't think he'd land the role of JP in Fresh Meat after reading that the character was supposed to be sporty.

"I was completely physically inept at school," he admits, "but luckily they decided to slightly alter the part after they'd seen me and went with a less sport jock type. But they still have me rowing. How anyone is going to look at me and think I could row...I don't have any shoulders.

"I probably should have buffed up for the role, that's what the real professional actor would have done; gone all method and taken up rowing.  I'm a bit too lazy."

In fact Jack was anything but lazy in his quest for this role, his first acting job.

"I sort of found the job myself. There was a press release about it on Chortle, a comedy website I go on all the time.  So I called my agent and asked to be seen for it.  It was definitely something I chased after.

"I did a little bit of acting when I was younger; I suppose I had early aspirations. But I have always wanted to act and I wanted to get this role. I love Sam and Jesse and thought it would be so good to do something they'd written.  Luckily I fluked the audition..."

But did it feel strange for Jack to be scripted?

"It is a new discipline. It's slightly weird doing other people's work when you are so used to doing your own stuff, but if you're going to do anyone else's material then Sam and Jesse's is a pretty good place to start. The scripts are so good and I feel so confident in them which makes it a lot easier to be regimented to stick to the script and not go off on your own tangent."

A former student of Manchester University, where Fresh Meat is set, how does Jack compare his experience to JP's?

"When we first came up to Manchester to film all my friends were doing their finals.  I left two years ago - I'd started doing stand up in my gap year so when I got to uni that was all underway and I was a bit half hearted in my approach to it. I didn't really want to do history of art anymore; it seemed pretty boring by comparison.

"But I stayed in a very similar grotty student house and a lot of people I was at uni with were similar to the characters in Fresh Meat. It is very well observed. Manchester is such a big university that you get all types of people up there. I lived with a guy at university who was basically JP. He was a friend of mine from Eton who I based some of my portrayal on...hopefully he won't realise!

"In fact it is so big that when I left they didn't realise I'd gone for ages. If you don't want to do any work it's very easy to drift by, there is no one to chase you up. You have to be motivated and there was no one to hold my hand so I wasn't.

"I had an active social life plus I was doing lots of stand up in the north, lots of travelling round to gigs. While my friends were doing their university work I was in a car heading up to Warrington. I didn't have much material about my university experiences either, not sure talking about student life would have gone down that well at a northern working men's club..."

Talking about his character in Fresh Meat, Jack says: "When JP arrives at uni he is very confident and quite ballsy but sort of unravels a bit over the first couple of episodes. He rubs everyone up the wrong way but starts to realise that if he is going to survive there he needs to calm down a bit and make some effort, so he does. At first he does just come across as the posh kid, which is funny, but over the course of the series you realise he's not just a posh idiot, there are other elements.

"He doesn't have the best of starts.  He has sex with one of his housemates and generally puts his foot in it a bit. Not a great way to endear yourself to the group but a great way to start the series though, with this massive elephant in the room.

"His relationship with all of them changes over the series as well. He has weird bonds with all of them, he annoys them all but ends up relying on them. By the end they really look out for each other. The writing is so well observed. These are really accurate types of people, they've totally nailed it."

Jack is currently performing stand up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

"I've been every year but one since I was 17 ...it's where I started.  I was a big fan of sketch comedy when I was at school and used to perform revue stuff. I started off in a sketch troupe at Edinburgh and it remains the home of comedy. So many stand ups go through the experience and I really like the audiences up there, they're very appreciative. It's a really enjoyable place to perform; if I wasn't there I would feel like I was missing out."

Jack is about to start filming a new comedy series Hit the Road, Jack  for Channel 4.