John Yorke - The New EE Boss
By Paul Field
We arrived at Elstree at 11 a.m. We were met by John’s production
assistant, Samantha Davey.
After waiting for a few minutes, taking the opportunity to sneak a
peak at the “filming in progress” on their TV monitor, grabbed some of
the photo cards I was missing from our set, John Yorke greeted us with a
smile and a handshake.
First impression, he looked younger than I had expected. He made a
point of saying, later in the interview, that he was a lot older than he
looked! I had not seen his picture before, on the TV or in the tabloids,
although he did tell me his relationship with the tabloids is now very
good, and of late they have been pretty accurate and fair.
At one point, towards the end of our conversation, he said I was
scaring him with all my tabloid quotes. This, I told him, was because I
had spent two days catching up on what the papers had to say before
meeting with him.
Obviously, here in the U.S. we don’t hear, or see much, of the
U.K. tabloids.Our meeting was on March 21, the day after the showing of
the 15th anniversary episode of EastEnders (shown March 4 and 5 on BBC
America).
I asked him what he’d been doing since his last spell at
EastEnders. “Since I did EastEnders last time, I’ve worked for Grundy
Television developing soaps in Europe, and produced two series of the
BBC police drama City Central. I also worked recently on Sunburn,
starring Michelle Collins (“Cindy” on EastEnders).”
“And, what about EastEnders?,” I asked. “Did you watch it while you
were ‘away?’”
“Not every episode, but nearly—I love it!”
I asked why his name appeared on the titles for the 15-year
anniversary episode, alongside Matthew Robinson, but not on any of the
others since he started in January. He said the main reason his name was
on that show is that the scripts were not even finalized for that
particular episode when Matthew left, and he had done quite a bit of
work on it. He also stated that we wouldn’t be seeing his name again for
a while, as he did not want to take credit for any of Matthew’s hard
work before. It also doesn’t help in the fact that EastEnders is filmed
at least six weeks in advance, and scripts are obviously written long
before that.
He also noted that the 15-year episode was the first ever to not
end on a character’s face, or specifically on a character. It ended with
a shot of the Queen Vic. This was intended to show that EE was still a
community after 15 years, and that is what it was all about.
I told him I had expected a sensational ending to that episode.
Yorke responded, “It would get very boring and unrealistic if we had
sensation at the end of every episode, you have to have variety and
realism, or people will not stay close to the show and the characters as
they are now.”
I mentioned to him that in his interview for the Radio Times
15-year anniversary special (see cover), he had said that Arthur Fowler
was his favourite character, and that he needed a new “Arthur” for the
show. This was misquoted, he told us, and in fact what Arthur Fowler
represented was vital for the programme. “If you’re going to show ‘bad’
you have to counterpoint it by establishing a sense of “good.”.
I asked him what he thought of killing a character off, rather
than leaving them open to return. “Killing your characters, or making it
so they can’t return is always bad, although you have to do it sometimes
to be real.” I ask whether he is going to be known as another “axe-man”?
“I don’t know—I hope not, but we’ll have to wait and see, but you do
have to move on, life goes on, we can’t be stagnant. The world doesn’t
stay the same, does it?”
I asked him about the possibility of Michelle’s return, always a hot
question with our readers. “Sue [Tully] has just finished directing
London’s Burning, a 50-minute per episode show for ITV.” She most
recently worked on a series of short films for BBC2, entitled Black Cab.
How about a return to directing here? (A few months ago, she directed a
week’s worth of EastEnders in the U.K.). “It is very unusual for someone
to go backwards in their career, going from an hour-long show, back to
30 minutes and so on. I doubt she would want to do that,” Yorke adds.
I ask, “How about a return to the show of Michelle, even a cameo?
People have been wondering why her character did not appear at important
events such as Arthur’s funeral, especially with airfares at $99 each
way! Would you consider using a different actress?”
Yorke replies, “I think you will agree that considering another
actress for the part would be very disrespectful to Sue, as she IS
Michelle. She made the character what it was, and I don’t see us
considering that at any time in the future.”
I asked him what he thought about Matthew’s leaving, and how long
he thought he himself would last. I commented that I thought moving from
this job to the Head of Drama for BBC Wales (Matthew’s new job) was a
bit of demotion in my eyes. This, I thought, was the ultimate job for a
producer in U.K. television.
“The average life of an executive producer on a show with a hectic
work schedule like this one is about two years. There is only so long
you can do it.” Do you see yourself out of here in two years? “I can’t
answer that now, ask me again in 18 months,” was his repsonse.
He adds that there have been many EastEnders head producers,
including Julia Smith, Mike Gibbon, Michael Ferguson, Leonard Lewis,
Barbara Emile, Corrine Hollingworth, Jane Harris, Ian Aldwinkle and
Mike Hudson (co-execs), Matthew Robinson and myself. (Some of them were
just called series producer or producer). “It is just a title, the job
has always been the same.”
One of the Gazette readers asked me to ask, “Do you consider the
show character-based or story-based?” Yorke sees the show
“character-based, more than anything else.”
As we left John’s office, we returned to the other office where
they were laying out the remains of the official EastEnders birthday
cake, which was from the party they had the past Saturday. Nearly all of
the stars were there, past and present. I figured it would be really
great to have a slice too. We were biting our tongues when he said, “Go
ahead, take a piece”; we did!
We took a walk around the Square, and as always I forgot somewhere
I wanted to see. I did, however, get to Phil’s auto shop, The Arches,
which I missed last time. We also saw the restaurant (we didn’t get
close to it on our previous visit, as they were filming in front of it
at the time). I took a couple of pictures of him on the set, the
statutory Walford E20 sign picture on the Square, and one other.
He seemed in a little bit of a rush, but I soon discovered why, as
he left us outside the BBC restaurant to meet one of the writers. Even a
TV show producer has to eat!
One thing though, he tried very hard to take back the piece of
birthday cake he had given me as I hadn’t eaten it all, he thought I
didn’t like its taste. Try as he might, it’s still in my freezer!
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