Rejection and Rejuvenation: how Steve Coogan escaped the Alan Partridge typecast
Alan Partridge is such a well-established and long-lived character in British comedy that he has become quite literally synonymous with his creator, Steve Coogan. The comically inept and socially awkward broadcaster first appeared on the radio show On the Hour before transitioning to television in Chris Morris’ The Day Today. The character finally broke through with his own series in 1994 with Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge.
Coogan often describes Alan Partridge as a suit he wears that gives him the confidence to step on stage or in front of the camera. After rising to fame in the 1990s, Coogan reached the tabloids with his hard-partying lifestyle, which saw him rub shoulders with the era’s biggest stars. Liam Gallagher once recalled an evening when he partied with Coogan, who employed his Alan Partridge alter ego for part of the evening.
When the Oasis singer awoke in the morning with a pounding head, Partridge was still there. “We drank loads of Guinness and went back to our room and crashed out,” he told Noisey. “I wake up and see this lump in the bed, and I go ‘Oh, God, Who’s this?’ And it was him, and he was fully clothed, and he’s gone [gesturing an emergence from the bedsheets]… A-haa!”
As this comical anecdote suggests, Coogan has occasionally become consumed by his most famous character. Over the years, Partridge has evolved, appearing in a variety of formats, from television series and films to books and podcasts, demonstrating Coogan’s attachment to the character. However, he has a love-hate relationship with Partridge and often finds himself trying to escape into new characters.
As Daniel Radcliffe knows all too well, recurring appearances in world-renowned roles bear the inherent risk of typecasting. This can be a double-edged sword in the entertainment industry, as actors known for one iconic role may find it challenging to be recognised for their versatility in other projects. Coogan himself has circumnavigated this challenge over the past couple of decades, branching out into dramatic roles in films like Philomena and Stan & Ollie.
Speaking to his The Trip co-star Rob Brydon in a 2022 podcast episode, Coogan revealed that he became incensed after receiving a rejection for a dramatic role in ITV’s The Scapegoat. “I was fucking furious,” Coogan asserted. “Charles Sturridge was directing a drama for ITV, and he wanted me to play the lead.” At a screen test, Coogan demonstrated his range with “some emotional stuff” and felt it had gone well.
Sadly, Sturridge contacted Coogan with a rejection. “I’m so sorry, they don’t want you,” Coogan recalled, quoting Sturridge. “I think they were hoping the screen test would show your weaknesses, but you did everything you were supposed to do, and then they said, ‘We just don’t want him because of who we think he is. We can’t associate him with acting; it just seems wrong. He’s Alan Partridge, we just want an actor.'”
The casting team ultimately appointed Matthew Rhys, whom Coogan regards as a fine actor. All the same, it “stung” Coogan at the time, and he remembered “spitting blood about” the missed opportunity. As a man of resolve and creative drive, the unfortunate experience encouraged Coogan to “shift things” in his career so he wasn’t “typecasted” or “pigeonholed”.
Shortly after, while shooting The Other Guys in New York with Adam McKay, Coogan stumbled upon his ticket out of the Alan Partridge typecast. “When I was twiddling my thumbs, I read The Guardian, and I read an article about an Irish woman who had lost her son and had gone on this journey with this journalist to track him down. I remember seeing a photo in the newspaper of this middle-aged man and this old Irish woman who was laughing.”
Coogan felt that the woman’s emotion expressed in the photo didn’t “tally” with the sombre nature of the article. This peculiarity stirred something inside the actor. “There’s something about that,” Coogan thought. “Why’s that woman who’s been through all that pain laughing?”
The article reduced Coogan to tears and inspired him to reach out to the old lady, Philomena Lee. He subsequently worked on the screenplay for Philomena with Jeff Pope and starred in the eventual Stephen Frears direction opposite Judi Dench as the journalist Martin Sixsmith. Arriving in 2013, Philomena was a resounding critical and commercial success that helped establish Coogan as an actor of dramatic range, dissociating him from the Alan Partridge typecast.
