Sarah Solemani, Kerry Howard and Russell Tovey, from the popular UK BBC sitcom Him & Her, talk to Ellen Wishart about the fourth and final series: The Wedding.
Lazy, loved-up twentysomething bedsitters Becky and Steve have made up one of television’s most quietly convincing couples since sitcom Him & Her first aired in the UK on BBC3 in 2010. As the show comes to an end with a wedding for Becky’s awful sister Laura, stars Russell Tovey, Sarah Solemani and Kerry Howard explain how the lines have blurred between fact and fiction.
Could you actually live together in real life?
Sarah: Definitely – we’re all so close, it would work.
Russell: We’ve been on holiday together, with our partners.
Sarah: We should do that: Becky and Steve on holiday together where they don’t actually leave the hotel room, just watch telly, sit on the balcony and take the mick out of people.
Do you drive each other insane with your bad habits?
Russell: When Sarah sneezes, she puts her finger in her ear and wiggles it up and down. Me and her husband both talk about it – it’s so noisy, like something out of The Lion King.
Sarah: I am really messy. My husband is always moaning at me for carrying dirty tissues about.
Sarah, you got married last year – any experiences you could draw on for this wedding?
Sarah: Nope. If you think about what weddings involve: the speeches, being made to say things about each other so publicly, the money… The new series really highlights what we’ve all bought into. Kerry and I both had BIG weddings. If we’d shot the series before that, I’d have been totally put off.
Kerry: I’d have just got married in a registry office or something.
You’re actually leaving the bedsit for this series.
Russell: We were worried it wouldn’t work being away from the flat and away from each other so long, but [in those scenes] when Steve and Becky come back together, it really works.
Sarah: It’s those moments that Becky and Steve manage to steal together that really make it.
Does the show have to end?
Russell: It doesn’t feel like the end. We’ll probably do a Christmas special.
Sarah: They’re all getting older and it won’t be the same show when they have jobs. It’s the only show that depicts people on [unemployment] benefits in a positive light, which is good.
Becky’s such a together character. Why won’t she get a job?
Sarah: Becky and Steve aren’t ambitious, greedy or materialistic.
Russell: They just want to hang out and have a laugh. They’re so happy with themselves. They’re who you want to be, really.
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