Reggie Yates is remarkably chilled out for a man embarking on a high-profile, mid-career pivot. It’s probably because he’s done it before: over the course of a 28-year career in the entertainment industry, he has transitioned from actor to presenter to radio DJ to documentary filmmaker (he’s an author and a podcaster too, naturally). Now, at the age of 36, he’s written his first script for TV and his debut feature film is also in the works. But he’s not overly concerned about how his foray into fiction will be received.
“I don’t really have much fear in my life at the moment because I’ve got a bloody good therapist,” he tells GQ during a phone call that took place during the very early stages of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown. Yates, at that time, was enjoying a green patch of creativity in isolation. “It’s calm. I have the room to think, the room to breathe. I’m actually weirdly more creative than I’ve been in a long time.”
In Make Me Famous, a one-hour standalone drama for BBC Three, he tackles the complicated aftermath of reality TV stardom through the eyes of Billy (Tom Brittney), a charming and cocksure contestant on a Love Island-like series whose life unravels around him in the year-and-a-half after his stint on the show. It’s an extremely sensitive subject that became even more so once Yates’ former co-presenter Caroline Flack took her own life in February, shortly after production on the film had been completed. (Yates declined to comment on Flack’s death in our interview. “Personally, out of respect for the situation, with it being so delicate, the best thing for me to do is to not give any direct quote on that, unfortunately.”)
Inevitably, Billy’s story is one that many will associate with that of 26-year-old Love Island star Mike Thalassitis, who took his own life in March 2019, but, sadly, it goes far beyond one person’s experience. According to a report from last year, 38 reality stars have died by suicide in the past 20 years, and that number will have risen in 2020, following the deaths of Flack and Hana Kimura, an alumnus of Japanese series Terrace House, in May. The problem is global and it hasn’t yet been solved by promises of increased aftercare from production teams.
BBC Three sought out Yates to write the script, which follows in a line of award-winning singles inspired by real life events, including Killed By My Debt and Murdered By My Boyfriend. Yates has experience in reality TV and he’s also been in the public eye for the best part of his life, having kicked off his career at the age of nine with a guest stint on Channel 4 sitcom Desmond’s. But crucially, he has spent the past seven years making documentaries, which has revealed him as a deeply empathetic storyteller.
Translating the experiences of reality stars into a drama required thorough research. Yates spoke to several former contestants to understand their experiences in order to construct a composite that would accurately probe the situation. “Through those conversations, combined with my own experiences, I was able to create Billy, who I felt sort of epitomised the archetype, but at the same time had an individuality, so you would believe in him but also understand and believe his story.”
When we meet Billy, he’s on the downslope of fame: the new series of the show has just begun to air and one of its contestants has neatly slotted into the role he had filled, leaving him cast aside. The promotional opportunities – such as paid appearances at club nights and Instagram ads for protein powder – have started to dry up and the negative comments on social media, which are announced with a familiar ping and appear in the corner of the screen throughout the drama, are starting to affect him more than they used to.
“If you are in that world, your time in the spotlight is limited, because the nature of the beast is there is a new iteration of what it is you did less than a year after,” Yates says. “That’s the one consistent thing that was said by everyone I spoke to. When you’re out of that cycle and a new show comes on, everything drops off a cliff. And that’s why you’ve got the new character, Pete, the younger, hotter Billy. That’s just the reality of it if you’re in one of those shows. The minute the new series airs, you can be forgotten.”
Over the course of the drama, we see Billy struggle to come to terms with the steep drop back to real life. In one heart-wrenching late scene, he returns to the insurance firm where he used to work to beg for his job back. His former boss is shocked to see him: all he has seen of Billy's new life thus far are the posts he has shared on social media – naturally, he doesn't share the bad stuff – and for that reason he has no idea about the pain Billy is experiencing.
But the film makes it clear that social media is not solely to blame for Billy’s problems. “It’s his life, it’s his situation, it’s his choices, it’s the way he spent his money. It’s all these different elements.”
Yates, for his part, has seen the toxic side of Twitter and it made him pull back from the site, where he still holds a largely inactive account.
“I’m not a fan of it. I think the etiquette of different social media platforms is different. There was a point when Twitter changed and it felt like anything goes. I’m quite a private person and that doesn’t really work for me. It wasn’t really so much people saying things to me. It was just me seeing the way that people felt and could speak to anyone and everyone. And that didn’t sit well with me.”
This kind of decisive action likely plays a part in why Yates has been able to keep his head above water, despite having spent the majority of his life in the public eye. He attributes his level-headedness to the attitude preached at Anna Scher, the North London afterschool drama club that gave him his start in the business (other alumni include Daniel Kaluuya, Naomie Harris and Kathy Burke).
“The first thing you were told on your first day was to look at this sign above the door and read it out loud and that sign says: 'There is no such thing as star and fame.’ And you know, a few years away from having a 30-year career, long may it continue, and I think a huge part of that is because of that sign.”
He was aware of the transitory nature of fame from a young age because he had seen others fall prey to it. “By the time I was 18 I had already been in this business for a decade, so even at that age it took a lot for someone to get one over on me, so to speak. And having seen so much by then – and by that I mean seeing people come and go – you realise that nothing lasts forever and it just changes your relationship with the art form and with the job.”
But Yates’ experiences are not comparable to those of the contestants he interviewed, because his multi-hyphenated skill set is inherently valued above theirs in the current media landscape. How do we move forward, then, with the knowledge that the fame machine is currently causing so much harm?
“I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that I have the answer as to how to fix this,” he says. “I’ve learnt that the healthiest way to end a documentary is to ask a question, as opposed to thinking that you’ve come up with the solution. I think a huge part of things being easier for everyone is just empathy. Understanding how your behaviour affects others, period, is a huge part of actually walking in love and having a healthy and happy and balanced life. And I don’t know if enough people invest time in that.”
BBC Three’s Make Me Famous will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer now. It will air on BBC One at 9pm on Thursday 25 June.
