Will Mellor: 'If I can use my platform for good, then I will'
Will Mellor sits down with Yahoo UK to share his Origin Story, and explain why he feels its his duty to inform the public of miscarriages of justice in shows like Cops Gone Bad.
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00:00 I feel like I have a responsibility and that's what I did with the post office,
00:03 even though I was an actor in a drama.
00:05 Afterwards, when people like yourself or journalists on the news or
00:10 chat show, if they want to ask me, I do have an opinion and I feel it's my duty
00:13 to give my opinion because I have a profile and a platform to use it.
00:17 And if I can use it for good, then I will.
00:19 What was it that first drew you to acting?
00:28 It was just who I was. That's the only way I can explain it.
00:31 As a kid, I grew up in an estate, a council estate with four older sisters.
00:35 So I came out, there was six years between me and the youngest sister to me.
00:40 So they had four girls and then they waited six years and then they had me.
00:46 Coming out as the only boy and being the youngest, I got a lot of attention
00:49 and whether I enjoyed the attention, I don't know whether it was that,
00:53 but I was just always on. I always wanted to entertain.
00:57 I always wanted to make people laugh or, you know, I was always dancing,
01:02 doing impressions, impersonations.
01:03 Every time I went to a butlings or on a caravan site, if there was a talent show,
01:08 I'd go in it. I just wanted to entertain. That's all I can tell you.
01:12 And I had this dream that I was going to be on TV from a very, very young age.
01:18 And then that was that. And then it wasn't until I was 11, 12.
01:24 It was the first time there was a casting for a new agency in Manchester
01:28 called Lane Management, and they were looking for raw talent.
01:30 And they said, if you want to go down, bring your kids down
01:33 and we'll see if they've got something.
01:35 And they took me down, my parents and the agent thought I had something
01:38 and they took me on and said, we think we can do something with him.
01:41 And that was the rest is history, as they like to say.
01:44 Yeah, yeah, for sure. And obviously, you know, you made your mark in soaps,
01:47 but you've since gone on to appear in, you know, acclaimed dramas
01:50 and docuseries like Cops Gone Bad.
01:52 And I wondered, how would you describe the way that your acting
01:56 and approach to the entertainment industry as a whole has developed over the years?
02:01 I've always been of the opinion that I never want to be put into a box and say,
02:05 well, this is what I do, because there's more to me than just being an actor.
02:10 I sing, I taught myself to play the piano at a young age,
02:13 and I used to sit and play the piano and sing all the time.
02:17 And any kind of entertainment is sort of where I want to be.
02:22 I enjoy the factual side of the entertainment because I get to be myself,
02:27 whereas when I'm acting, I have to be somebody else.
02:30 Where I'm sort of quite comfortable in my own skin, I'm being myself and talking.
02:34 I love meeting people and doing factual.
02:36 It helps me to meet different people,
02:38 find myself in different scenarios and surroundings.
02:40 And I enjoy that.
02:41 I just don't ever want to be one thing.
02:44 And I like to do different things.
02:45 I like to challenge myself and learn.
02:47 I'm always learning. I'm always, yeah, I'm always sort of on the move.
02:50 I never sit still.
02:52 Obviously, the police are under a lot more scrutiny nowadays in the news and in the public eye.
02:59 I wondered, why do you feel like it's important to have shows like this now on TV?
03:04 I watch lots of programmes like 24 Hours of Police Custody,
03:07 or, you know, Suspect Number One or anything like that.
03:11 I enjoy watching them to see how the police work, to see how they do their job.
03:17 There's ways of doing this.
03:18 And I think when they first asked me to do Cops Who Kill,
03:22 they said, we want someone to represent the public and be a real person,
03:26 ask real questions and have real emotions when you see what's going on here.
03:30 And I said, that's me.
03:31 I'm happy being myself.
03:33 And I'd rather people get to see me and hear what I have to say genuinely,
03:38 because I believe there's an honesty and a truth that comes from that.
03:43 And I wanted to make sure I asked the questions that people are shouting at the TV.
03:47 I found myself watching programmes going,
03:50 well, why don't you ask them that?
03:51 Or why don't you say this?
03:51 Or I wish they'd have said this or asked that.
03:53 So I just wanted to represent the public in this and come on the journey with me
03:57 while I find out what these police officers did, how they did it, why they did it,
04:02 and how can we prevent this happening again in the future?
04:04 There is a necessity for the public to know what's going on.
04:08 And also, I think the police should be interested in finding a way of
04:12 being able to trust within their units to point out a bad egg if they see one,
04:16 because I think there's a lot of times it's gone on where people have protected their own.
04:21 It's giving the police, the great police that are out there,
04:26 the confidence to be able to stand up and lift their head above the parapet and say,
04:29 no, there's a bad egg here and we need to have a look at them.
04:32 We're not cop bashing here, because we know 99% of police are great police.
04:36 What we're doing here is saying, if you do see it, say it before something bad happens.
04:40 Like Wayne Cousins, like with Sarah Everard,
04:43 and David Carrick got away with it for far too long.
04:46 Thank God they caught him in the end,
04:48 and it comes down to the great police work that they did catch him,
04:51 and now he's in prison for the rest of his life.
04:53 You've seen firsthand how shows like Mr Bates vs the Post Office can enact real change in real time
04:59 when the public get to know more about these subjects.
05:01 I want to do hope that Cops Gone Bad will be able to do the same.
05:05 Doing Cops Gone Bad, Cops Who Kill, the Post Office scandal, and all that sort of stuff,
05:10 it just gives me a chance to help, hopefully, right some wrongs.
05:14 And if I can be a small piece of this puzzle, and righting some wrongs,
05:18 then great, I've done something good.
05:20 And that's all I ever want.
05:22 And sometimes I go in, I play a character, and it stays there.
05:26 But with the Post Office, it was more than that,
05:29 because I was playing a real person, and it's an ongoing thing that's happening now.
05:32 All I ever want, when I do these kind of things, is to find an improvement.
05:37 Like, let's learn from our mistakes.
05:39 And the problem you've got with police is there's so much power that comes with that badge.
05:43 And it's just how they tighten that net to stop them slipping through,
05:49 whether they have to make changes in the recruitment.
05:53 And I don't know.
05:55 All I know is we put it out there, and we ask the question.
05:58 And I think it's only right for the public to know.
06:00 But I have to reiterate again, we are not cop bashing.
06:05 We know you can't tie everyone with the same brush.
06:07 I hate it when people say, "Oh, I don't like them because they come from that country."
06:11 "Oh, I don't like them because they do that job."
06:13 It's like, no, judge people as an individual.
06:16 These are individuals who did horrendous things, and they got punished for it.
06:21 All we're trying to say is, how do we prevent this from happening again?
06:23 Were there any mentors in your life or career who you would say
06:29 had a defining influence on you and your career path?
06:32 Tell you what, this is a strange one, but my school gave up on me.
06:36 When I was at school, they didn't understand me.
06:39 And I told them I wanted to be an actor and a performer.
06:41 And apparently, I wasn't ever going to do that.
06:44 Even my drama teacher said, "You're a failure. You're never going to be anything."
06:46 And that drove me on, to be honest.
06:48 It could have crushed me, but it didn't.
06:49 And they actually threw me out of all the classes,
06:52 apart from maths, English, and science,
06:54 and told me I had to sit at the back of the class with headphones on
06:57 so I didn't disrupt the class because I had all this energy, which is so bad.
07:01 But the head teacher, Mr. Nolan, I'm never forgetting,
07:04 sat me down and he just said, "Listen, I don't want to throw you out of school."
07:07 "I understand what you're trying to do here."
07:09 "I want to support you, but I have to support the teachers at the same time."
07:13 And it just made me think, "Somebody gets me."
07:16 And then he came to see me.
07:18 I was doing a musical in Manchester called "Oh, What a Night,"
07:20 where I met my wife.
07:21 I was about 21, 22 years old.
07:23 And I got a letter, and it was in my dressing room,
07:26 and it was from Mr. Nolan.
07:27 And he said, "I knew I was right to stick by you. Keep going, kid."
07:30 And do you know what?
07:32 It made me feel somebody understood me.
07:35 Not a lot of people did get me.
07:37 I am an advocate now, speaking out to people and teachers,
07:40 just to say, "Hey, we're not all academics."
07:42 "But it doesn't mean we're failures, because we're not."
07:44 Love that.
07:45 If you could go back in time and give young Will any advice
07:48 on how to change his origin story, what would it be and why?
07:52 I'd just try and ask him to calm down and take time out every now and then,
07:56 because I don't know whether it's possible,
07:58 because that's part of my drive.
08:00 But my head doesn't stop, you know what I mean?
08:02 And I'd sort of say, "Don't worry so much,"
08:06 because I worry about a lot of things and stress about a lot of things.
08:10 So, yeah, I'd just try and say,
08:14 "Sometimes sit back and have a look at the world around you,
08:17 because if you keep going at this pace, you'll just miss it all."
08:20 So, yeah, and you don't have to be the most entertaining person in the room.
08:25 If I walked into a room, I felt like I had to entertain everybody.
08:28 And I didn't, but I felt like it was my responsibility to do so,
08:32 whether that's a nervous energy, whether it's a part of ADHD,
08:34 whether it's a part of just me being me.
08:37 But I'd just sort of say, "Calm down a bit, lad. You'll be all right."
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