‘We tap-danced down the corridors’
Drew McOnie, choreographer
Often in film the arts are portrayed as glamorous: a star magically appears and it’s all very dreamy and aspirational. What was exciting about Fame was the way it showed you’re in it because you’re prepared to commit your life to building a craft. It was a more realistic version of the industry. It captured hunger and desire and hard work.
Going to performing arts school was life-changing for me. I went to Tring Park aged 11. I’d gone from my school in the West Midlands, where I was absolutely not popular, making up my own dances in the playground, to being in a place where people understood me and it made me thrive. Suddenly I had worth and a skill, and the fact I was passionate made me a cool person, which was the opposite of before. In my memory, the constant desire to create and perform that you see in Fame is absolutely truthful. We would be on our way to science in the morning and be spinning down the corridor, running up and down stairs tap-dancing. That was the way we communicated.
I met Alan Parker when I choreographed Bugsy Malone at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2015. We were all really nervous about him watching the show, but he was so supportive. He had such a warmth and you could see the joy he got from watching the brilliant young performers. He was quite quiet sitting in the rehearsal room, holding his cards close to his chest, but he was really listening and watching, really paying attention. He was very complimentary about the choreography, but he said I could do better with the song Down and Out. The next year, when we revived the show, we started that scene again from scratch, and he was right.
‘In the 80s everything was soft filter – this was dark’
Mica Paris, actor
My love of Alan Parker began in 1987. I’d just made a record with Courtney Pine called Like Dreamers Do, and Alan used Courtney on the soundtrack of Angel Heart. Angel Heart was such a life changing film for me, as a person of colour especially. Alan brought race into his films in a way that was so true and honest. He was very ahead of his time in that way. The guy who played Leroy in Fame, Gene Anthony Ray, it was revolutionary to see a black man dancing like that, not just doing street dance but to turn it round into this classical thing.
I toured in a musical of Fame based on Alan’s film, not on the TV series. I’ve done loads of theatre, but I’d never stayed on a musical more than six months. I did Fame for two years – that’s how much I loved the show, because the story is so good. It wasn’t the twee version, it was the real one. In the 80s everything was given sugar, soft filter, glamour, but Alan went dark.
I was 17 when I signed to Island Records. You become famous, suddenly you have this power, then the vultures come out. You get people who are very jealous, people who wish it was them and they come to destroy you. This is the industry. Alan always showed the reality, and that’s why I loved him.
‘We’d do hardcore ballet then double maths’
Jenna Russell, actor
It must have been the early 80s when I saw Fame and it had a massive effect on me. I always loved musicals but I remember being struck, as I always have been by Alan Parker’s films, by how he isn’t scared of letting the darker tones seep through. There were these brilliant moments of joy – when they were dancing on top of the cab, going crazy – but mostly everyone was struggling, and I remember how much hard work it all looked, the cost of it. Because a lot of students are quite vulnerable, that’s why they end up falling into the arts, because it’s somewhere for them to explore that vulnerability in a safe place.
I went to Sylvia Young theatre school when I was 14. The TV series was on then, and there was this mad craze with everyone wearing their leg-warmers and headbands and me thinking I was so lucky because I was at a school where we did that. Does it reflect what training’s really like? Yes and no. The competition and jealousy, I don’t remember that at all. At Silvia Young, it was very bohemian, we’d all be jumping around dancing and doing improvisation or a hardcore ballet class and then trying to settle down to double maths. We did all feel like we were the kids from Fame. We’d get on the tube and all sing and it was exhilarating. That’s what I remember: the world of possibilities.
