My interview with Daniel Ings gets off to a suitably chaotic start. I’m supposed to meet him at The Newman, a very nice hotel in Fitzrovia. So far, so typical – except The Newman has yet to open to the general public. (He’s really very new.)
I didn’t know this. Suffused with blissful ignorance, I breezed out of the drizzle and straight into a locked door. A very nice lady came to my rescue and we shared an exchange of mutual confusion. I wondered why she was being so inquisitive – “Are you meeting someone here?” – she naturally had questions for the nincompoop attempting to break into her hotel. Quite an apologetic nincompoop once he clocked the situation and the largely deserted lobby. I explained myself, and she directed me to a sofa to wait.
Ings shows up a few minutes later. He’s very amused by the incident, especially when I share my various theories: does he know the owners? Is he the most well-connected man in London? Does he only stay in hotels where he is the sole guest? “That would be cooler, wouldn’t it?” he chuckles. In fact he’s here for a photoshoot and will be off home after our chat.
I described the mixup as ‘suitably chaotic’ because it’s exactly the kind of thing you can imagine happening to a Daniel Ings character, blundering into a space that isn’t expecting him. Only he would doubtless maximise the opportunity by sneaking a bottle from behind the bar when nobody’s looking and hit on the first woman in sight. (I should stress I refer to his archetypal on-screen persona: the real Ings is a happily married father of three.)
Over the past 15 years, Ings has specialised in playing feckless yet loveable poshos – nincompoops, for want of a better word – the type of chap whom a century ago goes carousing with Bertie Wooster down the Drones Club and would now be a staple on Made In Chelsea. He’s more than capable of straying beyond this remit: witness his emotive turn as Billie Piper’s cuckolded husband in Sky drama I Hate Suzie. However, he’s best known as a bounder: the womanising Luke in cult sitcom Lovesick, Prince Philip’s toxic BFF Michael Parker in The Crown, drug-addled aristocratic Freddy Horniman in The Gentlemen.
The brief was ‘Captain Jack Sparrow meets Ernest Hemingway.’ Part of me was like, ‘Wow, those two flavours don’t feel remotely similar.’
The man himself is actually rather zen. He wears glasses, preppy yet comfortable clothes, and looks like an extremely handsome Masters student. (Today, at least.) He’s a big guy; now 40 and a tad more grizzled, it’s easy to see why he’s been cast as warriors in recent years. He played the fearsome champion Owain in the recent adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King, and now he’s heading to Westeros as an even harder bastard, the swaggering Lyonel Baratheon.
Lyonel is a big-time player in the latest Game of Thrones prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Adapted from George RR Martin’s novella series, Tales of Dunk and Egg, the first season runs for a lean six episodes; its title and trailer promise a far sunnier romp than the perennially gloomy House of the Dragon. (I suppose you could make a gloomy TV series with ‘egg’ in the title but it would be terrifically bad form.)
For those unfamiliar: Dunk is Ser Duncan the Tall, the titular hedge knight; Egg is his shaven-headed squire. They wander the land of Westeros and have adventures. Forget those guys for now: concentrate on Lyonel Baratheon, a gigantic nobleman whose fighting prowess and joie de vivre have earned the immortal nickname ‘the Laughing Storm’.
Lyonel sounds rather like Lord Flashheart from Blackadder. “It is quite Lord Flashheart,” agrees Ings. “The brief was ‘Captain Jack Sparrow meets Ernest Hemingway.’ Part of me was like, ‘Wow, those two flavours don’t feel remotely similar.’ And the other part of me was like, ‘But I want to smash them together and find out what happens.’”
Ings makes a more grounded comparison to Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker, a soldier so addicted to the adrenaline of conflict that the peace he’s supposedly fighting for becomes intolerable. “He just loves fighting. He just loves the art of beating the shit out of people.”
Pre-casting, Ings was a Westeros neophyte. He hadn’t even watched Game of Thrones. “I don’t know what my excuse was. I just didn’t catch it.” Having binged the whole series, “I’m now obsessed with it. It’s so fucking good, man.”
Even the controversial final season? [Spoiler warning for the two people who require one.] “I kind of bought it. There’s that one bit where she goes mad and she flies around burning everyone… I kind of understood why people got a little angry about that. But I liked the character progression, where it went. I felt like she had to become a tyrant.”
There are currently three Dunk and Egg stories for the series to adapt; George RR Martin has assured Ings that Lyonel will appear in further adventures the author has yet to write. (Expect them to arrive sooner than The Winds of Winter.) Season two has already been commissioned.
Ings will be laughing for a while yet.
Camel wool coat by Brixtol Textiles, brown mohair knit and burgundy track pants both by All Saints; loafers by Sebago.
For many years, he wasn’t even the most famous Daniel Ings in the country. Striker Danny Ings spent a decade in the Premier League, scoring goals for the likes of Liverpool, Southampton, Aston Villa, and playing for England three times. Any internet search for Daniel required the addition of ‘actor’, otherwise you’d discover he had netted the opener against Everton at the weekend.
“I’d love to meet Danny Ings!” exclaims his thespian namesake. For years, he wanted to make a short film entitled I Am Dan. “We both played ourselves but I was really annoyed that he was taking all my Google hits. So I kidnapped Danny Ings the footballer.” It’s a genuinely funny idea. Did he ever suggest it to striker Ings? “No!”
Danny now plays in the Championship for Sheffield United, while Daniel has two major TV series on the go; the premise no longer works quite so well. But maybe if Sheffield get promoted the two Ings can finally collaborate on I Am Dan. It’s certainly more likely than Daniel trotting out at Bramall Lane on the wing.
Unlike many kids, our Daniel never wanted to be a footballer. He never wanted to be anything other than an actor. Growing up in Wiltshire, “I was obsessed with movies when I was a kid. I would just sit and watch movie after movie. I knew that I wanted to be involved in filmmaking, maybe writing and directing, and acting was really the only part of that that I could do at school.”
I was walking off the set, and someone from the crowd shouted, ‘Do the chicken dance
He ticked off the National Youth Theatre, theatre studies at Lancaster University, trained at Bristol’s Old Vic Theatre School. “I really don’t have any other skills because I was singularly focused on acting,” says Ings. “I always think it’s awesome when people are like, ‘Oh, I just fell into it!’ But I was really lame and obsessive.”
Lame, obsessive, and successful. By his mid-twenties he had landed recurring roles on several TV comedies such as Psychoville, Pete versus Life and The Café. He understudied Benedict Cumberbatch in the National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, playing the titular scientist on six hours’ notice when Cumberbatch went down with laryngitis. Then he scored a major role in a sitcom originally named Scrotal Recall. Thankfully, by season two, the title was changed to Lovesick.
Lovesick revolves around three twenty-somethings, friends from university who share a house in Glasgow. There’s hopeless romantic Dylan (Johnny Flynn), bitingly competent Evie (Antonia Thomas), and irrepressible party boy Luke (Ings). In the first episode, Dylan is diagnosed with chlamydia and must inform all of his past sexual partners, typically one per episode. The series is funny and sweet and wise – so obviously, Netflix decided to remove it last year to make room for another series of Copulation Beach or whatever.
I’m delighted to report that Ings cherishes Lovesick as much as its fanbase (count me among them). “That’s about as good as it gets,” he says. “We’ve all said how maybe we didn’t quite know what we had at the time. In terms of incredible writing, incredible crew. We all got on incredibly well. We were shooting in Glasgow, which is such a vibey city. We loved it.”
Check suit, shirt, and tie by Edward Sexton; sunglasses by Lunetterie Generale; shoes by Crockett & Jones
Would he ever revisit the characters for a fourth series or a movie? “I would honestly love to,” he says. “I am speaking for myself, so this is complete guesswork, but I do think everybody would love to do it. Maybe a movie. I’d love to see what they’re all up to in their 40s.” He has his theories but won’t divulge anything, just in case. “Not that anyone would ask my fucking opinion if we did it!” He grins. “And rightly so.”
Like Ings, Flynn and Thomas enjoy thriving careers. Aligning schedules would be tricky, and absolutely nothing is in the works. But I can divulge that ideas have been mooted, however abstractly. “I had an idea for it,” says Ings. “Which I kind of ran up the flagpole. I think there was a general sense of, ‘That’s kind of a good idea.’ I would love to. Let it be known.”
He can say even less about season two of The Gentlemen, other than filming is complete and the show “becomes bigger and broader”. Season one was a huge hit: Theo James establishing his James Bond credentials as a suave duke drawn into the cannabis trade, Kaya Scodelario equally brilliant as an enigmatic gang boss. However, it was Ings who stole the show as the hapless Freddy, the overlooked older brother whose cocaine addiction kicks the plot into gear (ahem).
There’s a legendary scene in the first episode in which Freddy is forced to don a bright yellow chicken costume and dance for a deeply unpleasant Scouse gangster. Ings wore the chicken costume when he first visited Guy Ritchie’s trailer. Its fame has endured. He describes filming a jousting scene in a Belfast field for Seven Kingdoms, resplendent in armour and a helmet with antlers. “I was walking off the set, and someone from the crowd shouted, ‘Do the chicken dance!’” Ings smiles wryly at the memory. “In spite of all the armour, I was clearly still giving off chicken vibes.”
Behind the camera, he’s done some producing and enjoys writing – “although I find it best to write without really thinking that it will ever get made.” An idea for a TV series got hamstrung when he recently saw a film trailer for the exact same concept. Maybe the film will flop. “That’s what everyone has said!” laughs Ings. “‘Maybe it’s shit.’ Or ‘Maybe it’s good and they just want someone else to make it again.’”
He’s reluctant to divulge too much of the concept, or the film that’s inadvertently copied it. “I don’t know what possessed me to write it but it was sort of a medieval Western. Unforgiven in the Middle Ages.”
Sounds awesome… “I mean, I like it. I showed it to a few people who were like, ‘This is so interesting – and fucking expensive!’”
Maybe turn it into a novel? “I don’t have a novel in me,” says Ings. “I don’t think I have a novel in me. In fact, I’m 99% certain there is no novel in me. Maybe a pamphlet.”
Ings wears a navy Shetland wool jumper by Peregrine Clothing
The afternoon has darkened into evening, the drizzle hardening to unambiguous rain. Ings must return to North London to his loving family and their two pet geckos, Sparky and Lloyd.
I have to ask – why geckos?
“One of my children really wanted geckos,” explains Ings. “We did that thing of going, ‘If you get the books and you read up on them, we’ll get you them,’ – thinking that would never happen. And then unfortunately it did happen. The research was done and we were without a reason to not get these geckos. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but they’re nocturnal. So we never see these motherfuckers.”
Do Sparky and Lloyd roam the house? “They’re in a vivarium. I spend more time hanging out with the locusts that I have to keep alive to feed the geckos.”
He has locusts, too? It sounds almost biblical at his place… “Well, it is if they escape – which has happened a couple of times. I have pet locusts because I never get to see the fucking lizards!”
How long do geckos live? “So long,” sighs Ings. “So unbelievably long.”
My sister’s rabbit Nutmeg endured for nearly a decade, well after its owner had departed for university. Apparently captive geckos can live twice that span; I hope Ings gets a discount on the locusts.
Outdoors is also looking quite biblical. Naturally, nobody has umbrellas; I didn’t think to bring one and Ings inadvertently left his at an earlier engagement. “You never really own an umbrella, do you?” he says. “Just pass it on to the next person.”
Thankfully, the staff come to our rescue by supplying us with one apiece. The Newman is already one of my favourite hotels. Ings and I bid farewell and off he goes in the rain, a thoroughly charming man who deserves all the love, laughter and locusts that come his way.
Watch A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Sky
