“They begged me to stay” – Kris Marshall reveals truth behind Beyond Paradise departure
Kris Marshall might never had made it to Beyond Paradise stardom had he not nipped one embarrassing character in the bud as soon as he could.
Kris Marshall opened up on a role he couldn’t wait to leave behind (Image: Getty)
BBC bosses begged Kris Marshall to continue his role as Nick Harper in the comedy show My Family – but he resisted, arguing he’d be stereotyped as a “stoned loon”. The Beyond Paradise star opened up on the moment he knew it was time to leave behind the sitcom that had made him famous once and for all, in a revealing interview.
Admitting his desire to be cast in more serious and perhaps grittier roles, the then 28-year-old said, as reported in The Mirror, “I couldn’t play a stoned loon for ever. When my aunt started calling me Nick I knew it was time to leave.” He then made the shock claim that only his pay cheque had kept him going, while he cringed about being “typecast”.
Kris Marshall (pictured here in 2003) went on to star in the film Love Actually months after leaving (Image: Getty)
“I wanted to leave before, but they gave me shedloads to stay,” he admitted.
Kris was barely recognisable on the show, which he left in 2003, and looks more chic and well-presented these days.
He was written out through a storyline which showed the hapless character, who couldn’t hold down a job and was endlessly broke, undergoing a transformation and moving into his own flat.
Meanwhile, Kris was growing and transforming in real life too, expanding to bigger roles including that of Colin in the American blockbuster Love Actually.
He only spent 14 days on set, but the opportunity was “next level”.
It wasn’t the end of his involvement with the BBC, of course, as he’d later end up taking on a major Death in Paradise role, occupying millions of fans’ evenings as they were glued to the screen to see DI Humphrey Goodman’s latest adventures.
“To me, Goodman is a combination of all the wonderful, quirky detectives I grew up watching: Miss Marple, Poirot, Clouseau, Columbo…” he enthused to the i Paper.
Meanwhile, despite feeling desperate to leave My Family back in the early days, Kris dropped the bombshell last month that the “wanderlust” of that era is “mostly gone” and he’s in a “really happy place” where he is right now.
That means viewers are unlikely to see the back of DI Humphrey Goodman anytime soon.
