Putting Ray Winstone and Guy Ritchie together might seem like a no-brainer if you're making a gangster film, but many will be surprised to learn The Gentlemen is the first time the pair have ever worked together.
According to Winstone, the two British screen icons have never collaborated before because they had a big falling out in the late 1990s, although they now seem to have made up.
The rift began when Winstone was due to appear in Ritchie's debut movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but was forced to pull out due to scheduling conflicts when filming was put back.
"The film got put back and I went and done something else," Winstone told What to Watch and other media at a round-table interview. "And then me and him fell out. I weren't talking to him and he weren't talking to me, I didn't particularly like him to be honest with you!"
However when he was asked to star in Ritchie's new eight-part crime caper, Ray decided it was time to bury the hatchet...
"I just thought 'fuck it, stop being little children and go to work!'" explains Winstone. "And I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed it. I have to say, in all the years I wasn't talking to Guy, I liked his stuff and I liked what he was doing. He makes films that you can watch again the next day, because they're funny and there's something about them. For me it was about breaking that shit and going back to work with someone that really I should go to work with. And I like him, he's a good guy!"
The Gentlemen, which is Ritchie's first TV project in a celebrated career that has seen him direct a string of crime movies, tells the tale of an aristocrat who finds himself at the head of a million-pound drug empire.
Inspired by the director's 2019 film of the same name, which starred Matthew McConaughey and Hugh Grant, the TV spin-off begins when Eddie Horniman (Theo James) unexpectedly inherits his father’s estate as the Duke of Halstead.
Eddie soon learns his dad balanced the books by allowing Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelairo) and her East End gang to use his properties for growing cannabis, helping himself to a healthy slice of their profits.
It’s an arrangement Susie and her father Bobby Glass (Winstone) is keen to continue, yet a host of unsavoury characters from Britain’s criminal underworld are soon desperate to muscle their way in on the action…
"It’s a great caper," says Winstone. "But there’s reality in the middle of all the mayhem, because there are people like this. Whether it’s the posh mob or us mob, it’s happening. Who are the criminals? How did they get the big houses in the first place? Because they were robbing people and up to skulduggery. That message is there, but we have a bit of fun with it!"
The Gentlemen premieres on Netflix on Thursday 7 March
