‘I’ll fucking show her, Adam.’
Vanity Fair
MURDER ON THE ISLAND
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24
Within hours of the announcement, the internet was awash with rumours and counter-rumours, accusations and theories about the whereabouts of Ned Groom. That he was dead. That he was in hiding. He was on the run. He had been kidnapped. That he had faked his own kidnapping. That for some unknown reason Freddie Hunter had thrown Ned out of his helicopter and into the North Sea.
Freddie Hunter shakes his head, rubs the back of his neck. ‘I think sometimes people forget that you can see it, the stuff they write online. That they forget you’re a human being – a human being grieving your friends, an actual person processing trauma, who is quite capable, against your own better judgement, of googling yourself,’ he says, his usually bouncy London-slash-California delivery noticeably subdued. ‘Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they don’t forget. Maybe you seeing it, being hurt by it, is the whole point . . . Know what I mean?’
For anyone expecting the wry patter of one of his opening monologues, the goofy sycophancy of his celebrity interviews, Hunter is surprisingly softly spoken, thoughtful, in one-to-one conversation. He gives the impression of someone picking his words carefully, acutely aware that what he says will be endlessly analysed by the ghouls he describes, understanding that this is not his tragedy to own.
Speaking from his elegantly appointed Montecito house, in his open-necked white linen shirt, with his golden tan, Freddie does, on the other hand, look every inch the slick chat-show host. Long gone is the gawky awkwardness, the puppy fat and floppy hair of his boyband days. Similarly distant is the stubble and bloat of his wilderness years, a period during which he has described himself as practically living at Covent Garden Home, having relocated to London in a bid to escape the harsh glare of the US spotlight, come to terms with everything he’d been through during his stint in Sideways, wrestling with his sexuality （‘often very enjoyably’）， taking acting lessons and auditioning, in his own words, ‘for awful parts in terrible movies and never once getting them’。 All of this peppered with several extended stays at The Priory for addiction issues, something which he has always been open about （‘Look, addicts are addicts,’ he once explained. ‘It’s something I constantly have to be careful of. When I left Sideways, I replaced adoration with drugs, drugs with drink, drink with food, then food with buying disgustingly expensive stuff I didn’t need’）。
He is now very much a well-paid, well-loved member of the Hollywood establishment, frequently papped shopping at Fred Segal with a supermodel friend, grabbing a Starbucks and giggling with a hot new starlet. What people forget, he suggests, is quite how long it took, quite how hard he had to work and quite how resilient he had to be to get here. ‘One of the things Kyra and I always say is, thank God we got famous before everyone had smartphones. Although perhaps if I had been on Instagram someone might have done me a favour and mentioned those leather chaps on stage were a bad idea . . .’ He smiles, to show he is joking.
‘Look, I had five years of almost constant touring in Sideways, fans screaming every night that they loved me, opening the hotel curtains in the morning to see them all still out there with handmade banners with hearts all over them. But I woke up one morning and I just couldn’t do it any more. I was exhausted, couldn’t sleep, was having almost constant panic attacks. Never saw my family. Didn’t have any friends apart from the other guys in the band. So I quit and sacked my management. I’m not sure I thought through the implications – that I’d have nobody I trusted to help or advise me, that I would instantly become a person who used to be famous, a nobody. But at least back then it took a bit of effort to find out what people were saying about you. The cruel comments. The jokes. These days? It’s always there, in your pocket. If there’s something bad you think about yourself, within ten seconds you can find someone who has already said it online but ten times worse.’
He stops to take a sip of water, eyes flicking left as if someone – perhaps, given the size of the immaculate house sprawling behind him, a housekeeper – has walked into the room. ‘I thought the worst it could get,’ he continues, ‘was just after I landed the gig back over here – my own show, the thing I’d been working so hard towards. All these people – most of them with four followers and a Moomin for a profile picture – speculating about how bad I was going to be before we’d even taped an episode. It did sting, and it did get to me, because I really wasn’t sure I could pull it off myself at that point. And you’re trying to make something good and all the time part of your brain is obsessing about all those people out there you’ve never met, are never going to meet, hating you, priding themselves on how much they hate you, all waiting for you to fall on your face. And I really thought when I got through that, well at least it can never get that bad again.’