Russell T Davies reveals how Tip Toe’s final scene was filmed without alarming the public
SPOILERS AHEAD: Speaking about filming the sequence, Davies said it required three days of shooting and extensive planning
By Callum Wells
Russell T Davies has revealed the lynching scene in Tip Toe took three days to shoot, required a purpose-built lamppost and had to pause every afternoon to avoid schoolchildren walking past the set.
The five-part Channel 4 drama stars Alan Cumming as Leo, the owner of Manchester gay bar Spit & Polish, whose long-running feud with his neighbour Clive (David Morrissey) ends in his murder.
Throughout the series, viewers are shown a flash-forward of Leo’s body hanging from a lamppost before the finale reveals he was killed by Clive and a group of football hooligans. The drama examines anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice, online radicalisation and political division in modern Britain.
“It was all very complicated and meticulously planned” – Russell T Davies on filming Tip Toe‘s final scene
Speaking about filming the sequence, Davies said it required three days of shooting and extensive planning.
“It took about three days to film as we had to be very careful with it. There was a school nearby that broke up at 3.30pm, so we had to stop at that point every single day. We were next to quite a major A road, so we had to erect huge screens to block off the set, otherwise cars driving along would have seen a man hanging, and we could have caused an accident,” he told The Independent in a new interview.
“It was all very complicated and meticulously planned – we had to build that lamppost. We had Alan Cumming, a stuntman, and a dummy. When the crew first hoisted the dummy up into the air, absolute silence fell over the entire street. Everyone stopped what they were doing and just stood there, as the enormity of it hit us.”
Davies said the actors playing the football hooligans were recruited from Manchester’s theatre community and approached the material with care, adding that they were “so serious in rehearsing it and not hurting anyone”.
Davies said Channel 4’s compliance team also worked closely with the production
The production schedule was also arranged to give the cast time away from the material after the sequence had been completed.
He said, “Our producer Phil Collinson did one of the cleverest things I’ve ever seen, which is that he arranged for the hanging to be done just before the shoot’s one-week break, so that everyone could let go of it and shake it off. It gave people time to recover from something that was genuinely traumatic.”
Davies said Channel 4’s compliance team also worked closely with the production on how the scene would be shown on screen.
Tip Toe is currently streaming on Channel 4.