Lee crash-landed back into brother Glen’s life with a wallop in Mr Bigstuff season one – but at the beginning of season two he is now a mopey mess spending his life sitting in the garden.

With that dressing gown he walks around in desperately needing a wash, it’ll take something big to get his mojo back, and thankfully there’s a bizarre team of mates ready to give him that help along the way… in their own unique fashion, of course.

Danny Dyer took home his first ever BAFTA at the TV awards this year for his portrayal of Lee in Mr Bigstuff, and it seems like he’s only just beginning – with his character set to get even more wild as his story unfolds, with some reunions with a familiar EastEnders face to boot.

Speaking ahead of season two, Danny talks about his journey as Lee so far, what it was like taking home that Bafta, and some of the key moments coming up in the new episodes.

Thank you so much. Amazing, innit? Well, I’ve got a thing built round my telly with lit-up shelves and stuff, I’ve had a good run with awards over the years, won some, lost some. So, I put my awards up there.

But… if you’re going to display awards, I suppose you’ve got to have a Bafta there, ain’t ya? I never thought I’d get one. It’s lovely.

It’s a weird one, isn’t it? I don’t know what it does. It’s always nice to be acknowledged. In the grand scheme of things, what is it? It’s a little shiny bit of metal, really. The work is so much more important to me, and getting the right work, and trying to do something different now at my age.

It’s a lovely thing, but it isn’t the be all and end all. There are some incredible actors over the years that have never nicked a Bafta, that thoroughly deserved one. So, it’s a nice feeling for a bit, then it’s like, ‘OK, keep your ego in check, and get on with your life’.

Well, comedy is such a difficult genre to get right. Trying to make people laugh is hard. But to try and make people laugh and, in the same show, cover quite dark, serious stuff. The brilliant thing about Mr Bigstuff is it’s so funny. When it is funny, it’s ridiculously funny, and then we start tapping into the whole masculinity stuff, and the pain of losing a father young, how we deal with grief…Ryan [Sampson, creator and Glen] really did pull it out the bag.

The perfect show is the one that can make you laugh and cry within the same series, and we managed to do that. The half-hour episodes helped us as well, that short, sharp hit of an ep, and then you go, ‘I’ve got to watch another one.’ If you start going into the realms of an hour, you’re fleshing it out more, things take a bit more time. We’re straight in with Mr Bigstuff, we set the tone early. Ryan is so brilliant at getting that right. It’s because he’s such an amazing actor himself: he understands what’s engaging and interesting.

[Laughs] Look, we just scratched the surface with series one. We set the characters up, and so being recommissioned, it gave Ryan an opportunity to really dig deep.

Lee is on a crusade to try and right these wrongs over the years, but of course he does it in a very Lee way, which is in your face and f**king leftfield. He blames himself for Ian being gay. He doesn’t quite understand it, but his heart is in the right place. It’s interesting, him trying to do the right thing but getting it wrong. He’s still on this crusade to find out what happened to his dad, who they thought was dead. That storyline in itself…

There’s some beautiful stuff with Adrian discovering that he’s gay, and realising he's been living a lie. That stuff is delicately handled and funny. And also, the stuff with Kirsty. Harriet Webb, what an actress this woman is. She’s so brilliant and underrated. Her being ‘boss bh’, deciding that whenever she puts on these dominatrix boots, she becomes boss bh, it’s f***ing brilliant.

Lee doesn’t quite know how to deal with his feelings and emotions. So, he’s feeling really sorry for himself. All his great attributes, the alpha male spark -‘says what he thinks’, ‘don’t take no s**t off no one’, ‘he wants to save the planet’, he’s lost them all.

Ryan wanted to open the series with my character as this ‘injured lion’. Lee is sad to watch, but you don’t want to see it for too long. We didn’t dwell on it. The first episode is Lee trying to, for want of a better word, find his bs again, and he needs to be snapped out of just moping around. He’s sitting outside in an armchair, nicking stuff out of people’s bins like an old womble.

He doesn’t quite know what to do with this information he’s been given, that his dad is still alive, and has been lying to him for all these years. As it develops, it’s Kirsty that makes him see the light. He finds his feet again, and then they’re on a mission, ‘Right, we’ve got to find their dad, for better or worse.’

It’s great for me. That’s why, when I won the Bafta, I dedicated it to Ryan. He sees something in me. He gave me this gift, he knows where I can shine, and he plays off of me beautifully as the ‘straight’ man, the neurotic little man next to me.

The love between the brothers, that starts to show as the series goes on. It’s really touching. To be surrounded by brilliant actors, which I’ve been blessed with on Mr Bigstuff, you can’t go wrong. It makes you raise your game.

The thing about being a lead in something is the stamina. Can you keep it at a level? The shoot had long days with lots of different locations… the fatigue can kick in. That’s part of the craft. You need to live a good, clean life as much as you can, sleep well, keep that instinctive thing going as an actor. That’s always been the challenge for me, being a sort of lead. And of course, I’ve got the writer [Ryan] next to me, so if I’ve got questions about anything, of how he thinks I should pitch it – you know, there’s a whole episode where Lee’s running on this adrenaline because we think we’ve finally found our dad… Ryan had to keep reminding me to overplay it… it’s a real gift to have the oracle playing scenes with me.

Oh yeah, absolutely… it’s a small cast, but it’s series two, and we all love each other dearly, and we’re very supportive. It’s really important on any job to have a ‘no a***hole’ policy. It is quite rare these days, but it’s about concentrating on the work, and being supportive and patient. It’s such a wonderful gig.

I can’t wait for people to see the second series. People were very loyal to that first series. The amount of love it got, you know, it being Sky’s most-watched comedy in the last four years. It’s very different now, isn’t it, in the sense of, it’s not about ratings anymore, it’s not about how many people watch it live. It’s about how many people gorge on it. That’s the way it is now, a high percentage of people came to the series after it aired, and those who watched the first [episode] watched the whole thing, which is an incredible achievement. The people that got it, that cult following, love it. We don’t want to let them down, and we certainly haven’t.

I knew Ryan would crack it. He was already talking about the second series while we were doing the first. He was sort of splitting the golf ball on the tee, if you like. We hadn’t even been commissioned for it, and his brain was ticking away. So, the foundations were there already. Some of the [plot points] I didn’t know about, and I was like, wow, didn’t see that coming, especially the way it ends.

We changed that halfway through the series, Lee’s last scene. It’s gonna freak a lot of people out.

Absolutely, I did. All of the actors, Ryan, Harriet, are fans of Linda. She’s one of the best actors this country has ever seen. Everything she’s done. She did a long stint in EastEnders with me, and I think our dynamic was really special. We could make each other cry when we were doing scenes because a lot of our stuff was heavy, you know, I thought she was my sister, and it turns out she was my mum. I’ve missed her dearly, and so I chucked her name in the mix.

Obviously, she went through the audition process. I would’ve given it to her straight off, of course. She came in and did a read. I know she gets quite nervous about these things. As much as I’d like to claim it was completely my idea, she won that part [of Pam] purely on her talent, and what she brings to it is brilliant. People are going to p**s themselves.

She’s really funny as well, Linda, in real life. She’s wasted – she was funny on EastEnders when she wasn’t meant to be. We managed to make Shirley quite funny. In Mr Bigstuff, I haven’t got as many scenes with her as I would have liked, but we’ve certainly opened it up for more in maybe a third series. We’re a brilliant dynamic. Linda’s a welcome addition to the Bigstuff cast. She needs to be back on the telly more.

Love Shaun. Such a lovely energy. Such a lovely man. A wonderful actor by the way. But a very busy man. He does a lot with his ‘Barrioke’ so it’s hard to get hold of him. We only had him for a day. I remember after the first series, randomly, he messaged me. We don’t speak a lot, but he messaged me and said, ‘I just watched Mr Bigstuff. It’s incredible. I thought you were brilliant in it. I loved it. I laughed. I cried.’ I told Ryan this and he wrote a part for him, and he was thrilled.

Well, my [Carter] family aren’t in it anymore. But I do miss working with Kellie Bright [aka Linda], somebody I worked with for nine years. We had an interesting dynamic, and she’s somebody I just miss working with. I don’t know if it works against you, working together for so long on EastEnders. If someone put us together again, it’d have to be something completely different.

Maybe little Rose [Ayling-Ellis], who played my daughter Frankie. Mind you, she’s far too busy with her amazing projects.

[Laughs] Ah, yeah. I was ping myself reading it. When I read it, I didn’t know it was going to be Rula. I was like, ‘Who the f are you going to get to do this by the way?’

Rula, I grew up watching her. She’s been around a long time. A fascinating actress and really committed to it. It was a very difficult couple of days for Rula, I’ve got to say. It’s a lot of dialogue and a lot of physicality, shall we say. It was an honour to work with someone I was brought up watching, and someone I used to love watching as well was Dennis Waterman, rest in peace, not with us anymore. He was her ex-husband, and we spoke about Dennis a lot. It was lovely spending time with her. When people see it, it’s going to freak them the f* out.

We had two days to get the big chair-up in the working men’s club done. Interestingly, they agreed to let us have it, but they were opening at 5pm. So, we had to get our s done before the old boys [came in], because they don’t give a s about filming. They want to go sit in their favourite seat, have a game of cards, and have a pint of Guinness. We didn’t have long to milk it.

I would say it’s my favourite episode, that. I spent a lot of time in working men’s clubs as a kid, all the old boys and faces in there, they’ve got stories to tell. It’s a daunting place, a working men’s club, if you’re not a member. Also, to get Alan Ford, someone I’ve always admired – again, another great cameo – someone who’s made similar films to me, been around a long time, but weirdly we’ve never been in the same stuff. To get to play with him and all the old boys in that scene – I think we called on every stunt man over 70 who had retired to come in and have one last roll of the dice… It was a joy for me. I’ve sort of made a career out of them big fight sequences.

Not many. Interestingly, Harriet had never slapped anyone on screen before. Or in real life, I don’t think. I said, ‘Babe, just give me a clump.’ I’m used to being clumped on screen. I’ve taken a few over the years. We just went for it on the day, did it twice. It was a night shoot, freezing cold. I had that dressing gown on, and she just had her pyjamas on, in a petrol garage.

It’s Kirsty’s clump that gets Lee out of his haze. Sometimes a geezer needs a good slap!

I think a third series has to be done. I don’t know whether we need to take it any further than that. Ryan’s got longer now to write it. It was a quick turnaround from series one to two. Before we’d got the greenlight to go again, as much as Ryan had a lot of stuff in his head already, but we didn’t get the green light until quite late, before we started shooting the next one. I’m doing Rivals now. I’m up in Bristol, and I don’t finish until next March, then we potentially go into a series three [of Mr Bigstuff], depending on how well series two is received.

Of course, listen, you can’t leave it there. If we go again, we’ve got a real opportunity to, maybe, potentially, go all guns blazing.