James Buckley admits he could not afford a travel card when starting on The Inbetweeners
James Buckley worked as a kitchen fitter while The Inbetweeners was getting off the ground in 2008.
James Buckley could not afford a travel card when he was starting on The Inbetweeners.
The 39-year-old actor has previously recalled working as a kitchen fitter while the E4 coming-of-age sitcom, in which he played foul-mouthed Jay Cartwright, was taking off in 2008.
On a recent episode of The Buckley's podcast, James told his wife Clair: "I was literally like, at some points, I was like, I can't f****** afford a travel card to get to this place.
"I don't have any money. I'm fitting kitchens."
James said the free clothes he received as his profile grew helped at a time when he could not buy clothes himself.
Looking at a photo of himself and his The Inbetweeners co-stars Simon Bird (Will McKenzie), Joe Thomas (Simon Cooper) and Blake Harrison (Neil Sutherland), in a magazine, James said: "I can see the clothes that I'm wearing. All freebies.
"All free stuff because I didn't have enough money to buy clothes."
He added: "'And it's weird when you get when you first get on the television because you don't really earn any money, right? But still, you've got to be on magazines and go on talk shows and stuff like that."
James, Simon and Joe, 42, and Blake, 41, are reuniting for a third Inbetweeners movie, which is being made for Netflix.
The sitcom originally ran for three series between 2008 and 2010, and was followed by two feature films.
Co-creators and writers Damon Beesley, 54, and Iain Morris, 53, previously said: "It's been super-fun hanging out with our friends again, and we're going to work hard every week to ensure there are no problemos making this new film for humans."
However, they recently warned fans that while the four main stars are back, not all of their favourite characters will be part of the new movie.
In an Instagram post, they wrote: "For the record, we’d like to clarify that, try as we might, we couldn’t squeeze every single beloved character from the TV shows into this new film."
They added that the snubs are "on us, and us alone", but stressed that any decisions came down to fitting characters into the story being told.
They added: "Again, people will speculate about why we make these choices, but sadly the truth is we just couldn’t find a plausible way in the script to bring back all our lovely ‘friends’.
"It’s not as headline-worthy, but it’s the truth."
