Jeremy Piven: Selfridge cast best he's worked with

Jeremy Piven: Selfridge cast best he's worked with
Jeremy Piven: Selfridge cast best he's worked with (Image credit: Empics Entertainment)

Jeremy Piven has revealed he reckons British stars are more modest than their US peers. The New York-born actor plays the lead role in new ITV1 Sunday night drama Mr Selfridge alongside a cast including Katherine Kelly, Frances O'Connor and Samuel West. "What's so interesting is this is the best cast I have ever worked with, and everyone is so unbelievably good and I'm not just saying that," he told Daybreak. "I feel like everyone is overqualified for their role. In the States we really love to celebrate ourselves and take victory laps - that's what we do as Americans. And the Brits just go to work and they work really hard and they just get on with it and everyone works on a very high level and that's just the norm. "So I'm used to being celebrated, so it's been difficult." He also revealed he recreated scenes from the show when speaking to a floor manager in the real-life Selfridges store during a recent visit. "I literally started recreating the same first scene as in our show where the floor manager ends up kicking me out on the show. And I swear to God, I started having vertigo, it was really surreal."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.