Sobbing Danny Dyer says wife ‘right to throw me out’ and empty bank account after d.r.u.g fuelled benders
Ex EastEnders star Danny Dyer, who has been with Jo since they met at school aged 14, says she deserved better and now "controls everything" when it comes to their finances
Danny talks openly about many aspects of his life in ITV’s The Assembly
Ex EastEnders star Danny Dyer is moved to tears as he gives the “most open and honest” interview of his life, revealing that his wife Jo now controls all their finances after his wild youth in which he cheated and went on d.r.u.g-fuelled benders. In a warts-and-all confessional for ITV, the former EastEnders star also explains how therapy helped him after every male role model in his life either left him or d.i.e.d and defends sending his kids to private school.
His grilling comes courtesy of TV series The Assembly, which started with Michael Sheen on BBC1 last year and is now returning on ITV, with David Tennant, Jade Thirlwall and Gary Lineker featured in later episodes. The questions are asked by a group of interviewers who are autistic, neurodivergent or learning disabled with the deal being that nothing is off the table – and that all answers must be honest and truthful.
Danny has to agree to answer any question at all with truth and honesty and he doesn’t dodge any of them – from his favourite kebab to what he gets paid
Asked by group member Chardonnay if he and his wife still have a shared bank account after she emptied it and kicked him out over his wild behaviour in 2000, Danny says: “She controls everything now.” Explaining what happened, he says: “Yes, she did kick me out because I was a pr***. And she deserved better. Sometimes I would go out and get off my head, take d.r.u.g.s, and I wouldn’t come home for three days. I had issues – I never wanted the party to end. She had every right to throw me out.”
Asked if he’s betrayed his working class roots by privately educating his kids, Danny said he needed to leave the East End, where he and Jo grew up and met at school aged 14, because there was always “violence in the air”. He tells the group: “What you want to do is earn some money and then move to a better place, a better area where you can bring your children up. But I put my children in a private school and now they’re not streetwise. I don’t regret it, but there’s a part of me that wishes I could instil a little bit of knowing what it’s like to struggle.”
Danny says wife Jo now ‘controls everything’ after kicking him out 25 years ago(Image: Getty Images)
He says driving them around in his Bentley hasn’t helped. “I walked everywhere as a kid, or I had to get a bus. I don’t think they’ve ever been on a f***ing bus, my kids.”
One of the group wonders whether therapy has helped him over the years. “I needed to learn what was wrong with me because I was acting, I was earning money – I had everything going for me, but I still wasn’t happy. I learned that it was every strong male role model I had either left me or d.i.e.d.
“My dad left when I was nine. Then I got really close to my grandad but he got cancer and d.i.e.d within six months. Then I got close to a very famous playwright called Harold Pinter who was somebody who took me under his wing and I loved him very much and then he got cancer, and he d.i.e.d.”
Danny said he’d enjoyed the ‘beautiful’ questions he was asked by the neurodivergent members of The Assembly
Danny reflects that he later developed coping strategies that weren’t helpful. “Whenever I got close to somebody who I loved and I looked up to I’d press the ‘f*** it’ button before they could d.i.e. I thought ‘I’ll beat you to it’ which is a weird way of thinking. I needed to learn some tools, so [therapy] was good for me.”
Asked how he felt about absent parents by group member Essin, who was also brought up by a single mum, Danny gets emotional as he says: “My dad wasn’t a very good dad, he didn’t know how to do it. I don’t understand how men, including your father, put their head on the pillow knowing they have children out there that they don’t want to have a relationship with.”
He says he has made a conscious effort to be a better parent. “I caused quite a lot of pain to my children, the stuff I was getting up to, just being vacant, not engaging, not being available. It’s not about money, you can live in a cardboard box. Children need stability and affection and to feel like they’re loved. That’s it. When you haven’t got that, it’s a really tough thing.”
He is also candid about the discovery in his childhood that his father had a secret second family. “My dad was living two lives. I always remember on Christmas Day he’d always disappear for a few hours and what he was doing was going across London to see his other family. He had two daughters. If you think about that – crazy.” He and his father, Antony, have since patched up their relationship. “I’m very close to my dad now actually, because he deserved another shot.”
