Actor Ryan Sampson has shared details of an eventful night out with Danny Dyer in Bulgaria, which culminated in him developing Bell's palsy and the pair leaving a restaurant without settling the bill.
Sampson, who stars alongside Dyer in the BBC series Mr. Bigstuff, recounted the incident during an appearance on the By The Way podcast. He explained that their first meeting occurred while filming the ITV2 series Plebs in Bulgaria, and the night out that followed was particularly memorable.
"I woke up from this night out and I slept on the bathroom floor, the marble floor of this hotel room and I woke up with a Bell's palsy. I had half my face like that, a very minor one," Sampson told host Harriet Rose. He described Dyer as someone who "attracts stuff around him."
The evening involved a visit to a fancy restaurant with the show's director and producer. When the bill was taking an extended period to arrive, Dyer became impatient. "Danny was like 'No not having this'," Sampson recalled. "We're like 'What do you mean Dan?', 'mugging us off.' You can see he's angry. You don't know at first, 'Not having this. Come on. We're f*cking going.' We were like, 'oh alright, we are going without paying the bill.'"
Following Dyer's lead, the group left the restaurant without paying. Sampson noted that this action led to a confrontation with local police. "They were like, 'You go, we're calling the police.' He's like, 'Fck that sht.' So in the street we walk out and the police car there immediately, it's one of their mates or something like this, stopped us and he's having this showdown and I was just like 'this is unreal'," Sampson said.
He later learned from the producer that he had to pay triple the original bill because the producer had to pay off the police. "Without us knowing, he had to pay everyone off," Sampson added.
In Mr. Bigstuff, Sampson and Dyer play estranged brothers Lee and Glen. The series follows the two as they discover their father, whom they believed to be deceased, is actually alive.
Previously, Danny Dyer shared an anecdote about filming a scene for the same series where he ran through a British council estate naked. He described the scene as a "full-frontal moment" intended to show his character, Lee, as emasculated and seeking to regain his confidence. The scene involved Dyer running through a suburban street without clothes, using a towel as a prop before discarding it.