Jack Whitehall Is Your Kids’ New Favorite Actor (And Maybe Yours Too)

British audiences may raise an eyebrow at the fact that comedian Jack Whitehall is the newest family movie star here across the pond in America as he finds his biggest success with films such as Jungle Cruise and Clifford the Big Red Dog. But really, it all makes perfect sense.

The 33-year-old actor and comedian has been charming audiences in the UK via stand-up specials, hosting the Brit awards, panel show appearances, and series such as Bad Education and Fresh Meat for about a decade. In the last five years or so, the US has slowly started to catch on, mainly because you can’t avoid the guy. Truly, open any streaming platform and there’s a strong chance he’s got a project on there. When we spoke over Zoom last month ahead of his latest project, Clifford the Big Red Dog, now available to stream on Paramount+ and watch in theaters, where he stars as slacker uncle Casey, I asked if he ever got tired of seeing his own face when he sat down to choose something to watch. “It’s nice to spread my bets and have the opportunity to work with lots of different studios and platforms,” he said. “The world’s changed a lot over the last couple of years and it’s just nice to be able to get stuff out there into the world in whatever format that ends up being. I enjoy being able to have a variety of work.”

And that he does. In the past year alone, he’s released another installment of Travels with my Father on Netflix and even the accompanying book How to Survive Family Holidays, as well as starred as MacGregor in the Jungle Cruise movie, available to watch on Disney+ without an additional fee this week. In other words: your kids are probably going to watch something with this guy in it this weekend. “It was a bit of a coincidence,” he admitted of the timing. “I filmed a lot of these movies a couple of years ago and obviously with the pandemic, a lot of them got delayed and now they’re all coming out at the same time which is cool. We’ve been waiting a long time for Clifford to get to theaters. I’m really excited that finally, it’s time to share it with the world. It’s a really fun film, it’s got a lot of joy and feels like it’s the perfect escapist fun people need right now.”

Which is perhaps the key to Whitehall’s success. For the most part, his comedy is hardly controversial. It’s broad, it’s an escape, and it does still manage to be funny. The vast majority of his projects are harmless in that if anyone is getting hurt, it’s solely him. In fact, he’s especially great at being the butt of the joke. He also proves to be goofy and approachable, jovial and energetic, and having a posh accent and blue eyes never hurt anyone. He can perform comedy for the Royals and still talk football with the lads. Adults feel like they would totally be his friend, and children feel like he’s one of them. It’s a smart move on his part, to place himself in front of such a wide audience, seemingly following the footsteps of people such as his pal Dwayne Johnson and even the likes of Robin Williams. Sure, now that he’s friends with Clifford and Mickey, he may need to be mindful of his social media (don’t we all) but it’s not like he’s losing any edge, really. In fact, he’s only gaining new admirers.

A new uncle to his sister’s daughter Peggy and godfather to four other children, born to his friends who have already arrived at parenthood, Whitehall smiled when he explained, “They’ve not really been able to see anything I’ve done, so this is really the first time I’ve ever really made a movie or a television show or anything that all the kids are going to be able to come to. We’re going to do a big screening in London, everyone’s going to be there, and I’m really happy to be a part of something that they’ll be able to watch.”

But it’s been a family affair for Whitehall for a while now, especially as Travels with my Father has allowed for Jack and his father Michael, a former TV producer and talent agent, to hilariously bicker all around the world, as the naturally cheerful and friendly breakout star, his mother Hillary, serves as the reasonable referee. When asked if working with his family has reframed anything for him when it comes to the projects he pursues, Whitehall joked, “It’s reframed that I’m always happy to be on a set if I’m not with my mom and dad. I feel like anything is an improvement on that. No matter how hard it is to work with children, I’d sooner take that than my dad in a foul mood. So, be careful of what you wish for.”

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Clifford the Big Red Dog pairs Whitehall with Darby Camp, 14, as his niece Emily, and the adorable and precocious Izaac Wang, 14, as Owen, as well as the titular, computer-generated Clifford. However, Whitehall is not phased by the old Hollywood cliche of never working with children or animals, and will happily share the screen with the CGI kind any day. “I’m definitely more into working with the CG animals than a real animal,” Whitehall said. “My only experience working with a real animal is when I did the Disney film, The Nutcracker and a lot of my scenes were with a horse. I remember there being one scene when I had the bulk of my dialogue and it was my big moment. The camera rolled and I started doing my bit and then as I was talking, the horse, which was right behind me, started unloading his bowels. Really started emptying it out in quite a serious way, and I didn’t know whether to stop or not. I got through the scene somehow, then they went, ‘Cut! Okay, moving on.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean moving on?’ I get one take and this was my big scene and I had a horse doing a dump behind me and I didn’t get another opportunity to do it.”

Luckily, Clifford caused no such nonsense. “Fortunately with this, the CGI animal, those are not problems you have to contend with,” Whitehall explained. “Jungle Cruise we had a guy in a leotard crawling around on all fours, and with Clifford, it was two puppeteers and a ten-foot red Clifford puppet that was operated. They were much more well behaved, shall we say, than the horse in The Nutcracker.”

Plus, Whitehall had nothing but praise for his fellow adult human co-stars in the film, who are quickly becoming some of his most frequent collaborators. “I absolutely love Rosie Perez,” Whitehall said of his co-star, also in Bounty Hunters (a very fun action/comedy binge-watch where the two serve as a delightfully unexpected duo, should you be in the market for such a thing). “She’s just so much fun and we get each other and we’re all on the same wavelength. So when she came on board to do her character’s scene, it was really fun. We have an instant shorthand and it was a real joy to be working with her again.”

Later this month, Whitehall will also reteam with Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson, as both take part in the Jonas Brothers Family Roast on Netflix, premiering November 23. “Keenan’s fantastic, so funny. That scene was a real fun one to shoot in the vet’s [office] and had a lot of improv. We did it a hundred different ways. He’s someone I admire a great deal. There were a lot of moments like that in the film because it’s a great ensemble of comic actors and comedians that are involved. There was a lot of improv and a lot of play in it. Every scene felt alive with possibility and it was a real pleasure to work with people like that.”

He also got his own taste of CGI magic, as Whitehall recalled, “I did get to ride Clifford in the movie, which in reality, essentially was like riding a big red bucking bronco that they built on a jib in a studio and it was the last thing we shot in the entire movie. They shot it from every different angle and I think in the end they didn’t use any of the close-up footage at all. It was all CGI and I didn’t really need to go on it in hindsight. That was a weird last day filming, essentially trying to do a bucking bronco challenge with an animatronic Clifford the Big Red Dog.”

Should the movie find success across both Paramount+ and in theaters this weekend, it would be a no-brainer to bring back this cast for a sequel. Also a no-brainer? An option I offered up to Whitehall, which is to give Clifford a friend in the form of Noodle The Pug. “I’ll pass that along,” he said politely. “It’s either going to be Noodle or we’re going to go for Clifford vs. King Kong which is the one I’m really pushing Paramount for, but thus far, no bite.”

Stream Clifford the Big Red Dog on Paramount+