Fat Suit.

Pearl

Pearl

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I watched a 3 part program yesterday about Dinner Ladies and at one point they showed a picture of Maxin Peake in a fat suit she'd lost weight so needed to wear a fat suit, I know that Kathy Staff also wore a fat suit for the roll of Nora Batty so I wonder why they couldn't have done that for Crusher too ? It would have been great if he'd have stayed it the program.
 
The reason was that he lost so much weight that his face looked very different, making him nearly unrecognizable.
Jonathan Linsley before.jpg Jonathan Linsley after.jpg
Perhaps an explanation could have been written into the script about his having gone on holiday and fallen in with a crowd that was obsessed with distance running. Training to keep up with them would have peeled the weight off quite quickly, and would have resulted in the haggard appearance.
 
So Crusher runs off with Fran, the girl with the coloured hair, his long lost cousin appears who is similar in several was to the old Crusher but more dynamic
 
There could all sorts of plots there - Ivy embarassed her nephew no longer looking like he'd fed well, Seymour trying to get him fat again to no avail and so on.
 
Also, keep in mind that Dinnerladies was filmed at least ten years after Jonathan left Summerwine, so the cost and realism of facial makeup solutions was likely significantly better by then. Plus, Crusher was presented as a pretty active character with a number of outdoor scenes where makeup would have been harder to hide.
 
I had no idea he lost that much. They could have said he went on a fitness fad and spent some time at the 'Waist Land' clinic that the boys snuck in to sell snacks to.
 
As said, no real reason why his change of appearance couldn't have been written into the show.

People lose weight in real life, for various reasons.

Seems a bit unfair to sack someone for losing weight.
 
Alan Bell says in his book that Jonathan was unrecognizable, at least in the short term. He also felt that Crusher was a “gentle giant” character and that was gone with the transformation.

Jonathan did a long interview on the Summer Winos site last year (worth reading) that includes photos from that period and I think he does look a lot different. On top of that, he says that the BBC wouldn’t commit to him even being back year to year and so he decided (since they weren’t paying him much) to take his agent and his doctors advice and lose some weight. That lead to more lucrative acting gigs - he says he made more doing six or seven John Smith’s commercials opposite Jane Freeman then in all his time on LOTSW.
 
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Yes. that's him in the 2nd advert for sure.

I never knew that.

Gordon Rollins was excellent as Arkwright, a sort of cross between Wally Batty and Andy Capp.
 
Marianna said:
The reason was that he lost so much weight that his face looked very different, making him nearly unrecognizable.
View attachment 2115View attachment 2116
Perhaps an explanation could have been written into the script about his having gone on holiday and fallen in with a crowd that was obsessed with distance running. Training to keep up with them would have peeled the weight off quite quickly, and would have resulted in the haggard appearance.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree, he looked totally unrecognizable. On the other hand, Kathy Staff just needed to look pleasantly plump so the fat suit worked.
 
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