Tom Hartley: The Dealmaker

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The actors we’re working with now, we got put in a room with them and asked to improvise and we must have done something right because here we are.

Tom Hartley Rags to riches multi-millionaire supercar dealer Tom Hartley

It’s just a great story, and the bending the law bit, I’ve always been a bit on the edge of the rule book, so for me, I like the slightly rogue side of it as well. From there you’ve got this amazing level playing field that you’re all on, Shane’s very much on the level of the actors and he’s part of this with you and he’s really driving you forward. One of his more memorable deals was tracking a Ferrari Enzo driver for more than 30 miles, flashing his lights until the motorist was forced to stop at a set of traffic lights. Someone might do something or it might be a feeling, or it might be coming in to a space where the art department had just smashed it.Tom said: “It felt great, a real adrenalin rush, and I still get that rush when I sell a supercar today, it never leaves you. Whatever you’re looking for, we pride ourselves on being the definitive go-to destination for the greatest cars ever made. You didn’t know what was going to happen each day, in terms of how we made it, because it was improv, so for me there were always little magic moments that you couldn’t predict or foresee in the scriptments, and you just go that’s magic, that’s the alchemy that is beautiful. Working with Shane, I’ve come to really learn that he’s probably one of the most humble people I’ve ever met in my life. These days his base boasts two showrooms, one with a glass ceiling offering a 3D experience, as well as a helicopter pad to fly in his high-profile clients.

Balmoral Cemetery: The History of Belfast, Written in Stone Balmoral Cemetery: The History of Belfast, Written in Stone

Once that fell into place, I thought only a certain type of person would probably admit to that, so I decided to make him this visionary guy, prone to delusions and hallucinations and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the book. The city’s first municipal burial ground, it was designed with a host of beautiful features intended to inspire peace and reflection. Hartley had made his first million by the age of 17, but soon suffered major setbacks as his business went bust, and he found himself at risk of losing his sight without major surgery. That sense of egalitarianism, that sense of we’re making this together, we’re solving this problem together, the camera crew, the wardrobe, the actors, the director, everybody who’s involved is working towards the same end, which is part of why we’re all smiling. Personally, he is a great guy with a great business and he deserves this book to be his day in the sun.When I first read the beginning of the scriptments, I felt very blessed and very grateful, to go from doing nothing like this before to this, it’s a big step. Marry that with a cast that pitches some of the UK’s finest actors alongside an awesome array of brand spanking new Yorkshire talent and you have a series unlike anything else I’ve made before. Even though when you watch his work, you’re like wow this is Shane Meadows, but when you meet him and work with him, he’s so humble in terms of he’s like a friend, the way he speaks to you, he’s welcomed me as a non-professional who’s come from the open casting, and he’s treated me exactly the same as everybody else on the job. You would have thought with a group of people, in terms of experience so disparate, some with a lot of experience and some with none at all, that it would show, that it would crack open, and the people could do it or not, but you wouldn’t know.