‘You’re really going to be fine’: celebrity cameos, toast (2010) and the British biopic

Abstract

ABSTRACT When a biopic includes a cameo appearance from the subject themselves, it can serve as a persuasive claim to authenticity: what more powerful endorsement is there than figures appearing in their own life stories? Less common is the interaction between the subject and their on-screen surrogate which occurs in Toast (2010), an adaptation of food writer Nigel Slater’s memoir. Slater himself appears in the film as a Savoy chef who offers his younger self (played by Freddie Highmore) a job in a London kitchen. This interaction visualises characteristics of the memoir genre, the meeting between a past and present self, and affords rehabilitation: in representing visually the memoirist as witness to their own traumatic past, the adaptation suggests a ‘working through’ of childhood traumas associated with an abusive father. Toast also hints at the cameo’s capacity to intervene in the memoirist’s past in a manner which reflects the ‘corrective’ possibilities evident in different forms of life-writing. In having Slater offer his younger self reassurance – ‘you’re really going to be fine’ – the memoirist embodies the caring father he himself lacked. In Toast’s telling, time really is a great healer, provided you are willing to exploit the potential of the cameo appearance.