The Full Monty: Stars of Disney+ series on getting the Sheffield gang together 25 years after baring all

“I was thinking about wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Nathan on it, with an arrow pointing to my face.”

Plenty has changed, of course, in the 26 years since the 1997 release of the Steel City-set film, which was almost a ‘straight-to-video’ prospect but went on to huge acclaim and competed against the likes of Titanic at the Oscars.

But while there is new talent in the new Disney+ sequel series, which is released on the streaming platform on Wednesday next week, many of the faces are familiar.

Carlyle reprises his role as Gaz Schofield, with Mark Addy returning as Dave, Steve Huison as Lomper, Paul Barber as Horse, and Tom Wilkinson as Gerald.

We last saw them (and quite a lot of them) throwing their hats into a crowd of cheering women.

Their redundancy from jobs as steel workers led them, in desperate need of money, to put on a strip show - and few could forget scenes such as the Job Centre queue dancing to Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff before the raucous final scene in which the actors bared all.

But within the Trojan Horse of a bawdy British comedy about declining traditional industry, writer Simon Beaufoy found a space to explore topics which rarely co-existed on screen: parenthood, male bonding, body image, suicide and gay relationships.

This time - with Alice Nutter, formerly of Leeds band Chumbawamba, as co-writer - the characters’ vulnerabilities are portrayed alongside society’s crumbling healthcare, education and welfare systems.

In a montage early in the first episode, called Levelling Up, it’s suggested that the comings and goings of seven Prime Ministers and eight Northern regeneration policies have done little to improve the region’s prospects.

However, “a rehash of the film would never have happened,” Carlyle, now 62, tells The Yorkshire Post.

“Simon Beaufoy had been approached through the years to make another film, to make a Full Monty 2. Never interested in that because, again, the film itself, it’s such a complete piece. That ending - the hats go off and the cheers go up. That’s it, that was that story told. But when he got in touch with me a couple of years ago and said: ‘Do you fancy doing it as an eight-part TV (show)?’, I thought, this is exactly what we should be doing, looking at these characters in a bit more detail and depth, seeing where they are, and also bringing a whole newer, younger (set of) Monties into the equation.”

Gaz is still struggling with fatherhood. While his relationship with police officer son Nathan, from the original, is distanced, he is trying hard to bond with daughter Destiny, played by Talitha Wing.

In the first episodes, Destiny calls on her dad for help when she gets in trouble with the law.

“I love the character,” says Carlyle. “He’s got a heart the size of a bus, no doubt about that. I love the sense of justice that he has in the sense of right and wrong. But the one thing he’s not very good at is being a father. He’s been a kind of absent father in both of these characters’ lives. But I think he’s at a stage in his life where this is probably ‘last chance saloon’ for him here, he’s got to try in some way. It’s probably too late, sadly, with his son, but with his daughter there’s a chance, there’s got to be something there.”

Snape has fond memories from the original, especially of times with Carlyle.

“We had a relationship when I was a kid and Bobby was incredible with me on the set,” says Snape, turning to speak directly to Carlyle. “We’d sit, every lunchtime, in your trailer together, didn’t we, and had our lunch together, going over the scenes for the next day.

“I remember you took me to see Toy Story when it first came out. We had a couple of weeks of rehearsals and stuff, and we just hung out. It was a dream. So as soon as we got on to set, that connection was just there.

“You re-meet when you’re a 38-year-old man, and it’s a new relationship. I still see him as my mentor and my good friend, but he’s a buddy now. But there’s something about when we were on set and we would do the scenes…(it’s like) there’s no cameras around, and I am transported into Nathan’s shoes with my dad in front of me, telling him to stop being a ********.”

“Again,” jokes Carlyle.

The film was an unexpected hit, with those involved in the production uncertain about whether it would even reach cinemas.

Snape recalls: “We were doing night shoots. We were losing light and the sun was coming up and it was all a bit frantic and stuff, and I remember hearing somebody go: ‘Oh, it’s only going to go straight to video anyway, who cares?’ And I was like, what do you mean straight to video? I didn’t really understand that films either were successful or they weren’t successful, you know, so for me it was always going to be quite big. And then when it did come out and I did get recognised - I’m originally from Sheffield and obviously the people of Sheffield have taken this film very much to their hearts - so everyone was just incredibly lovely.

“As soon as I came of age everybody wanted to buy me a pint…”

Carlyle remembers it being a “really tough” shoot, with lots of takes.

So tough that, remarkably, he says that he was “close to walking from it” in about the second week of filming.

“It was a difficult shoot because, number one, it’s a comedy, and that’s the hardest to do, that’s the hardest thing to shoot. Because (with) comedy, something that’s funny at eight o’clock in the morning when you start shooting is not so funny at eight o’clock in the evening. You go home thinking, this is not working.”

After edits, it did work, and Carlyle smiles when he thinks at how it went from “that close to never being seen” to being one of the highest grossing British independent films of all time.

He speaks of it being a much better experience this time around.

The series is more diverse and, for one, women are more involved in the story.

Lesley Sharp plays Jean, who in the original was Dave’s supportive wife but in the series has become head of the local school.

She says: “Obviously, the 90 minute film was ostensibly about those men, about the impact of their redundancy and their lack of working life was having on them. And Jean, really, was a sort of satellite character. And I think it's been wonderful to feel like I'm part of the gang, even though I didn't take my clothes off in the original.

“Who knows what’s going to happen at the end of the series,” she jokes.

Leeds-born Steve Huison, who plays Lomper, adds that the prospect of any nudity “was the first thing I asked Simon (about) when he rang up,” but deadpans: “We’ve got to hold on to an audience.”

Addy’s character, who in 1997 we saw struggling with self-esteem, continues to be one who draws empathy while extending it to others, especially twelve-year-old “Twiglet”, played by Aiden Cook.

“It was Dave's little stab at being a dad,” says the Game of Thrones actor, from York. “He’d spotted somebody who was going through the same (stuff) that he'd been through when he was a kid, getting bullied.”

Sharp adds: “There’s a really interesting new bunch and they’re amazing, those actors, so it’s really nice to have us old lags alongside that youthful, fresh energy.”

In comes the likes of Talitha Wing, who takes on one of the series’ central roles in Destiny.

She says: "It was such a unique experience, and so exciting, and it just made sense as soon as I got to the read-through and saw everyone. It felt like we were the young Monties coming in, part of the family.

“Also, the thing that was super helpful was that Simon has known these characters inside out so even though I wasn’t returning to a role that had already existed, I had Simon who made me feel like I was returning to a role that had already existed because any question that I had about Destiny’s life up until the point that we meet her at, he knew the answer to,” she says.

“It felt quite safe, in a way, because it felt like I was going into something that already had this amazing family and I just got to be a part of that. It was amazing.”

The Full Monty premieres in the UK on Disney+ on June 14.