Cocaine, kids and Shrek-themed OnlyFans: life inside London’s immersive tourist attractions

Somebody once told me that every journalist has a white whale. That one story they just can’t get out of their head, that drills its way deep into their brain. Mine is big, green and has more layers than an onion: Shrek’s Adventure.

I can’t give a rational explanation for my unending fascination with the ogre-themed tourist attraction that has squatted on the Southbank, next to the London Aquarium, for the last decade. But it’s a surprisingly common fixation among Londoners who’ve encountered it. Maybe it’s the mystery as to why the capital chose to make one of its prime pieces of tourist real estate a garish tribute to an American movie with no link to the capital, a film that spends half its time poking fun at the kind of Disneylands that it is now mimicking. And maybe it’s just idle curiosity as to what actually goes on behind the scenes in that imposing building, once home to the municipal might of Greater London Council, in order to bring us a “game-changing immersive experience”. Which games are being changed? Who are the winners and losers? And, most importantly, is Shrek’s Adventure a journey into the heart of County Hall — or the human soul itself?

Getting behind the curtain is harder than it looks. Try as I might, I struggled to find anyone with experience donning the Shrek mask. A less intrepid journalist may have given up. But after months of searching I managed to speak to John*, who spent a year working at Shrek’s Adventure. His name, for obvious reasons, is a pseudonym. When we do speak, he talks breathlessly for 35 minutes, like a long-awaited confession. His tale is part personal story about working for low pay in insane conditions, part a broader insight into the Wild West of London’s tourist industry: immersive experiences.

In 2017, John had just graduated from a prestigious drama school. He was 22 and, like so many other aspiring actors, needed stable work to tide him over between auditions and grassroots shows. Then he spotted an acting role in the “performance and entertainment” department at Shrek’s Adventure, a place where he could keep his performing muscles flexed rather than, say, working in a pub or a coffee shop. It offered some security for a year, with a wage barely above minimum. He had a brief audition where he had to deliver a monologue as the Muffin Man, the creator of the Gingerbread Man who gets a one-line role in Shrek 2, proving his ability to master the French accent, and run through an array of “the usual” improv exercises in the theatre world. A week later he got the job.

John worked full-time: five days a week, nine to five during the busy months. Every morning he would assemble in the backrooms of County Hall with his colleagues, mostly other early-career actors, to be briefed. It was like any other job. Except this wasn’t any other job. This was Shrek’s Adventure. The eponymous adventure, it turns out, is a loose plotline where you, the tourist, play yourself — a visitor — on a trip to the kingdom of Far Far Away, where Shrek 2 is set. The role John was assigned every day was decided by gender. Male actors on the Shrek’s Adventure team would cut their teeth by playing a variety of supporting-list characters from the films: Lord Farquaad’s executioner from the original Shrek, the Muffin Man, the Ugly Stepsister bartender. They would be charged with guiding visitors through different activities and performances: in the morning, John would be given his role for the day and the room he would be manning. Every time a new group of visitors entered, he would perform a three minute segment for them, before sending them on their way, resetting and repeating the show all over again for the next group. This went on for hours.

John’s daily dives into the swamp were hard work. There were the voices: the constant rolling of the ‘R’s required for the Muffin Man’s French accent left his throat in agony. The make-up was a nightmare too. To play the role of the Ugly Stepsister required full drag, replete with a faux monobrow. But the fake pencil moustache they had to wear playing the Muffin Man was worse. The glue would stick to stubble and rip away hair and flesh if not removed properly, and could only be broken down with rubbing alcohol.

Shrek’s Adventure employees shared a staff room with the London Dungeon team, two of the four different immersive theatre shows that now occupy most of the space in the old County Hall building. Exhausted actors sitting in full Ugly Stepsister drag would sit eating a packed lunch and making small talk with women in cheap corsets drenched in fake blood, fresh off playing the role of one of Jack the Ripper’s murder victims.

It was in the Ugly Stepsister get up that John encountered his first bonafide A-Listers: global superstar Shakira and her then-partner, footballer Gerard Piqué, with their two children. He quickly leant on his hard-won improv skills, whipping out a series of World Cup references and — the crown jewel — a soft rendition of Shakira’s hit single ‘Hips Don’t Lie’. The other tourists in the room seemed to enjoy the show. But there was a more steely reception from the couple themselves.

Improvisations like that were allowed, but there were strict rules you had to follow too. Anyone who mentioned the ‘Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life’ meme — a viral and deeply insane animated video in which the great green ogre makes love to an adoring fan — to the public, even indirectly, would be immediately fired. (No-one broke the rule while John was there, but you have to wonder how many incidents had to happen before they were forced to introduce such a draconian measure.)