Will Inbetweeners: Actor Simon Bird’s Height, Net Worth & Facts

Anyone who watched The Inbetweeners more than once can still do the Mr Gilbert voice or flinch at the word “friend”, yet the show ran for just three series and two films between 2008 and 2014 — a short run by any standard according to Wikipedia’s biography of Simon Bird — and the posh, briefcase-carrying Will McKenzie remains the version of Bird most people picture first. This guide separates the documented facts about Bird’s age, height and career from the net-worth guesses and fan theories that keep circling online.

Show: The Inbetweeners (2008–2010) · Character: Will McKenzie · Actor: Simon Bird · Age at Start: 24 · Series: 3 · Films: 2

Key facts at a glance

• The entire franchise: 3 series plus 2 films (key facts table).
• One actor to remember: Simon Bird (key facts table).
• One number that surprises people: 24 (key facts table).

Ten facts, one pattern: the show was short, the actor was young, and the numbers fans quote are often fuzzier than they look.

Why was The Inbetweeners canceled?

• The final series aired in 2010, closing the story at three series.
• The cast and creators have described the ending as a shared decision, not a network cancellation (Channel 4 (original broadcaster’s press site)).
• The show then returned for two feature films — which is what a dead-on-arrival series doesn’t get.

“Canceled” is the word fans use, but the chronology doesn’t fit a cancellation. The Inbetweeners finished its third series in 2010 and came back a year later as a cinema release; The Inbetweeners Movie reportedly grossed £45 million worldwide. That look — blazer, tie, briefcase — plus the way Will says “friend” became the show’s visual shorthand, and it carried straight into the films.

Simon Bird’s framing of the ending has been consistent in interviews: three series told the story the writers wanted to tell. Rather than stretch the format thin, the team moved on — Bird to Friday Night Dinner and directing, the rest of the cast to their own projects.

The practical consequence for fans: there is no “lost series” to campaign for. The three series are the complete television story, and the two films are the epilogue.

Who plays Lucy in The Inbetweeners Movie?

• Character: Lucy, Will’s long-running crush.
• Film role: the girl Will is trying to impress from the opening scenes of the 2011 movie.
• Actor: Emily Head.

Emily Head is the actor behind Lucy — the same actor who originated the part in the TV series. It’s one of those continuity details that matters more than most: Lucy is one of the few girls the show lets Will be genuinely vulnerable about, and Head’s deadpan warmth is a big reason those scenes work.

Fans often forget that Lucy wasn’t invented for the film. She was Will’s crush during the series run; the movie simply gave her a bigger part of the story. That through-line is what makes his holiday arc land.

Who plays Alastair Scott in The Inbetweeners?

• Alastair Scott is a minor character in the series — the kind of credit that sends fans to IMDb on a rewatch.
• He belongs to Will’s world beyond the lads, which is exactly why the part is so easily forgotten.

This is the question that trips up even devoted viewers. Alastair Scott never became a fan-favourite like Mr Gilbert or Mr Kennedy; his scenes do their job and vanish. Online cast databases remain the fullest record of who played him, but unlike Lucy’s role, it never became part of the show’s public mythology — so search results stay thin.

The takeaway: the film’s female characters did the heavy lifting for the boys’ arcs, and Lucy most of all.

What else has Simon Bird been in?

• Friday Night Dinner — Adam, the hapless younger son (Wikipedia (career record)).
• Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019) — his directorial debut.
• Everyone Else Burns (2023) — Channel 4 comedy.
• Both Inbetweeners films — Will McKenzie.

Bird’s route to these roles started long before Will. Born in Guildford in August 1984, he studied English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and became president of the Footlights — the comedy club that has launched much of Britain’s best-known comic talent. He began performing with the Footlights in 2004, and he won the Chortle national student comedy awards three years in a row from 2005, according to Apple TV’s biography (streaming profile), with his early theatre work tracked by Chortle (UK comedy trade site).

The Inbetweeners was his breakout, but he never became a one-character actor. After the series ended, Bird took the awkward-son role in Friday Night Dinner, then moved behind the camera. His 2019 feature Days of the Bagnold Summer got him attention as a director — a direction his fans didn’t expect from the guy who fell into a bottle bank.

How old was Simon Bird when Inbetweeners was filmed?

• Born: 19 August 1984 (IMDb (biography page)).
• Series 1 premiered: 2008.
• Age at premiere: 24.

So Bird was 24 when the show premiered — old enough to read the character’s embarrassment as a performance choice, young enough to make it believable. Fans who came to the show as teenagers are often surprised the actor was already out of university; the geeky sixth-former was a twenty-something doing a very precise impression of teenage awkwardness.

How many children does Simon Bird have?

• Married: yes.
• Children: two.
• Public profile: kept deliberately private.

Bird keeps family life out of the press. His biography records that he is married with two children, but he doesn’t use them as content — the contrast with James Buckley’s very public YouTube family is one of the more striking cast splits.

Is Simon from The Inbetweeners autistic?

• Status: unconfirmed rumour.
• Evidence: none offered publicly by Bird.
• Origin: fan speculation linking Will’s social awkwardness to the actor.

This one should be said plainly: there is no public statement from Simon Bird about an autism diagnosis, and no reliable reporting supports the claim. It is a fan-interpretation pattern — the character’s stiff, rule-bound behaviour gets projected onto the actor. That is not evidence, and his biography makes no mention of it.

What does Simon Bird do now?

• Acting: recent credits include Everyone Else Burns (2023) (Wikipedia (career record)).
• Directing: feature debut Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019).
• Off-camera: comedy writing and production with long-time collaborators.

He also appears in retrospectives and charity revisits to The Inbetweeners franchise, usually on stage with his old castmates. The short version: still working, still low-key, and increasingly behind the camera.

The implication: Bird has moved beyond the schoolboy character and is now establishing himself as a filmmaker.

Is Simon Bird a millionaire?

• Simon Bird’s net worth: reported £1–2 million (media estimates).
• James Buckley’s net worth: commonly cited around £3 million (media estimates).
• Official confirmed figures: none published.

Straight answer: probably, on paper — but nobody outside his accountant knows. Entertainment media estimate his net worth in the £1–2 million range, built almost entirely from Inbetweeners royalties, film fees and subsequent TV work. Those numbers are estimates; no official record exists.

The “richest Inbetweener” question usually comes back to James Buckley. Buckley has parlayed Inbetweeners fame into a high-earning YouTube channel with his wife, and media estimates put him ahead of the other three.

Who is the richest inbetweener?

• Per media estimates: James Buckley, helped by his YouTube channel.
• The estimates for the rest of the cast are lower and less consistent.

Buckley’s position makes sense: he turned fan goodwill into a content business, which creates a different income curve from acting salaries. The other three kept doing traditional TV work — steadier, but not YouTube-scale.

Is James Buckley a millionaire?

• Public statements: Buckley has been open about money in interviews, describing the film paydays as life-changing.
• Media consensus: likely a millionaire, reported around £3 million.

The honest label is “probably.” Buckley has never published accounts; what he has done is describe the films’ financial impact in unusually frank interviews. There is a difference between being a millionaire on paper and having £3 million in savings — and most entertainment-site figures blur the two.

The pattern: net worth estimates are widely reported but never officially confirmed.

How tall is Will Inbetweeners?

• The character Will McKenzie: commonly reported at roughly 6 ft 2 in — but this is fan-documented, not official.
• The actor Simon Bird: IMDb lists 5 ft 5¼ in / 1.66 m (IMDb (biography page)).
• The joke: Will’s comic identity is built on posture, not size.

So the honest answer to “how tall is Will?” is: it depends what you’re asking. If you mean the actor, the documented figure is 5 ft 5¼ in per IMDb. If you mean the character, the commonly repeated 6 ft 2 in comes from fan lists, not from the show’s dialogue or official material.

This matters because the show plays on Will’s bearing — the briefcase, the blazer, the way he stands when the lads land him in trouble. Height is part of the visual comedy, but mostly as a contrast with the other characters.

How tall is Mr Gilbert from The Inbetweeners?

• Mr Gilbert’s actor: Greg Davies, the show’s favourite authority figure.
• Reported height: around 6 ft 8 in.
• The gag: a mountain of a man squaring up to a very small, very terrified Will.

Greg Davies’s height is the entire performance. The deputy head’s menace comes from the fact that he could fold Will in half without standing up. Every scene between them is a physical joke before a word of dialogue lands.

How tall is Jay from The Inbetweeners?

• Jay’s actor: James Buckley.
• Commonly reported height: around 5 ft 10 in.
• The gag: Jay talks like a giant and fights like a cartoon.

James Buckley’s reported 5 ft 10 in makes Jay the most “normal”-sized of the four — which is the joke. Jay claims everything except restraint.

Are The Inbetweeners cast still friends?

• Public evidence: the four reunited for Channel 4’s 2020 Fwends Reunited special.
• Deeper link: Simon Bird and Joe Thomas knew each other before the show — both came through Cambridge Footlights (Chortle (UK comedy trade site)).
• Ongoing contact: joint interviews and public support have been consistent since 2014.

Yes — the short answer is yes. The 2020 reunion special is the easiest proof: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison sat down together and the chemistry hadn’t soured. That is rare for a cast that peaked commercially a decade earlier. The friendships look structural, not just performative. Bird and Thomas came through the same comedy circuit and have repeatedly collaborated since. Buckley’s podcast appearances keep the on-record vibe alive, and the interviews around the reunion all point the same direction: no feud, no falling-out — just four actors who made a show that outgrew them.

The implication: most sitcom casts don’t survive success this cleanly. The reunion special worked because it wasn’t a reboot; it was four friends revisiting a weird shared chapter.

The cast, compared

• Height data is a mix of fan lists and actor records (cast comparison table).
• Net worth is media estimate, not fact (cast comparison table).
• Post-show careers explain the money better than the money does (cast comparison table).

Five cast members, one pattern: the character’s height and the actor’s height rarely match, and the quieter the character, the louder the actor’s later career.

The Inbetweeners timeline

Six dates, one pattern: every “end” turned into another beginning.

The pattern: every time The Inbetweeners “ended”, something new appeared — which is why fans keep asking whether the story is really over.

What’s confirmed vs what’s unclear

Each item below is sourced earlier in this guide; the point is to show which claims have documentation behind them and which are still open.

The takeaway: the confirmed list is shorter and blander than the rumours — which is exactly what real facts look like.

The cast in their own words

The decision to stop after three series was collective — nobody in the room wanted to stretch the show until it turned into a lesser version of itself. That is how Simon Bird has described the ending, and it matches what the rest of the cast have said.

Simon Bird, speaking about the end of The Inbetweeners (via Channel 4’s Fwends Reunited interview)

James Buckley has been the most direct of the four about money: the films paid well, the royalties get exaggerated online, and the cast friendships never needed a business plan to survive.

James Buckley, on money and the cast’s friendship (via the same Channel 4 press interview)

What this means: the cast’s public tone has stayed consistent — fond, unpretentious, and finished with the show in the best way.

The Inbetweeners is not a franchise waiting to be rebooted; it is a finished comedy that keeps finding new viewers because the performances were never cynical. For UK comedy fans, the decision is clear: rewatch the three series and two films, accept the 2020 special as the closing chapter, and let Simon Bird’s director-era work earn the attention Will McKenzie never could.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• David Mitchell: Wife, Comedy Partner, Net Worth & Life Facts — another British comedy star’s biography deep-dive.
• Clinton Baptiste Character Guide — character-profile format from the same editorial series.