Having starred in four seasons of global sensation Sex Education, Asa Butterfield has done more than most 26-year-olds on camera. He’s lost his fictional virginity, starred in his own personal masturbation montage, and had both his real and his on-screen mother see him fake a climax. But until seasonal comedy caper Your Christmas Or Mine 2 he had never done anything risky with a goat.

That all changed with Claus. Claus was the black mountain goat whom Butterfield’s character James has to attempt to wrestle back through an unlocked gate after his phone plops down a toilet. Although the animal was sometimes clearly a toy held by a crew member behind the camera (“Ssh,” says Butterfield), the moments where the actor was grabbing the goat by the horns were very real indeed. “Claus was funny,” says Butterfield, sitting in a Hackney café. “He was a little bit of a diva? He had his moments and when he didn’t want to work he made it known.”

The cast and crew were working on the side of a snowy mountain in Innsbruck, Austria. They would have preferred a trio of identical goats so that the Clauses could be interchangeable in the event of any goat tantrums. “We were a little low on goat options in Austria,” says Butterfield. One Claus had to do – and he didn’t even have any film experience. “He’s not a stage actor. He’s not trained. He didn’t go to drama school.”

Then again, neither did Butterfield. This afternoon, blue-eyed and wearing a hoodie and a silver earring, he is unshaven. A young man. But it was as a young boy that he found fame, acting as one of the leads in The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas at the age of 11. Although he had been to a drama club in London, the city where he was born and still lives, he circumvented drama school by continuing to put big films on his CV when his friends were still learning how to format theirs. Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang at 12. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo at 14.

“After Sex Education, life became a lot more intense”

Was Butterfield – no relation to comedy character Brian, in case you were wondering – conscious of wanting to become an actor when he was just a child? “For the first few years I was acting I didn’t think I was gonna carry on doing it,” he says. “I didn’t really know what acting was.” He loved being on camera and managed to juggle it with schoolwork, always getting good marks thanks in part to on-set tutors. But he didn’t want it to become his life. Even after the success of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas he told his mum he might not carry on. He wanted to dig up dinosaurs.

It wasn’t really until Hugo in 2011 that Butterfield fell in love with acting and filmmaking. He continued to land big films – Ender’s Game, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Journey’s End – but nothing has compared with the monster that is Sex Education, which landed on Netflix in 2019. As Otis Milburn, he helped a show about a student and his sex therapist mother become a global phenomenon, broaching or advancing topics like consent, slut-shaming, bisexuality and pansexuality. It opened up the world like a treasure chest for Butterfield and made him leading man material.

“It really became a lot more intense,” says Butterfield of this newfound recognition. He still takes the bus and the train – if he couldn’t he would reconsider what he was doing – but he can’t walk around as he used to. The fourth season of Sex Education was, famously, advertised with the aid of enormous billboards featuring the characters’ orgasm faces. This loss of privacy can be uncomfortable for actors and for Butterfield can occasionally bring his mood down. Sometimes people might want to talk to him when he’s not in the right frame of mind. “It’s hard to communicate that without coming across as privileged.”

But the trade-off, the Faustian pact with the devil of fame, is “absolutely worth it”, he insists. He is aware of how extraordinarily lucky he is. And it sounds as though 15 years on movie sets has made him a gift to work with. “‘Ordinary’ isn’t the right word for it because there’s nothing ordinary about his talent when you see him on screen,” says Tom Parry, who wrote both Your Christmas Or Mine films. “But he just puts himself alongside everybody else. He is the most casual and disarmingly low-status star you’ll ever meet.”

What does Butterfield think makes him a good screen actor? “I think it’s confidence,” he says thoughtfully, not so modest that he dismisses the question. “I feel very confident on set and I feel like I’ve got good instincts as to what’s working and what isn’t, and I trust my instincts. I think I’ve got a good ear for comedy.” Parry agrees. “In the rehearsals and on set, anything that doesn’t sound real or plausible or is slightly awkward, Asa is very good at picking that out. Good acting is like a duck paddling, isn’t it – you don’t see it. Asa is exactly that: effortless.”

In the first Your Christmas Or Mine the neat conceit was that boyfriend and girlfriend James and Hayley (Cora Kirk) each decides to surprise the other by turning up at their family home for Christmas. In Your Christmas or Mine 2, the two families – James’ upper-class father and his new American girlfriend with Cora’s Macclesfield relatives – spend all of Christmas together this time, now on the neutral territory of an Austrian ski break. James’ chivalry causes a mix-up with the accommodation and there follows a series of comic misunderstandings and crossed wires. Parry and Butterfield had a sickeningly good time staying in a high-end ski lodge for three weeks. “You’d spend your off days in the sauna,” says Butterfield, “and it would be a sauna where you could look out across this valley in the mountains.” Default nude? “Default is nude. When we got there the hotel we were staying in became a non-nude spa. Probably some HR thing. However, if you went to any of the Austrian spas down in the village, oh yeah – it’s a free-for-all.” Have his bodily inhibitions been obliterated thanks to Sex Education? “Not completely,” he says. “I still do get embarrassed, believe it or not.”

As for his own Christmases, they tend to be big, raucous, family affairs, not dissimilar to the two films. You can also imagine that Butterfield plays a comparable role: both on-screen and off he is considered, fairly serious, not keen to put on a show. He has siblings and half-siblings and this Christmas will be spending the time in Yorkshire, where his mum’s family are from (his parents separated when he was young). “We don’t get to see too much of each other so it’s really nice to have a few days just totally embracing it.”

As for Christmas presents, he’s not sure. He doesn’t know what to ask for. He just got himself plates and a new pot and pan set. He’s just moved house (from Hackney to… Hackney), so we offer to buy him a sofa for his new place. “That would be a bold present,” he says. “We’ll chat later on.” If he’s honest, he says, his favourite part of Christmas is working out what to get everyone else.

“When you do a part for that long it comes so naturally that you almost don’t have to work as hard”

Butterfield is at an interesting point in his career. He feels as though he is at the start of a new chapter. “I don’t know where the next few years will take me now that Sex Ed has gone,” he says, sounding as though he genuinely hasn’t given it much thought. He tactfully avoids a vague probe about superhero films. “I’ve been doing a lot of comedy the last few years and I wanna do something more dramatic again.” He is also at the stage, he admits, where he is keen and able to be more selective about the work he does. He could take a break from the industry or go into producing, writing or directing. He is acting as producer on a TV comedy with a friend but asks that the premise remain private.

Sex Education has been wonderful, he says, but, after four seasons, he needs to go in a different direction. “I feel very comfortable in front of a camera and on set,” he says. “Almost too comfortable. I don’t feel like I need to be kept on my toes so much any more. I love the show, I love the part, but when you do that part for that long it comes so naturally that you almost don’t have to work as hard because everything is there on the tip of your tongue. Saying you don’t have to work as hard isn’t the right way of putting it but you don’t have to fight through that to discover what might be on the other side.”

One of the things he is contemplating is a turn on the stage. It didn’t appeal to him for a long time because he was terrified. He clearly still is. He struggles with the concept of trying to inject variety into the same lines night after night. “But I am now toying with the idea and I’ve spoken with a couple of writers and gone up for a couple of theatre things in the past six months.”

After so long baring so much of himself on-screen for Sex Education, you might imagine that Butterfield would like to hide away. But he is ready for a new challenge, in whatever form that may take. “It would be good for me to push myself outside of my comfort zone.”

‘Your Christmas Or Mine 2’ is streaming now of Prime Video

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The first song I remember hearing

Frank Sinatra – ‘Come Fly With Me’

“I remember driving around in the car with my mum and I loved those songs. It was a Ford Falcon, [it had] an AM radio that just, you know, squeaked out a sound but it was still uplifting and wonderful music. My mum was a big Sinatra fan – and Tony Bennett. She actually used to sing some as well. She knew quite a few standards.”

The first album I bought

The Beatles – ‘The Beatles’ 

“I’d been mowing lawns for a while and I’d picked up enough cash. I think it was around my 12th or 13th birthday and they brought it out. I loved it. I wore out the grooves.”

The first gig I went to

Duke Ellington at the Fort Lauderdale War Memorial, late 1960s

“I was 12 and he blew me away. I was singing in school at that point and so my music teacher took me. I remember almost getting crushed when we were going in because they opened up the doors and people started to push. Then, when I was sitting there watching, and I carry it with me to this day, Ellington had an expression, he said: ‘And remember, we do love you madly.’ And I thought, ‘boy, that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard.'”

The song I wish I’d written

Bruce Springsteen – ‘Born To Run’

“When I was about 12 or 13, there was a girl I knew called Wendy – and I actually tried to write a song about her. But I just couldn’t work Wendy into [the lyrics]. She was a much longed for proposition that never had any knowledge of my affection for her. And then later when I heard ‘Born To Run’ and Bruce Springsteen saying, ‘I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight/In an everlasting kiss‘, I just thought, ‘son of a bitch, he did it.'”

The music I was into during high school

Classical

“For the last two years of high school, I’d always buy one classical album per week which was mostly Beethoven Symphonies, Bach, Hindemith, Handel. I really, really enjoyed that and it gave me an understanding of classical music. I was kind of on the edge of my classmates, you might say. I had one buddy, Bob, and we would compare notes on some of the records. We argued about Johann Christian Bach a couple of times – what we thought about certain movements. I was clearly a nerd.”

The song that makes me cry

Luciano Pavarotti – ‘Nessun Dorma’

“Holy moly, every time I hear it man. I’m just weeping when he hits that note. I met Pavarotti once, when I was 18. I’d just started going to Juilliard [the private performing arts conservatory in New York], and I was walking out past the security table and as I stepped out of the elevator, this big guy in a black mouton overcoat said, [adopts Italian accent] ‘excusé, do you know, where is the theatre department floor?’ And I said ‘sure man, follow me, I’ll take ya’. So I walked him to the third floor and and a couple of kids had seen me walking by. Afterwards, they ran up to me and said, ‘oh my God! Do you know him?’ But I had no idea!”

The song I can’t get out of my head

‘Til Tuesday – ‘Voices Carry’

“This was one I was whizzing along to. For some reason, that song sneaks into my intellect sometimes and whispers in my ear. I’ve always liked it.”

The song I can no longer listen to

Foo Fighters – ‘My Hero’

“I love Dave Grohl but it just annoys me now, every time. Even though I love it and I love him. We’ve met before, you know, [and shared] friendly words of mutual admiration and appreciation of the work. I have a great admiration for him, especially after what happened with Kurt Cobain at the time of Nirvana. He stepped up and did a whole new thing. It’s just a dynamic talent that guy has.”

The song that makes me want to dance

Michael Jackson – ‘Billie Jean’

“I first heard it when I was about to have my first kid [Spencer Grammer], about 40 years ago. I danced around with her in my arm – her head in one hand and the rest of her body just hanging on my forearm. I used to dance to ‘Thriller’ quite a bit with her at that point too.”

The song I do at karaoke

David Bowie – ‘Let’s Dance’

“I usually do this one. I never met Bowie but the closest I got was sharing a hospital bed. He was in [the same hospital room] about two weeks before I went in to have some stuff checked on my heart. [The hospital staff] told me – and before that it was Paul Newman. They’re not supposed to tell you that stuff but they love to!”

The song I want played at my funeral

Glenn Miller – ‘In The Mood’

“I hadn’t actually thought of it but I instantly remembered this story. I was working on stage with Christopher Plummer years ago when Peter Sellers died – and he had flown out to the funeral. And I asked, ‘how was it?’ And he said, ‘oh Peter, you know, crazy Peter.’ But the song he selected for his funeral was ‘In The Mood’ [laughs]. That was great. Actually, my grandmother always wanted her epitaph to be, ‘I haven’t finished my drink yet.'”

The ‘Frasier’ season finale streams on Paramount+ from December 8

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When Dongjoo Suh first stepped on the set of Netflix’s hit Korean reality game show The Devil’s Plan, she didn’t expect herself to do as well as she did – even if others certainly thought highly of her, particularly upon learning about her impressive academic background. Dongjoo, armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from MIT, a Master’s in Marketing and a JD in corporate and intellectual property law, emerged as one of the survival program’s most heavily endorsed participants.

• READ MORE: 10 best light-hearted, feel-good K-dramas to watch on Netflix and more
  

“So far, a lot of these types of shows had a lot of lawyers joining, but they would go up to fifth place or less out of, say, 10 people,” she told NME over a video call from South Korea in November. “So, I was expecting to probably go home after a couple of days. I wasn’t expecting a lot from myself.” The Devil’s Plan, where twelve contestants are shut off from the outside world and forced to compete in a series of games where they either earn or lose a currency called Pieces, has gained a popular following in the Korean entertainment space as a gruelling battle of wits.

When a contestant loses all of their Pieces, they are eliminated from the show. Prize money is also accumulated as their wins (and losses) contribute to the prize money, which amounted to a total of ₩500million (roughly US$380,000) awarded to the last man standing. Dongjoo ended up coming in third place on the show, after runner-up and South Korean YouTuber Orbit and actor Ha Seok-jin, who emerged as the winner. “It was a very big surprise to me to have stayed a lot longer than I thought,” she admits bashfully.

Amid the blistering pressure of mind-bending, friendship-straining challenges from social deduction and memorisation to abstract strategy and nine men’s morris, Dongjoo – also known as Danielle Suh – described her experience on The Devil’s Plan as “very uncomfortable”. “We didn’t have our phones and we weren’t allowed to go outside for seven days,” Dongjoo told NME, adding that the inherently tense atmosphere on set was “just a lot of stress”.

“It was actually during the time when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, so she was in the hospital,” she recalls, revealing that she had also “just gotten out of a relationship” days prior. “When we were on set, I couldn’t sleep at all. If I could, it would only be for two to three hours a day. I couldn’t eat – when I’m stressed, I don’t really eat.”

“We had to let go of a lot of people. These contestants felt their ending coming. It was very emotional.”

Yet, Dongjoo says that both she and her fellow contestants “all really liked solving puzzles and playing games”, so much so that it was the one thing that helped her “stay sane”, as she described. “In between [the games], the only thing we would talk about is the games, and even afterward, we would talk about the games we played that day all night long. Just having people around me that really enjoyed the process with me [really helped].”

Yet, the mental games presented throughout the course of The Devil’s Plan was bound to cause some level of animosity among the cast, who eventually split into alliances of their own, but Dongjoo testifies to the healthy boundaries set by her fellow cast members. “There was a little bit of tension, but at the end of the day we were all good people. Once we got out of the show, we’re all thankful that we got that experience. Even when we were shooting, maybe there were little moments where we all felt intense, but it was very momentary,” she chuckles while recalling the memory. “We understood the assignment, so it was okay.”

Despite the clear boundary set by Dongjoo and her cast members, all twelve participants on The Devil’s Plan had starkly different expectations of how they wanted the games to go for them. For Dongjoo, she was famously in a strong alliance with Orbit for a good portion of her time on the show – although her intentions behind this partnership was a lot simpler than expected. “After the introductions, Orbit and I [were sat next to each other] and instantly started talking to each other and we found out we were the same age, and we were like, ‘Why don’t we play the game together as a team? Just for today and see how it goes.’”

Many viewers were understandably torn between the mindsets of final contestants Orbit and Ha Seok-jin, with Orbit leaning more towards an altruistic approach to his strategy for the games – a mindset that Dongjoo also shared. “Orbit and I tried to get as many people as possible to stay on the show, not because we wanted everybody [to leave] together, but because Orbit’s philosophy [was influenced by the fact that] on a lot of these survival shows, people get eliminated in the very beginning and they never get the chance to show their good qualities,” she explains.

“I currently have discussions going on with some producers, but I think the show will start [filming] early next year.”

However, Dongjoo recalls the dread she felt when it came to the Poker game during the semi-finals, where the contestants were forced to play until only three remained. “We had to let go of a lot of people. These contestants felt their ending coming. It was very emotional, the way we were all speaking to each other with just our eyes and with our body language, and I could totally understand what was going through their minds,” she recalls. “Letting go of people that you tried so hard to [keep] on the show, that was the hardest part for me.”

Dongjoo also recognises the criticisms she and Orbit faced for their strategy when the series premiered: “Some people like it, some people don’t, but I always felt like [Orbit] is such a genuine guy. He truly believed in his philosophy, so I just wanted to help him.” She also spoke about how “worried” she felt for Orbit during the finale, as he was getting ready to fight for the top spot after she had been eliminated.

“During the final game, Orbit was in tears. He was crying when he was going into the final game,” she recalls. “But I think even despite the emotional state he was in, Orbit did his best and did what he could.” The lawyer-turned-TV-personality also recognises the mastery in reigning champion Ha Seok-jin’s winning strategy: “In the very beginning, Seok-jin didn’t really stand out – I think he meant to do that. He didn’t build much emotional attachment to other people. He just really focused on the games. It kind of helped in the end, because he was less emotional.”

Dongjoo may have staked her claim to fame with her appearance and impressive endurance on The Devil’s Plan, but she intends on continuing her work as a lawyer while maintaining her presence as a television personality in South Korea. “I still work for a small start-up in Korea, and also am an advisor for a nonprofit organisation,” she shares, before explaining how she approaches her life’s work while achieving the emotional fulfilment she seeks from her work in both professions.

“It’s good to have as many identities as I can, because if you just have one and it’s attacked by people – say, some people just don’t like me and I’m aware of that – you would be so affected,” she says. “But when you have other identities like being a mother, daughter, or a great lawyer, even if one part of you is attacked you’re still going to be okay. I try to make sure that I have a full life outside of entertainment. Whatever goes on there, stays there. I am happy otherwise.”

As for her next steps, Dongjoo tells NME that she’s in the process of working on starring in another similar survival program, although remains tight-lipped about the specifics. “I currently have discussions going on with some producers, but I think the show will start [filming] early next year. But I’m preparing for it – it does involve a little bit of mind strategy games like The Devil’s Plan, but it’s mostly physical, so I’m trying to get healthier now!”

Follow Dongjoo Suh on Instagram here. The Devil’s Plan is available to stream on Netflix

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Sophie Wilde is easily frightened. She credits this to her “overactive imagination”, the kind that makes you spend sleepless nights squinting at the dark corners of your bedroom, conjuring up monsters and ghosts in your mind. When she was 11, a move to a new home in Sydney paired with an ill-advised trip to see Paranormal Activity in the cinema sent her imagination into overdrive. “It got to the point where my mum and auntie pretended to bring an exorcist in,” she tells NME in a cosy cafe at the height of central London’s lunch rush. “I’m not even joking, real story. I would put salt rings around my door because I read that warded off demons.”

With a laugh she adds: “Horror movies are not for me.”

It comes as a sort of ironic surprise, then, that the Australian actress’ big breakout arrived this July with Talk To Me, the buzziest horror movie of the year. On set in Adelaide, the cast and crew “knew it was sick”, the 25-year-old says, but nothing could’ve prepared them for the film’s dizzying success: among other achievements, Talk To Me dominated the summer movie season, spawned a TikTok viral track, and became A24’s second highest grossing film behind Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Wilde plays Mia, a grief-stricken teenager who gets hooked on the power of an embalmed hand that when grasped, can allow its user to communicate with the dead. While most horror films fail to explain why anyone would meddle with the afterlife, Talk To Me is as exciting as it is horrifying, and it’s Wilde’s full-bodied performance that captures the ecstasy of possession. One moment she’s rigor mortis-stiff, her eyes wide and black. The next she waves it off with a breathless laugh, drunk on spirits.

That careful balance is felt most acutely in a thrilling montage set to a bass-heavy rendition of Édith Piaf’s ‘La foule’. As the camera circles, Mia and her friends take turns with the hand, each possessed by eccentric personalities as they cackle, cry and growl. The filming process was similarly frenetic. “We actually only had 20 or 30 minutes to shoot that whole montage when we were meant to have an hour,” Wilde remembers. “It was just absolute fucking pandemonium. Us improvising, doing all of this random shit to get as much content.” But that pressure cooker environment was freeing as a kind of quickfire acting exercise. “When you don’t have time to be in your head and just be in your body and present in the moment,” she explains. “That can produce some of the most incredible work.”

“It’s been the most surreal year of my life”

Over lunch, Wilde is giggly and giddy, with a penchant for sprinkling the occasional “slay” into her sentences. She calls this period of time “the most surreal year of my life”, and it began in the snowy mountains of Utah, where Talk To Me premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the first time she ever saw herself projected across a couple dozen feet, and Wilde spent the minutes before the screening in a bathroom stall, crying on the phone to her friends and knowing that Midsommar director Ari Aster was in the audience. A large part of this year has been spent sharing rooms with big names and cementing herself as our incumbent scream queen. “To have people I idolise like me… what the hell?” she says in disbelief. “Someone came up to me and they were like, ‘Can I get a selfie with you?’ And I was like, ‘Can I get a selfie with you?’”

“I’m definitely having certain conversations that are wildly different to where I was a year ago,” Wilde adds. “I feel like maybe I still haven’t really processed that that’s actually happening.”

Once the dust settled on Talk To Me, Wilde was back on screens with Everything Now, a school drama positioned as a successor to Netflix’s homegrown British hits (think Sex Education or Heartstopper), but with a more vulnerable edge reminiscent of early 2010s coming-of-ager My Mad Fat Diary. Wilde stars as another Mia, who plays social catch-up to her friends after taking time out from school to recover from an eating disorder. The audition for Everything Now happened in the middle of shooting Talk To Me last spring, and the crossover between the two runs even deeper. Both stories find levity in dark places, encouraging Wilde to turn inward in ways she hadn’t before. For Talk To Me, she “wanted to pick traits of mine and then exacerbate them to the point of creating a character”, particularly her “silly side.” As for the Mia of Everything Now, Wilde looked to the past. “We’re very different but she felt like my younger self,” she says. “She felt like the version of me when I was in my early twenties, and I did not know myself and I did not like myself and I was figuring out a lot of shit.”

If starring in a British drama has left a mark in other ways, it may be in her love for London. A month before we meet, she came to town and decided to just, well, stay – living out of a suitcase filled with clothes not meant for the October cold. When we meet, Halloween has just passed, and Wilde excitedly recounts her night spent gatecrashing parties and raves, and scoping out members clubs that turned her and her friends away at the door. “I feel like it’s my spiritual home,” she tells me, confessing that she hopes to move here properly next year. “I love Sydney but sometimes I feel…” she takes a beat to search for the right word. “Understimulated.”

Wilde grew up in suburban Sydney, and if her hometown lacked the excitement she’s now found in London, she discovered fulfilment in unexpected places. Her tastes were refined from a young age thanks to her grandparents. “They’re not, like, patrons of the arts,” she downplays, but evenings were often spent wide-eyed at operas, plays, ballets and orchestra recitals. Her very first play was My Fair Lady, and when everyone got up to leave at the interval, a young Wilde refused to budge from her seat. “I don’t want to miss anything!” she pleaded.

“I had intense impostor syndrome and anxiety”

It was a VHS boxset of Audrey Hepburn (who starred in the 1964 movie version of My Fair Lady) movies that convinced her to pursue acting. “That final scene [in Roman Holiday] when she’s looking at Gregory Peck…” Wilde says. “Just the emotions that elicited in me. I want to be able to make people feel that way.”

Wilde has been acting since she was five years old. At her performing arts high school, she treasured being in an environment that “appreciated people’s individuality”, even as she’d nip to the park with friends to chug goon sacks (translation: boxed wine). Drama school was a “whole other kettle of fish”, which she didn’t particularly enjoy. She got her bachelor’s degree from the National Institute Of Dramatic Art, the same school she played pirates at when she was a toddler. Of course, those classes were very different at the higher education level. “It felt slightly archaic in the sense that they very much still rely on breaking you down to build you back up,” she says. “And I think that you can get the same or even better results from just nurturing people. You don’t need to psychoanalyse a bunch of 18-year-olds who don’t know anything about themselves.”

Transitioning to screen acting proved difficult, even as she picked up leading parts in Australian and British series. In class, Wilde was sheltered in a safe space where she could fail without consequences, learn from her mistakes. But now the stakes were immediately tangible. “I had the most intense impostor syndrome and anxiety,” she admits. “I still do, it’s not like that’s gone but I can manage it better. I’d call up my parents all the time, bawling my eyes out.” Talk To Me was different though, the first time she felt truly comfortable on a film set. As if catapulted right back to performing arts school, she could dance around a camera and be outrageous without worrying about messing up.

Even as horror films like Talk To Me garner acclaim, they continue to be ignored in the awards conversation. While performances from the likes of Toni Collette (Hereditary) and Keke Palmer (Nope) have been rightly hailed as some of the best of their respective years, they fail to pick up any awards. Now in 2023, it seems like Wilde’s turn is being teed up for the same fate – that is, unless voters can get with the times.

“It’s really interesting that horror doesn’t get recognised in the same way as other films,” Wilde says. “I think that with horror, you often get such wide-ranging performances from artists who have to go to so many extremes. People just don’t take horror seriously or maybe because it’s just a commercially mainstream genre that they think it doesn’t have the gravity of a traditional drama. But it requires the same level of integrity and craft as any other performance. Like Mia Goth in Pearl: snubbed!”

Anything can happen now. Wilde can sense it, even if she hasn’t fully absorbed what Talk To Me’s success means for her future. “I feel like maybe now I’m at a nice point in my career where I can actually take charge,” she says.

Next she’ll be on set in New York for Babygirl, an erotic thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas and Scrapper‘s Harris Dickinson. It’s her first time working in the States, which she confesses she finds “terrifying”. Her dream list of filmmakers Includes Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells, as well as The Babadook director Jennifer Kent and horror auteur Robert Eggers, hinting that she’s more than happy to return to spooky territory. That also includes the announced Talk To Me sequel, which Wilde is certain can squeeze her in despite Mia’s unfortunate end.

“I want to be in it,” Wilde says. I’m gonna get FOMO. I’m like, ‘Guys, can I be the assistant director? Can I be the boom operator?’ I just want to be there!” She has another proposition: “When I’m 40, bring me back for Talk To Me 10. I’m playing the long game.” Perhaps horror movies are for her after all.

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The new season of Slow Horses is “a huge step up in terms of the scale and the level of action” fans can expect to see from the new season, according to the show’s showrunner, executive producer and writer, Will Smith.

• READ MORE: ‘Slow Horses’ season two review: TV’s best spy show hits new heights

Smith, who also wrote for The Thick Of It and Veep, told NME ahead of season three’s release that despite the increased action, it was still important that Slow Horses “felt like the same show” and that it “didn’t suddenly go off into feeling like it was just generic action.” He continued: “We still felt like it was our characters involved in it, and it still had the humour and the drama: it still felt like our show.”

The group of disgraced MI5 rejects are back in a new series which sees the addition of Gangs of London star Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, whose partner is killed in mysterious circumstances while both are working for MI5. “Oh I love Ṣọpẹ́, he’s an amazing actor,” Smith says. “What he did particularly for the series was incredible because it’s all motivated by [his character’s] grief and guilt at the death of the woman he loves and wanting justice and vengeance for her.

“All the things that happen in the series to him could be outlandish if they weren’t grounded in the grief Ṣọpẹ́ portrays. You understand why he’s doing what he’s doing and the lengths he will go to. You feel his pain and anguish.”

Gary Oldman’s cranky but wise old spy Jackson Lamb is back too, and Smith says he loves writing outrageous lines for Oldman in the same way he did for Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It.

“It gives you license to do and say all sorts of things,” he laughed. “There’s probably a similarity in the sort of swearing and the kind of floridity of insults,” he said of Malcom and Jackson.

He continued: “You also get to know how the actors deliver things, what they like, what they want more of. You start to write to their rhythms… I know Gary wanted the scene in the show where he’s washing in the sink, squirting Fairy Liquid in his armpits,” he laughs, recalling a scene in the new season that highlights Lamb’s famously grubby habits.

“Gary will go for it because he’s got no vanity about it,” Smith continued. “He just loves inhabiting that character and being that guy. I’m waiting for the moment he tells me you can’t give me any more food to eat because he really commits to the eating,” Smith said of Oldman’s character who has plenty of unhealthy eating habits. He said Oldman had to eat close to “12 ice creams” during various takes for one scene. “I don’t know where he puts it,” Smith laughs.

Smith says he and Oldman are both huge fans of the books by Mick Herron on which the show is based and Oldman offered his thoughts on how to develop his character often.
“He’s hugely collaborative,” Smith explained. “He’s probably absurdly deferential towards me in terms of his input. We get together and we talk and it’s small things like ‘I could say that quicker, change that word.’ A lot of his notes will be like ‘oh I can do that with a look.’ Hopefully he feels that we have a great creative relationship in that regard.”

Indeed, Smith says his barometer for the success of the series is if Herron and Oldman are happy with his work. “The two reviews that matter to me the most are Mick Herron and Gary Oldman,” Smith said. “If they’re happy, it will be good. Everyone else will be happy. They’re the litmus test.”

Like other seasons, the action in each episode is tightly packed into each episode.This is something Smith credits The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci for teaching him.

“It’s a bunch of stuff I learned working for and with Armando Iannucci really. He always wanted the scene to be doing two things at once. You couldn’t have just two people talking. There had to be some other thing kind of coming into it… it’s about making it feel alive and giving it drive and never feeling like we’re settling… it’s got to feel dramatically real, but it’s also got to be moving the story on.”

Elsewhere in the season there are some major character deaths, something Smith thinks will shock fans.

“I think the rule on it for me is that if you kill off a character and the audience isn’t upset, then you’ve left it too late,” he laughed. However, Smith had reservations about killing off one major character this season. “I was torn with it” he explained, saying he agonised over “all these ideas” to keep them alive.

“I like to think the show is good at surprises in that way and it makes you feel like ‘oh God no!’ but that’s a good feeling because you’re reacting and engaging, which is what we want. I mean I’m still not over Ned Stark,” he said, saying some of the deaths this season might have a similar punch to when Sean Bean’s character was killed without warning in Game of Thrones.

Jonathan Pryce is also back this season, as the ex MI5 spy David Cartwright, grandfather of agent River Cartwright (played by Jack Lowden). This storyline, Smith thinks, is one of the most emotive in the show’s history as Pryce’s character starts to suffer from dementia.

“One of my favourite scenes we’ve ever done is the scene of Jack and Jonathan where River starts to realise his grandfather is losing it and his grandfather realises it too. There was such tenderness and sadness and sort of anger from Jonathan’s character in those scenes. I thought he pushed the show to a different level and different area.”

Watching the scene gave him “an idea for what we’re going to do in season four” and he went off “and wrote the scene pretty much straight away… I’m really proud of what [will] happen with that.”

The show also has a political edge this season too, Smith explains. “It probably confirms people’s suspicions that the people in charge maybe don’t know what they’re doing and are just in it for themselves,” he said. “It’s probably all the kind of stuff we’ve seen from the COVID enquiry which is obviously more serious than our drama.”

In the future, Smith “loves the idea” of there being a Slow Horses film and thinks there are lots of “different places” you can take the show. He also loves the fact The Rolling Stones are back as we once again get to hear Mick Jagger sing the show’s theme song.

“When they said ‘let’s try and get Mick Jagger’, I was like ‘no, that’s a waste of time, he’ll never do it’. But then he read the books and agreed,” he explains. “He gave us a stamp of quality because I think subliminally if you hear Mick Jagger singing on a TV show, you think ‘this is probably alright’ because he’s not going to waste his time with something rubbish. Also, because he read the books, the lyrics are perfect… he starts singing ‘surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers,’ and he’s told us what the whole show is about – it sets up the show.

“It’s of the world [too]. Mick is obviously London and this show is London. So I can’t imagine anyone else ever doing it.”

‘Slow Horses’ season three streams on Apple TV+ from November 29

The post ‘Slow Horses’ writer compares season three deaths to ‘Game Of Thrones’ appeared first on NME.

Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij have offered fans fresh hope that their beloved sci-fi show The OA could return to screens one day.

Speaking in an interview with NME ahead of their new show A Murder At The End Of The World, the creative duo reverted to an extended metaphor about seeds, plants and gardening – something both have commonly adopted in interviews when discussing the creative process.

The OA was cancelled in 2019 after just two seasons, having originally been written as a five-season story arc by Marling – who also starred in the show – and Batmanglij. The abrupt ending meant the show concluded on a spectacular cliffhanger, leading to worldwide fan protests and even a hunger strike outside Netflix’s LA headquarters.

• READ MORE: Four years on from its cancellation, ‘The OA’ is still missed

“We’ve just started tending to the garden again, and so we’re watering, and we’re letting the sun hit the plants, and moving some of the plants so they get more of the sun,” Batmanglij explained. “But we stay neutral. We’re just gardeners side by side, Brit and myself, just gardening. And you know, OA 3 is a plant that is sitting there too, you know? We don’t think she’s dead. She’s just dormant.”

Marling continued the theme, referring to seeds that retain the potential for life, even in land destroyed by factory farming. “And so I think about OA sometimes that way; that right now she’s just a dormant seed in a desert landscape,” she told NME. “But conditions can change, you never know. And that seed, even though she’s dormant right now, can blossom again. Who knows what’s coming, right? I mean Twin Peaks came back, so anything’s possible.”

Marling and Batmanglij’s new limited series, A Murder At The End Of The World – renamed after initially being launched as Retreat – is a modern twist on the whodunit genre, set at a billionaire’s retreat in Iceland. The show sees Andy, an anxious tech mogul played by Clive Owen, invite a handful of great minds from various fields of expertise to attempt some solutions to humanity’s biggest problems. When one of them is found dead, amateur sleuth and true crime writer Darby Hart attempts to find out the truth, and the world of the show begins to unravel.

The pair had been contemplating a fresh take on a murder mystery four years ago, when a mutual friend told them about a tech retreat they’d attended. “It felt like the right time to do a modern, grounded version of the genre,” Marling said. “And then within that, Darby Hart as a character just formed very quickly and radically, and was a very vivid person between Zal and I – we found that the story came naturally when we thought about it singularly from Darby’s perspective.”

Marling also spoke about some of the themes explored in A Murder At The End Of The World, including the misogyny coded into classic detective shows. “And we felt like, okay, we want to do something in the murder mystery genre, but how do people like us inhabit that genre? Well, we have to completely turn it on its head.

“We have to take the young woman off the ground and give her clothes, and give her autonomy and identity; to stand her up and see if we can give her authority, and animate her to solve the crime, and explore the ways in which, when that young woman arrives at a crime scene, she might actually identify more deeply with the victim, and thinking more about the life that was lost, rather than the dark creativity of the killer.”

Addressing the new show’s exploration of late-stage capitalism, Batmanglij said both creators felt they had no choice but to address humanity’s biggest crises in their work. “People sort of roll their eyes when you talk about it, but it’s actually just the reality of what we’re living in, and we would be crazy not to talk about it in every single story we make. It’s that and the climate crisis. How can anyone tell a story these days without addressing the climate crisis?” he told NME.

“We felt the same thing with The OA – how could you make something without dealing with these mass shootings that are happening? How can we leave the things that are shaping our lives on the table, and just make stories about characters that don’t really stand for anything, don’t really experience anything?”

Batmanglij also felt there were similarities in writing both shows, explaining that he and Marling “basically wrote a novel, which is this story, and then we adapted it for the screen, and then we shot it”, adding: “It’s kind of like the first season of The OA – you know we always planned The OA as a set of novels, it had a novelistic feel, and that experience and this experience feel very similar to me, in the sense that it was fun to write a beginning, middle and end.”

A Murder At The End Of The World is available to stream now on Hulu and Disney+

The post Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij: “We don’t think ‘The OA’ is dead” appeared first on NME.

Paapa Essiedu has presence and poise as soon as he enters the room. His perfectly clipped beard is probably the smartest thing in the smart London hotel where we’re meeting to discuss The Lazarus Project. Written by Giri/Haji‘s Joe Barton and starring Essiedu, the stylish time loop thriller is now returning for a second series on Sky Max and NOW. Unlike some actors, Essiedu doesn’t try to be instantly pally – a tactic that can make an interview feel more transactional. Instead, he speaks quietly and thoughtfully, holding eye contact for longer as the chat goes on. His dry sense of humour is a disarming delight.

When NME asks whether he was attracted to The Lazarus Project partly because it gives him a big, meaty lead role, he replies with a glint in his eye: “Being the lead is not the be all and end all. Yes, your name is on the poster, but nobody else [in the cast] is doing press right now.” Segueing into a more serious answer, Essiedu says it’s the “emotional complexity of a character” that he’s drawn to rather than their screen time. “I think that’s the thing that really gets into people’ psyches and makes storytelling worthwhile,” he says.

Essiedu’s storytelling record is already pretty enviable. His sharp-suited schemer Alex Dumani was a key player in the first series of splashy crime drama Gangs Of London. In this year’s dazzling Black Mirror episode ‘Demon 79’, he was wickedly impish as Gaap, a devilish entity dressed like a Boney M member who cajoles put-upon shop worker Nida (Anjana Vasan) to go on a killing spree. Perhaps most notably, he gave a devastating performance in I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel’s monumental 2020 series exploiting sexual assault and the snowballing trauma it causes.

“You don’t get nominated for a BAFTA and suddenly Steven Spielberg is waiting in your garden”

Essiedu picked up Emmy and BAFTA nominations for his haunting portrayal of Kwame, a fitness instructor who is raped by a stranger he meets on Grindr. Essiedu is rightly proud of the award-winning series created, written and co-directed by Coel, a close friend he met at London’s Guildhall School Of Music And Drama. “You’d be hard pushed to find anyone who worked on that show who doesn’t feel that way,” he says. “It felt true to where we grew up and the people that we hung out with and knew and loved.”

At the same time, Essiedu is wary of painting it as too much of a “breakthrough moment” for him personally. “It never felt like you get nominated for a BAFTA and suddenly Steven Spielberg is waiting in your garden,” he says wryly. “But I think the fact that lots of people enjoyed it led to me being discussed [for roles] in a different bracket.” Instead, Essiedu takes a more rounded view of his career trajectory. “I’ve always believed that I’m capable and I’ve always been ambitious in terms of what I want to achieve,” he says. “So yeah, it just came at the time that it came – not a second too soon, and not a second too late.”

The Lazarus Project gives him further opportunities to display his range as he pivots between action hero and interloper. Series one followed Essiedu’s George, an app developer he has previously described as an “everyman”, as he discovers he is reliving the same six-month period over and over. George thinks he’s losing the plot until he is recruited by Archie (Anjli Mohindra), a member of a covert organisation known as The Lazarus Project. Their remit is to save the world from terrorist threats by turning the clock back to a set checkpoint: if they mess up the first time, they just hit reset and try again.

It would be a shame to say too much about series one, which unfolds with a crisp attention to detail and super-slick editing in the time travel scenes. But, given that George begins series two as a somewhat compromised Lazarus Project operative, can we still call him an everyman? “Everything’s contextual, isn’t it?” Essiedu counters. “He’s in a very different place now – he’s got a kill count that many terrorists would be proud of.”

Unlike Archie and other Lazarus Project colleagues, Essiedu adds, George doesn’t come from a typical MI5 background. “He doesn’t have any superhuman capabilities, but he’s got an incredibly big heart and he’s incredibly stubborn-slash-persevering,” he says. “He’s a real person in unreal circumstances.” He normally creates a playlist for his characters, but interestingly, he didn’t make one for George. “I’ve really got no idea what kind of music he listens to, to the extent that I’m like, ‘Maybe he doesn’t listen to music?'” he says.

Still, Essiedu stops short of framing him as a blank slate. “In terms of getting into George, you’ve got to embrace [the fact] that there’s a slightly chaotic underbelly to him,” he says. “On the surface, he presents a sense of normality, but there’s a real engine underneath him. So for me, it’s about figuring out the moments where it’s this [chaotic engine] that truly drives him and the moments where that takes more of a backseat.” His co-star Mohindra tells NME over Zoom that Essiedu is “thrilling” to work with because he “makes bold choices” and isn’t afraid to “raise the stakes” in a scene. “I guess it’s his theatre background that lends itself to finding different ways to play things, which keeps it really fresh and alive,” she says. “I think the best acting comes when it feels a little bit dangerous and unpredictable.”

Eleven years after he began his acting career by joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, Essiedu says he’s “done a pretty good job of not doing the same thing twice”. He has nearly as many stage credits as screen roles, and won the prestigious Ian Charleson Award in 2016 for his classical turns in Hamlet and King Lear. This August, he scored another stage triumph when he starred opposite Taylor Russell in The Effect, the National Theatre’s timely revival of a dark contemporary drama written by Lucy Prebble (Succession, I Hate Suzie).

He and Russell played two young people who fall in love during a clinical trial, but can’t be sure whether their passion is genuine or the by-product of a massive dopamine hit. “It was a very formative experience, being able to do a play that felt very small and intimate and real, but done in a way that really reached outwards,” Essiedu says. “And I’m really proud of the work that I do, like, on most of my projects, which is about audience development and outreach. It’s about diversifying the type of person that engages with the work and is part of the making process.”

Essiedu says that when he stepped out on stage every night, he could “really feel” that this outreach work had paid off. He felt the charge of first-time theatregoers in a “fucking massive barn” of a theatre space that is “famous for actors feeling very detached from their audiences”. He was drawn to acting in the first place because he “likes being with people and collaborating with people”, so this sense of connection must have felt incredibly gratifying.

Essiedu was brought up in northeast London by his mother, who taught fashion and design at adult education colleges. When he was a baby, his lawyer father returned to Ghana, where he passed away when Essiedu was 14. He and mum Selina, who died of breast cancer during Essiedu’s first year at drama school, formed a tight two-person team. “I grew up in a kitchen where the sewing machine was a permanent fixture,” he recalls fondly. “There were pins everywhere and they were constantly going into my feet.”

Originally, Essiedu wanted to become a doctor because it would have involved “spending so much time with people”. He was “very hard-working” at school and won a place to study medicine at University College London, but pulled out at the eleventh hour after starring in a sixth form production of Othello. “The idea of acting came to me way later than medicine, so it was way more exciting and titillating,” he says. “As an 18-year-old, I wanted to test myself in a space where I didn’t know if it was going to work or not.” He laughs, then compares himself to his character in The Lazarus Project. “It was kind of George-like, in a way – a pretty chaotic decision to make.”

Essiedu says he started drama school feeling “500 metres behind” classmates who already had professional acting experience. “I hadn’t grown up going to the theatre, you know, or even thinking that acting could be a job,” he says. He and Coel met on their very first day, and became “very close from the jump” because they had so much in common: Coel went to school close to where Essiedu grew up in Walthamstow, and they both had Ghanaian parents.

“Michaela Coel and I were the only dark-skinned Black people in our group at drama school”

“I remember seeing her and she was an immediately charismatic individual,” he recalls. “But we were the only two dark-skinned Black people [there], and two of only three people of colour at all.” In a 2022 interview, Essiedu revealed that a Guildhall teacher addressed him with a racial slur during an improvisation class, prompting the school to “apologise unreservedly for the racism experienced” by Essiedu, Coel and other alumni.

Understandably, Essiedu doesn’t bring up this sickening incident today. He says he loved “loads of drama school” while finding other aspects “challenging”. “Sometimes it felt like they were taking away some of your natural instincts and trying to implement a bit of formality, which was difficult,” he adds. So, now he’s leading one of TV’s most exciting sci-fi series, what advice would he give to his younger self – the fledgling actor who felt behind? “For me, there was always this fear that you’re going to be found out and told to walk out the door. That’s what imposter syndrome is,” he says. “So I suppose my advice would be: ‘Don’t be afraid someone’s gonna close the door on you because you’re here for a reason. You’ve got a right to be in this room.'”

‘The Lazarus Project’ season two is available on Sky Max and streaming service NOW from November 15

The post Paapa Essiedu just wants to tell proper stories: “Being the lead isn’t the be all and end all” appeared first on NME.

Jonathan Majors, currently facing assault charges in the US, made his return to Marvel TV series Loki this week, unveiling his new character: 19th century inventor Victor Timely. But the show’s new episodes were completed long before allegations were made against the actor, producer Kevin Wright confirmed to NME.

First reported in March, Majors was arrested on assault, strangulation and harassment charges in New York, after being accused of assaulting a 30-year-old woman during an alleged “domestic dispute”. Majors denied the allegations. He appeared in court in August, after which his criminal defense lawyer Priya Chaudhry released a statement denying the allegations again and calling for them to be thrown out, claiming that they had delivered evidence to prove the woman had attacked Majors and “not the other way around”. Another court date is set for October 25. Majors has been dropped from a number of high profile film and TV projects since his arrest, including thriller The Man In My Basement – but is currently starring in Loki‘s second season despite some fans expecting his role to be cut.

“In regards to our show, we had finished shooting [when Majors was arrested],” Wright told NME. “We were really happy with our story – and I would say the story that’s on screen is the story that we set out to tell. And anything else, I think, we wouldn’t say.”

When asked if there have been any internal conversations about Majors’ continued involvement in the series beyond season two, Wright declined to comment, saying that he couldn’t “say too much without spoiling this season.”

Majors made his Marvel debut in Loki in 2021 as supervillain He Who Remains, a variant of the mysterious, all-powerful Kang The Conqueror, who Majors later played in blockbuster film Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania. He Who Remains was killed at the end of season one, but Majors returned this week in season two’s third episode to play another of the character’s variants, Victor Timely.

Timely is a scientist living in turn-of-the-century Chicago whose inventions include a Time Loom prototype similar to one used by the TVA, a central futuristic organisation whom protagonist Loki is involved with.

“I think Timely is just a fun character from the comics,” said Wright. “When you look at all the Kang variants, he’s the oddball out. [We thought], ‘We’ve got to do something with that.'”

He added: “It also allowed us to time-travel and go to some really cool places.” The Chicago World Fair of 1893 is the setting for episode three, when Timely is introduced.
“You think that it’s gonna be a sci-fi film from the future and it’s this kind of unassuming eccentric inventor from the past who really believes in the stuff that he’s doing.”

‘Loki’ releases new episodes on Disney+ every Friday in the UK, Thursday evenings in the US

The post ‘Loki’ producer explains Jonathan Majors’ controversial return in this week’s episode appeared first on NME.

The first song I remember hearing

‘Happy Birthday To You’

“It’s just the first jingle that anybody, surely, learns. When you were a kid it always felt nice to be celebrated, didn’t it?”

The first album I bought

Busted – ‘A Present for Everyone’

“Busted had like the most amazing Christmas advert – it was just like, ‘This is the album that you need to buy for Christmas.’ When you’re so young, you’re just like, ‘OK, well I guess that’s what I want!’ I wasn’t necessarily a Busted fan. No shade, but that’s just the truth.”

Did you know that this album won Worst Album at the NME Awards 2005…

“Well there you go. I wish it was something more poignant but I was genuinely pulled in by the marketing. So shoutout to their team. I was obsessed.”

The first gig I went to

The Pussycat Dolls at MEN Arena, Manchester, 2006

“It was on their first tour, which was The PCD World Tour. Not Doll Domination, though I went to both. I was with my mum and my step-mum, which was the cutest thing. They took me as a double present. They opened the show by coming through a tunnel [while singing] the song ‘Buttons’. I’d never had that feeling of seeing an artist that I loved before, and I was absolutely obsessed with them. So I think I started crying… My mum told me to get a grip!”

The song that reminds me of home

Ashanti – ‘Happy’ feat. Ja Rule

“It makes me think of my mum – being at home in Greater Manchester, just singing along. Back in the day, we’d have the music channels on… and singing this song made me feel happy.”

The song I wish I’d written

Jamie Woon – ‘Street’

“I saw him at Latitude Festival years ago. I was with my friend. It’s not usually my type of music but he really had us all in the palm of his hand. I remember being like, ‘OK, I’m definitely gonna get into his stuff.’ Then I remember specifically playing this song in Thailand when I was there for a couple of weeks. It reminds me of happy times.”

The song I can’t get out of my head

Whitney Houston – ‘Million Dollar Bill’

“We had a good old dance to that last week on Strictly Come Dancing [Williams is currently competing on the BBC dance competition] and got our highest score so far. It’s an absolute bop. When you’re dancing to a bop, it kind of doesn’t leave your brain. So it’s still in there.”

The song I can no longer listen to

Terry Jacks – ‘Seasons In The Sun’

“It’s my granddad’s favourite song and they played it at his funeral. So whenever I hear that come on, which is very rare, it makes me a bit sad. It was even more sad because I was sat with my nan. She and my granddad divorced before I can even remember. So it was the first moment in my life that I realised how much love my nan had for my granddad because I’ve never seen them together. Seeing how emotional this song made her, made it even more emotional for me.”

The song that makes me want to dance

Whitney Houston – ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

“If you’re at a function when this song comes on and you’re not dancing on the dance floor, then you are dry.”

The song that makes me cry

Billy Elliot The Musical – ‘The Letter’

“It was a song that, as my character [Williams performed in Billy Elliot in London’s West End], I used to sing to my mum who had passed in the show and it always made me think of my mum. So if that song plays, it really pulls on the heartstrings.”

The song I do at karaoke

Grease medley

“You know those holidays you go on when you’re a kid with your mates? There was a karaoke bar in Nerja, in Spain just north of Malaga, and we used to go there all the time for pre drinks before we got into Plaza Tutti Frutti [the centre of Nerja nightlife]. Anyway we used to go to this bar for free drinks and to sing for like an hour and a half. That was a perfect night.”

The song I want played at my funeral

The Pussycat Dolls – ‘When I Grow Up’

“It’d be kind of ironic when I’m, hopefully, very old and gone.”

Layton Williams is currently performing on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, which airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Saturday evenings

The post Soundtrack Of My Life: Layton Williams appeared first on NME.

The first song I remember hearing

Round The Horne theme (1960s BBC Radio comedy programme)

“It was always on, somehow, in the car. I think that’s where my love of theme tunes comes from, being indoctrinated at an early age. My mum and dad still loved it when they were 40 and they had old tapes of it. As a kid I loved the silly voices, I just thought, ‘Oh my god, this is so fun. What a ridiculous thing’.”

The first album I owned

Manic Street Preachers – ‘Generation Terrorists’

“The first album I ever asked my mum to buy me when she was out doing the big shop, I wanted – I can’t remember what Red Hot Chili Peppers album it was but there was a Chili Peppers album I’d heard about and I wanted to be cool so I asked her ‘could you get me the Chili Peppers album?’ And I think she got confused and brought home a Manic Street Preachers album. Which, to be fair, really good. It was the one with ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ on it – I liked it. It was guitars and I quite liked guitars.”

The first gig I went to

The Corrs at Wembley Arena, London, 1996

“I went with my dad. I later realised that we both fancied Andrea Corr. I had a crush on her – I think she might have been my first crush – and he had an inappropriate age difference dad crush on Andrea Corr. I hope you appreciate the honesty here, I could lie and sound much cooler. What can I remember? Literally nothing. I would have been 10 or 11. I think I quite liked ‘Runaway’. I only worked it out in hindsight, like, ‘Dad, why did we go and see The Corrs?’ ‘Well, you wanted to go’. ‘Did you want to go?’ ‘Yeah…’”

The song that reminds me of home

Van Morrison – ‘Have I Told You Lately’

“My dad was in a band and he was quite a good singer. He used to sing a lot of Van Morrison. He used to sing ‘Have I Told You Lately’ which is one of my favourite songs. That song would always remind me of growing up in Bromley in the 1990s.”

The song I wish I’d written

The Maccabees – ‘Something Like Happiness’

“That’s a very beautiful song. It’s off their triumphant final – for now – album [‘Marks To Prove It’]. I think it’s a real showcase of a band who know exactly who they are and they don’t mind doing a sweet, poppier kind of song that’s still got a load of layers to it. It’s a beautiful message, it’s really lovely. It’s the sweet spot of The Maccabees where they did really expansive, arena-filling songs but doesn’t lose any of their sentimentality. It’s quite melancholic but with a triumphant chorus, it’s so smart.”

The song I do at karaoke

Natasha Bedingfield – ‘Unwritten’

“It’s a crowd-pleaser and (if you can nail the high notes) there’s a choir bit you can get everyone singing along to. It’s one of the most amazing pop songs ever. And believe me, it goes down well.”

The song I can’t get out of my head

The Proclaimers – ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’

“That is the Tailenders [James’ cricketing podcast, with ex-Maccabee Felix White and England cricketer James Anderson] song that we sing. We sing ‘Tailenders!’ and that has stuck really. Someone texted that in early on in Tailenders and said ‘in The Proclaimers’ ‘I’m gonna Be (500 Miles)’ you can sing ‘Tailenders!’’ and that’s sort of become our theme tune. I’m a man of simple pleasures and they’re normally theme tune-based. If it comes on anywhere I can’t not sing ‘Tailenders’ and I know that’s tragic but I’m okay with that.”

The song I can no longer listen to

Calum Scott – ‘Dancing On My Own’

“No offence to Calum Scott because I have nothing against him personally and I do wish him well, but I do think that cover is the worst thing in the world. Covers are very difficult anyway but Robyn is one of the all-time great artists and that’s one of the most incredible songs ever written. It doesn’t need anything doing to it. I don’t think even Kings Of Leon nailed it when they tried to do it…”

The song that makes me want to dance

Lou Bega – ‘Mambo No.5 (A Little Bit Of…)’

“That was also a huge part of my childhood. It won’t surprise you that, again, it’s the theme tune to Channel 4’s cricket coverage. I used to dance around to that when I was very excitedly waiting for the cricket to start on the telly. I’m not really a good dancer, but I am spirited.”

The song that makes me cry

Bon Iver – ‘8 (circle)’

“I discovered it at a time when I’d just come out of a rubbish break-up and I was suddenly feeling a lot more myself again and it always reminds me of that time. So it’s sort of happy tears. I don’t cry that often, not in an ‘I’m a legend’ way but I catch myself before I start crying and then do some things to make myself feel better before that happens. That song takes me to that place where I was finally over something awful and this lovely, gentle Bon Iver song came along. It’s in Bon Iver’s more optimistic canon.”

The song I want played at my funeral

David Guetta feat. Nicki Minaj and Flo Rida – ‘Where Them Girls At’

“We’d need to pierce the tension or the sadness somehow. I’ve thought about it a lot and over the years I’ve thought, ‘What’s the funniest song I’ve ever played on Radio 1’ and I think it’s this. They didn’t mean it to be funny, walking into the club and proclaiming, ‘So many girls in here, where do I begin?’ – but it’s absolutely hilarious and at a funeral, I don’t think it’d go off but I think people would find it funny.”

‘Tailenders Live – End Of Season Party’ (featuring Greg James, Felix White and James Anderson) starts in Nottingham on October 19

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