Deadline’s annual Ones to Watch group in Cannes is made up of actors and directors who bring new things to the festival. The difference is not always reserved for new faces; Rather, we have selected people who are branching out or who are in waters where they can create waves. After all, leather can be a place for reinvention.
Papa Essedu has a secret. “I’m in Rio de Janeiro,” confesses the actor. “I’m on vacation and I’m still struggling with it. “I find it difficult to justify the acceleration, but I’m in Rio de Janeiro, on vacation and I own it.” Esedu left London at the insistence of his partner, who was rightly concerned about the work the actor had been doing lately. It’s also probably a good time to unwind before Essay plunges into Cannes madness, where he can be seen in Alex Garland’s surreal psychological thriller. MenWithout a two-week filmmaking competition.
The film is the third director of Garland and has already garnered widespread attention for its bizarre trailer starring Jesse Buckley as a sad widow, as well as for the many characters played by British actor Rory Kinnear, a familiar evil face. . the penny is terrible television franchise. Eseedu performs with James, the widow’s late husband. “The context”, explains Esedu, “speaks of a woman that happened after the death of her husband. He goes to the countryside, hires Airbnb to get rid of all this and spends some time in one of those famous English villages, where he meets several men. These encounters affect him in different ways and let’s say he gets more and more tense and painful until… ”he stops and laughs. “I’m not good at spoiler-free synopsis, as you might say.”
Eseedu spends a lot of time with Buckley, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film. missing daughter. He describes those scenes with Buckley as “super intense” and “not forbidden”. He explains: “A lot is needed from you because she is so loyal. She really comes in. He puts more than 100 percent into every moment of the film, but mostly in our scenes involving a couple going through a tough time. You have to have a lot of courage to go there and he really does. I really liked, “Wow, I have to take a step back”.
Eseedu makes no claims here, making history in 2016 when he became the first black actor to play Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Washington Post described it as “glamorous, flammable, [and] Lightning Tongue, ”Esedu received the Ian Charlson British Theater Award for his role as Hamlet and King Lear. And to think that he may never have become an actor since he went to school to get a doctor before leaving and instead attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Would the loss of performance be a gain for medicine? “To be honest, I don’t know,” he says, “but he was very close. I had a place at university that I was supposed to attend, but at the last minute I turned around a bit. “
Growing up in Walthamstown, where he was raised by his Ghanaian mother following his father’s death in his early teens, Esedu had little experience in the arts, especially those that would guide him down this path. “Look, I didn’t know anyone who was an actor,” he said. “There are no actors or artists in my family, I don’t think. I didn’t know anyone who attended acting school, so the idea of people appearing on TV or in movies as normal people having jobs was just surreal – these two things were completely different to me. So meeting people who think, “Yes, we love this acting game and we will train to be able to do it as a job”, was a real baptism of fire, in the sense that I am a firefighter. “
Looking back, he still can’t remember a Eureka The moment that refreshed him. “Even today it seems absurd”, she says, “that the idea of ’doing it’ is so complex and so many aspects are difficult”. I graduated from acting school, found an agent, my first job … It was time to move on. I always try to make sure the following is better than the previous. This allowed me to learn how to do business because I know that when I finished acting school I wasn’t that good. But I was lucky enough to find a job in acting and in large theater companies, which allowed me to see the performances of great actors at night. I was able to see what they were doing, what was interesting, exciting or challenging for the audience, and then I was able to figure out how to apply it to my process. “
Ironically, he believes that the moment of his breakthrough occurred in Shakespeare’s play, even in the reinvented one. In RSC, Essiedu’s Hamlet was a modern graffiti artist with a tongue. “It’s really weird because I hated Shakespeare when I was in school. I thought it was so boring and so unapproachable, people speak a language that I don’t understand that I don’t care about and I taught it to someone who didn’t give a shit. I hated it, but it really made a difference when I got the chance to do it, I saw these works as more than just a literary Bible, I saw them as something living and breathing that could be changed. I always wondered if Shakespeare was a reinvention, rather than recreating something, and when we were doing it. Village This has been an important part of our modus operandi: how can we make this work relevant to our world?
Esedu was surprised to find that fate awaited him more than Bard. Last year, the role he played for an old friend from acting school: the role of Kwami in Michael Coel’s hit series. I can destroy– led to Bafta and Emmy nominations. “We auditioned on the same day,” she recalled. I remember talking to the escalators at Moorgate tube station in London and we said “This is crazy”, because we were both from East London, and we both had this: “We don’t know anyone.” Who does this? “So we’ve had that kind of connection from the very beginning. I feel lucky to meet him, but more like in my life, and not for business reasons. Obviously some of his shows have been a big part of my life. professional, but even when I did it, even when I said I wanted to do it, I did it mainly because he was my partner. And so it happened, obviously because he is brilliant, he turned out to be brilliant and the character he created for I was brilliant. So yes, he is a very, very important person and figure in my life, for many reasons “.
However, even after the Bafta and Emmys, even Essedu can’t figure out where it all started. after promotion Men In Cannes he will participate directly in the advertising work for his science fiction series Sky The Lazarus project, which he describes as “a kind of world-building, love story that takes time”. He will also appear on the BBC Police Show. InterceptionBefore the beginning kill the lightAdaptation of Anthony Quinn’s novel curtain hood.
“I feel very lucky to have had the trajectory that I had,” said Esedu. “I think it wouldn’t be so cool to be one of the actors whose first job was Spiderman Or whatever. It has been a more gradual process and I feel very fortunate for it ”.
Source: Deadline
