Sexy Beast TV prequel goes back to the 90s with Scottish actors James McArdle and Emun Elliott
There’s a scene a few episodes into Sexy Beast, the hard-hitting TV series prequel to the iconic 2000 film starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley where East End gangster Gal Dove says to his lifelong friend and fellow bad lad Don Logan: “People are always asking me why I’m friends with you?”
It’s a good question, given Don’s penchant for extreme violence, reckless impulsivity and obsession with the TV gameshow Catchphrase.
We don’t have long to wait for the answer, which is loyalty. The kind of loyalty where one will take a bullet for the other despite a complicated relationship which is explored through the eight episodes of the new series set a decade before the film in 1990s London where the characters are played by Scottish actors James McArdle (Mare of Easttown, Angels in America) and Emun Elliott (Guilt, The Gold, The Rig).
It’s fun to interview the duo together as Sexy Beast is about the friendship of Gal and Don and what happens to make them the way they are and what they become, and as well as spending eight months filming side by side in the UK and Spain, they have worked together before in a televised 2021 stage version of Macbeth. This ease in each other’s company is palpable and the pair riff off each other in conversation, as well as having a shorthand when it comes to getting to grips with characters who don’t always see eye to eye.
“When Emun and I did Macbeth together it ended with us wrestling in this pool of water and in Sexy Beast there’s the exact same wrestle,” says McArdle.
“Yeah, we’re doomed to be wrestling in the elements,” says Elliott. “I think the Macbeth choreography was still in us...”
“And we said, ‘don’t worry guys we’ve got this’.” says McArdle and laughs.
“Yeah,” agrees Elliott, “we didn’t choreograph that fight scene. It was just ‘roll camera, fight’. We’re half joking about Macbeth, but we have such a trust with each other in many ways and one of them is physically, so we just went for it. It was a hoot.”
Best friends and thick as thieves, Gal and Don are small-time criminals in East London, happy big fish in a small pond who become embroiled in a more dangerous world of crime when they are recruited by gangster Teddy Bass, played by Stephen Moyer (Shots Fired, True Blood). There’s further tension when Gal embarks on a love affair with adult film star Deedee, played by Sarah Greene (Bad Sisters, Normal People) and Don comes under pressure from his terrifying older sister Cecilia (Tamsin Greig). Loyalties are stretched, things take a violent, dark turn and the duo’s friendship is tested to the limit.
It was a chance for the actors to revisit the iconic film, but also put their own stamp on characters as they took them back in time and got under their skin, and neither hesitated to take the role.
“I think they were both iconic characters to begin with because of the film,” says McArdle, “but when I was reading the scripts they were just so vivid, the whole world was so vivid, and where they were taking them was so surprising. Gal and Don where we meet them are completely polar opposite from where we see them in the film which immediately excited me because I thought how are they going to take them to become mortal enemies? Gal is the centre of this world where everyone depends on him and he’s held on high and it’s a juicy story to see how that’s dismantled and he’s brought down.”
Elliott too was intrigued by the opportunity to get under the skin of a character he’d watched in the original film.
“I was really interested to understand why these characters ended up the way they did, the way we see them in the movie. I think Don Logan is in the film for one hour, but makes such an impact. I had so many questions after watching the film in terms of how did this man become the man he is, why is he so violent, why is everyone so terrified of him, where does this aggression come from? So it felt like a real gift to be given eight hours to explore that in the series. And also Don Logan as a character is so far away from who I am in everyday life that I was just thrilled by the challenge of that.”
McArdle continues:
“As a pair they’re multi-faced. They’re best friends but there’s also a brotherly love between them with Gal in sometimes the more paternal role. There are two love stories side by side here, between Gal and Deedee and Gal and Don, who have been with each other since they were wee. They grew up and bicker like an old married couple, but they’ve got each other’s backs. Gal’s the most popular kid on the block and Don doesn’t really have any friends except for Gal, who is this rock for him.”
“It’s almost like Don is the loyal, aggressive dog to Gal, who’s often put on a leash and sometimes let off to run, which can end in disaster,” says Elliott.
With London changing around them, as the Thatcher regime is superceded by that of John Major and greed is good, the pair enter the world of Teddy Bass and changing rules where Don’s habit of being a liability has serious consequences. Gal realises the only way to survive is to swim up and become irreplaceable, while Don is lured by the opportunities he sees to have security and things he’s never had, and both have their eyes opened to a world beyond the East End.
Having enjoyed the original film, did they take any elements from it into the new series?
“There are certain images and scenes and characterisations that stay with you,” says Elliott. “That’s why the film has become such an iconic classic. Our job was to take the elements of those performances and thread them into what we were doing but at the same time form our own version of what that character is. We had the original writers, David [Scinto] and Louis [Mellis] on board as executive producers so that felt reassuring. We were paying homage to these characters and respecting those incredible performances but also we’ve got eight hours of television so were allowing these characters to become part of us and to live and breathe them. Hopefully we put our own stamp on Gal and Don in the end.”
McArdle too looked back to the original, while taking the characters into a new realm.
“We’re meeting these characters in circumstances we’ve never seen them in before and that’s where our imaginations kicked in. There were times where we would lean into the film loads, and times less so. There’s a scene in the film where Gal orders calamari and is told Don Logan’s on the way. That became my bible, because this was a snapshot of the elements of Gal’s character - he’ in complete fear, sweating, he’s got a table of his wife and his best friend to look after and you see these conflicts, and that’s what was interesting to me. So when in doubt I went to calamari.”
As for the question of whether there were any elements of the two characters that they found in themselves, the early morning starts were revealing.
“Yeah,” says McArdle, “at six in the morning I’m calamari and he’s Don Logan.”
Elliott laughs and says: “You’d assume my answer would be absolutely not but Don has a vulnerability and humanity as well as terrifying aggression. It’s important to understand where that aggression comes from and my understanding is it’s from a place of fear, humiliation, not belonging. When Don is triggered the only way he knows how to respond is to shout or do something physical to make them back down. I can relate to what it feels like to feel humiliated, scared, insecure but I have a different way of dealing with those emotions. I remember being in drama school and did this scene and it was terrible - the class laughed at how bad my acting was and that feeling of humiliation was deep, and I think that’s what Don’s suffering from. I can understand why he lashes out because he’s a character that suffered abuse as a child and he’s learned that the way to deal with intimidation or fear is violence. Which I do not condone of course.”
For his part, McArdle responded to elements of Gal’s character, “like putting pressure on himself to look after people or succeed. That’s definitely something I could see in myself and I understood how that led to his flaws and his vulnerability.
"And for Gal the counterbalance is his relationship with Deedee which is a selfless love, and this is going away from your question because it’s not something I particularly respond to, but it drew me towards it. It’s exciting to use parts of yourself to express that, which is what you really do when you’re acting. Like I was scared when people come and see me in a play because I always think ‘oh shit, they’re going to actually know what I’m like - you feel incredibly exposed and live there’s no hiding from it. All these things you work hard in real life to curate or protect yourself or others, when you’re acting your job is to let that all out and you pursue it with complete zeal and dedication and then you’re like ‘oh shit, they can see it’.”
While both actors have found something of themselves to relate to in Sexy Beast, there was nothing familiar about the accents. How did a Glaswegian and an Edinburgh boy manage to do such convincing East End cockney?
“Laura Hart,” they say in unison, referring to their voice coach who worked with them throughout the shoot.
“She’d do a session with James and then a session with me and for eight months we’d have a session at least once a week before going into shooting, sometimes every day, she was incredible.”
Finding it easier to keep the accent going even when the camera wasn’t rolling, the pair maintained the cockney all day at work..
“I wouldn’t say I’m a method actor,” says McArdle, “it was just practical because it was so different for us and it was helpful to be in accent all day. Then we’d get in the car at night and it would be ‘how’re you doin’, you alright?’ You forget you’re doing an accent all the time but on the last day the whole crew put this big light display on and I had to say something and spoke with my own accent and they looked like they’d been betrayed,” he laughs. “I could not do the accent now for love nor money. That’s why I have to do it all the time because I can’t otherwise. I started doing it around about Mare of Easttown Town which was American, then Life After Life was posh English and this film, Four Mothers, is Irish.”
“I think I’m always going to do that now,” says Elliott, “because you can kind of test the water, if you go in in the morning and speak to your make up artist or driver in the accent, it’s almost like you’re warming up into it before you put it on camera. I found it really useful once I got over that initial terror.”
Despite playing a couple of thieves, the pair insist they’re not in the habit of liberating items, clothing or otherwise from sets - the left-field clothing Elliott acquired from his character Kenny the lawyer in BBC’s crime drama Guilt was gifted - and McArdle acquired a stylish jacket from the Sexy Beast 1990s wardrobe.
“Sandro,” he confirms.
“Yeah, James got all the lovely stylish gear,” says Elliott. “There was nothing I wanted from Don’s wardrobe. I remember in Spain we were out in the street shooting people would come up to him because he looks like a movie star and I would literally be standing next to him and someone genuinely thought I was his personal bus driver. That was a real ego check.”
Filming in Spain, in and around Malaga, Marbella and Mijas was a highlight for both actors, and by that stage in the shoot they had settled into their characters.
“We were given so much freedom in those episodes and we had kind of found the way with each other and with these characters and just to be in Spain running about the streets getting into trouble is something that I think we both look back on really fondly. It did not feel like work at all,” says Elliott.
McArdle says: “Remember the scene where we’re walking down a path in the countryside and we’re talking about the scenery, about Tesco’s, and it was one of the first times I had felt we could take ownership over what we were doing and kind of riff with each other and they were some of my most favourite moments in it. There was another one, a heist where we started to improvise about a character called Big Mandy. They are really the moments I will remember. It was a tough, rigorous shoot and really hard work but I can’t remember that now, I just remember our time together.”
With the original film being so popular it’s almost a given that the series will find an audience, but how do they think viewers will react?.
“I think the films so popular because of what it is,” says Elliott. “There are moments that are poetry in terms of how Gal and Don speak to each other, and visually it’s this beautiful masterpiece. Once you’ve seen it, it stays with you, it certainly did with me, for years after, but I don’t think you need to have seen the film to enjoy our prequel and story. I think if you have it will be interesting to watch this origin story, to understand how these characters got to where they end up in the film, but if you haven’t, this eight part TV prequel really stands alone. But it’s impossible to predict how people are going to react. For James and me it’s important to feel we’ve put everything into this in order to make it work and that it’s as compelling as it can be.”
Have they had any feedback from the cast of the film, in particular their older characters Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley?
“Ray Winstone texted me,” says McArdle. He gave me a very encouraging, gracious, good luck text in a really positive way and it really helped me. It was round about that time when we were in Spain and I did start to feel more ownership over it and I thought that was a generous thing to do.”
“I did not hear from Sir Ben Kingsley,” says Elliott, “and maybe it was for the best, I don’t know. It would be interesting to find out what he thinks about us and kind of terrifying because that performance is so iconic and incredible. But no I had no contact with him before, during or after the shoot. I suspect he’s slightly intimidated,” he says, deadpan, and they both laugh.
With Sexy Beast launched McArdle and Elliott are busy with new projects this year, Elliott shooting The Gold 2 from this month - “series one ended with them discovering they had only ever been chasing half of the gold bullion and new characters come with lots of brilliant new actors, while McArdle is filming a new drama with James Norton for STUDIOCANAL.
“There are two couples who discover their toddlers were swapped at birth,” says McArdle, “and it’s about the ramifications of that, and after that I’ve got a film called Four Mothers about a neurotic writer in his late thirties who has to look after four octogenarians for one weekend. It’s sad and funny.”
In the meantime, they’re excited to see Sexy Beast launch and find its audience, old and new.
“If you’re a fan of the film,” says McArdle, “we start off with such different people from that; they are the polar opposite from what they become, so the drive of this series is how did it happen? That becomes the engine of this story, how is this relationship going to fall apart? There’s something almost classical about that, how these friends become enemies, or brothers in arms become mortal enemies. There’s something ancient about that which I hope we explore.”
James McArdle and Emun Elliott star in Sexy Beast, available on Paramount+ now.