Why Sunshine on Leith actor George MacKay is singing about climate crisis in his new film

In a bunker underground for ever, never seeing the stars or feeling the wind or the rain…

“Yeah, that’s not something I’d want for my kids,” says actor George MacKay, pondering the weighty dilemma of whether he’d choose to survive the collapse of the planet and civilisation and live out his days in a luxury bunker.

“But life is all about surviving and when your choices are narrowed, to keep breathing or not, what would you do? That’s a good question,” he says.

It’s one posed by his latest role in Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The End, an apocalyptic musical, not words you often hear together, about the aftermath of climate crisis.

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a mad one isn’t it,” says MacKay, who is in Glasgow when we speak, promoting the film which goes on general release tomorrow.

Sunshine on Leith and 1917 actor George MacKay considers the dilemmas of post-apocalypse life posed by his new film in which he stars with Tilda Swinton. Thanks to Dakota Hotel, Glasgow | John Devlin

The End is set in the not too distant future where devastation has destroyed life as we know it and parents played by Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon have raised their son (MacKay), in a luxury bunker along with friends played by Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny and Lennie James, all desperately keeping calm and carrying on until the arrival of a stranger (Moses Ingram) from outside threatens to destroy an existence built on lies and denial.

“It’s such a nuanced theme at the core, on a tightrope between hope and denial and the ramifications of that and it’s quite an out there concept as well,” says MacKay. “The circumstance for the film is so extreme, but inside of that what Josh is looking at is very subtle so it gives it a particular feel.”

George MacKay and Tilda Swinton, with Tim McInnerny, Michael Shannon, Bronagh Gallagher and Lennie James, in The End. | Contributed

Particular is the right word for The End, produced by Oppenheimer, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Swinton, as it’s a film which from the outset has you wondering what’s going to happen next because we’re in uncharted territory, as MacKay and his co-stars sing and dance their way through dystopian dilemmas. It’s also the word for the process of making The End, with each step and word strictly choreographed.

“Some jobs you do it’s very ‘throw it at the wall and see what sticks’, and with others, part of the beauty comes in playing every note specifically as set. It can’t be a semi-tone different, it’s got to be that one.”

MacKay relishes the differences in method each job throws up and is well known for immersing himself in his roles, so it’s no surprise that he has engaged with the questions thrown up by the film. Its director, Oppenheimer, who previously explored our dexterity with denial and ability to justify committing atrocities in his documentary The Act of Killing, has returned to the subject but this time round set it to music.

As MacKay explains The End is a nod to the golden age of American musicals made in the 1950s, during the Cold War, their unremitting cheeriness at odds with the looming threat of global nuclear extinction.

“Josh says musicals often deal with delusion and this family is so delusional so much of the time. Some of the songs are poignant and truthful but some are the characters bolstering the lies they’re singing - ‘we’re fine!, we’re fine!’. And it’s often in the silences as well as the music that the real truth comes out, because it’s all about the unsaid.”

“It’s a film about a family set in a luxury bunker 25 years after the collapse of the earth and essentially they have kept themselves safe. The film deals with how any family and particularly this family would sustain some kind of life and keep functioning, hoping, when it’s a terminal situation for which they are partially responsible.”

Partially responsible science the family amassed a fortune from fossil fuel production.

“I think it speaks in a wider sense to those themes in life about when is something you just brush over? I was fascinated about that because I feel in the last few years there has been so much that we are re-evaluating.

“Also I’ve started a family now and being at the beginning makes you think do we talk about this now with the children in terms of the climate crisis, or even just day to day little things like lying about whether there are biscuits in the cupboard or not?”

“So what would I do if I was the family in The End? If it was my own family, my children, my loved ones, my partner, my best mates, and I was given the option to save just us, then maybe I would. But what sort of existence could you give them in the bunker and how do you live with that decision? So I think I’d stay with my family but try and remain with everyone else on the outside.”

George MacKay. With thanks to the Dakota Hotel, Glasgow. | John Devlin

Now 33, MacKay grew up in south-west London, the son of a costume designer and a lighting and stage director, and he and his partner Doone Forsyth, a makeup and hair stylist, have two young children.

“It’s fascinating to be that little bit older now and think how do you move forward and not make those same mistakes. The End is all about honesty really, so it’s made me check myself and try to call a spade a spade and realise when I’m not. Being part of making the film holds you accountable to the thing that it’s exploring. So that’s a life lesson I’ve taken. Maybe not often managing to do it, but it’s certainly given me awareness that I didn’t have before.”

“I just think it’s an amazingly nuanced piece of work that Josh has put together in making this film because there are lots of stories about binary goodies, binary baddies, and this isn’t a binary right or wrong. It’s about how in order to get out of bed in the morning you have to provide a certain bit of narrative and asks when is that acceptable and when is it dangerous?”

One of the best parts of working on The End for MacKay, and for audiences watching, is the presence of Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon as the parents of his character.

“It was great. I mean they’re two masters, unique actors and extraordinary people. I respect both their body of work so much and as a young actor you see how they work and operate as people. They’ve both worked non-stop their entire careers and they’ve got a lot of life experience so it was a joy to learn from them as people, as you navigate life amidst it all, and as crafts people, both quite different, they are simply brilliant.”

“I think those are the actors that I most admire, people who shape-shift. I think that’s the job of an actor and it’s not always the way of it. I think people often consider you for a role if they recognise something in it from something they’ve seen previously but the people who can make the consistency of their work the fact that it’s always different, I think that’s amazing.”

Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon in The End | Contributed

MacKay thrives on variety, from his first child role at 10 as a Lost Boy to First World War soldier in the Oscar winning 1917, a singing squaddie in Sunshine on Leith, the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly to a man who thinks he’s a wolf to a closeted thug in 2023’s multi-award winning psychodrama Femme, which saw him win the British Independent Film Awards Best Joint Lead Performance with Nathan Stewart-Jarrett in 2023.

We’ve heard him sing before in The Proclaimers soundtrack to Sunshine on Leith, with Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks, featuring music by The Proclaimers in 2013. Was he keen to do another musical?

“Yes. Totally. It was always in the DNA of the project that it would be a musical and it was always yes, I want to have another go at a musical, try and stretch myself.

MacKay has been called a method actor in the past, immersing himself in roles and doing extensive research, but is that something he would agree with?

“Um. I dunno,” he says. “I think I like to prep loads but out of respect to someone who’s proper method I wouldn’t say I’m fully method, no. I think there’s a sort of mythical understanding of what it is to be method, that you are that person and therefore that character all the time.

“I think I’ve learned from people to do whatever you need to do on a very pragmatic level to keep one foot on it. So if you’ve got an accent, my accent is better if I do it all the time than if I don’t. It’s a little bit embarrassing for the first week or two but I just do it all the time from when I get in the car in the morning to when I get out at the end of the day, so in that sense it’s a bit method. I just like to prepare.

“It moves and changes as life moves and changes and where your loyalties lie in terms of time and place. I’ll do as much as I can. I just like to prepare loads and that preparation is particular to each project and how each project works.

“So I wouldn’t say I was a method actor but there are elements of what is considered method that I like to do, just to keep me ready for the scene. It’s just about feeling on a personal level, match fit to do the job.”

The End has had a long gestation period and in the meantime MacKay has been busy working on three films last year. These are The Mission from the BAFTA award winning writer director Paul Wright, described as ‘a punk exploration of the psyche’, Rose of Nevada, a time-travel drama starring George MacKay and Callum Turner, directed by Mark Jenkin and & Sons, starring Bill Nighy, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton along with MacKay.

“I had a really lovely year last year,” he says. “I was in Scotland with Paul Wright, who I did For Those in Peril with, 11 years ago now.” MacKay won best a actor/actress BAFTA Scotland award for this role.

George MacKay, who stars in Josh Oppenheimer's The End, an apocalyptic musical film. With thanks to the Dakota Hotel, Glasgow. | John Devlin

“That was genuinely life-changing, how he works, again a bit like working with Eddie [Marsan] and the way certain projects stay with you creatively and personally, and I feel very lucky to consider Paul a very dear friend since. So we’re now doing his next film which is called Mission [also starring Daisy McEwen] and I won’t say too much about the plot, but it was a real pleasure to do that in Glasgow last year. I love being back in Scotland.

“And there’s a film called Rose of Nevada which is Mark Jenkin who is a wonderful Cornish director and again it was a very different process, very particular to how Mark works and just a joy to be part of.

“And after that I did a film with an Argentinian director called Pablo Trapero called & Sons in which Bill Nighy is the lead, and we just finished that very recently. So that’s in the can and hopefully will be coming out in the next year or two, and then after that we’ll see.”

In the meantime, he’s heading back to the family in London, still wrestling with the dilemma of the best mode of transport, given that he’s promoting a film about climate change.

“Do I take a plane to get there fast and benefit my career and the film and it getting out there, or is that going to be a bad thing for my kids in 20 years from now? But also, if I take a plane back I’ll get back for bed time, but actually should I take the train?

“So you’re constantly measuring those things all the time and I think everyone does that, and in a very extreme petri dish, that’s what The End is all about.”

Following its Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, The End is released in UK & Ireland cinemas on 28th March