Frank Dillane had months to get into character for “Urchin,” with director Harris Dickinson making the choice early for him to play Mike in his directorial debut after a referral from the legendary U.K. casting director Shaheen Baig, but still, it was one thing to prepare to play a young man who found himself out on the streets with few prospects but to beg, borrow and steal what he could to get by and for the actor to put himself out there in London neighborhoods asking for spare change in scenes that could easily be mistaken for reality when Dickinson was filming from a far with a long lens and the general public might not know a film was being made.
“You’ve got to get over yourself pretty quickly,” says Dillane, who was armed with a small radio to pick up any direction and little else. “I think before I got on set I was very aware that there’s no room for embarrassment or feeling anxious about how I’m perceived. It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than me and I think as an actor you have to get over that pretty fucking quick.”
The result is indeed towering, though it is in no small part due to Dillane’s remarkable turn as Mike, the kind of person that would seem hopeless to get his life on track if not for a sly charm that makes him impossible not to try to help in spite of a hard life has clearly led him to favor his worst impulses. As someone that hundreds pass by on a daily basis without taking notice, Dillane makes Mike impossible to turn away from, even when he becomes responsible for a devastating robbery of a good samaritan and is thrust into rehabilitation after spending some time in prison. Dickinson makes an arresting directorial debut in outlining a system set up to provide Mike with a foundation for a productive life with a kindly but clearly overloaded social worker to help pave the way for a modest flat and an entry-level position at a hotel restaurant, but little else as he tries to go on the straight and narrow.
However, while Mike’s newfound freedom can be crushing without any support system to prevent him from falling back into bad habits including a drug addiction, Dillane finds the purely instinctual nature of the role as a playground to show how disarming Mike can be with the quick wit he’s had to hone from being fast on his feet as he befriends Andrea (Megan Northam), whom he meets during an odd job beautifying public parks, and self-defeating when he’s naturally distrustful of others as well as himself. The performance has already earned Dillane a Best Actor Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where the film was a standout in the Un Certain Regard section and “Urchin” is exciting for other reasons than being one of the year’s most invigorating dramas when it marks the launch of the new U.S. distributor 1-2 Special. On the eve of the film’s arrival on American shores, Dillane generously took the time to talk about how he got his arms around such a moving target as Mike, finding the light in a character with such dark circumstances and what his north star for the role was.
I’ve heard Harris say that you came in to audition with a more interesting take than anyone else. What was the key to playing this guy or your earliest instincts on this?
I suppose my early instincts were there was so much potential to Mike. you could play Mike. Anyone can play Mike. There is no Mike. It’s all of us. And the themes that he was dealing were very emotionally taxing – they created a lot of turmoil in me and a lot of reaching for grace and a lot of falling from grace. That struggling for the light is a valiant and angelic struggle, and the harder he struggled and the harder he fell the better.
Just in hearing you talk about it, I think you may have had a handle no one else could’ve had. There’s a scene relatively early that I wanted to single out where Mike goes to apply for a job at a restaurant and when asked by his potential boss why he served time, he tells him in stark terms that frankly I was surprised to hear from such a wily character. Did you know when you could be honest with other characters in this role?
It’s an interesting scene to hone in on and I do remember spending a long time thinking about how he comes clean in that moment. I have friends who struggle with addiction, and I’ve worked with a lot of people who do and when they come clean, if it’s raw and it’s fresh, there is an honesty to it. There is like, “Yeah, I’m clean, I’m done. Fuck that stuff. It’s no good” – a simplicity to it that is not secretive and manipulated. So the times when Mike told the truth, or the times when he was lying, after a while, they became quite easy to navigate because they were dependent on his mental state and what he needed. So in that moment, he was clean and sober and humble, and he needed a job, and lying was not going to get him anywhere. I’m trying to think of any of the times. Did he ever lie?
I’m not entirely sure either, though he definitely could hide things if for no other reason than as self-protection. From what I understand, there was a healthy period between when you were cast and when you went into production to work on the character with Harris. What was that time like?
It was a great pleasure to work with Harris on the character and we did have a lot of time to talk about all the things that Harris wanted to achieve. It’s quite rare that you meet someone like Harris, but quite rare also that you have that shared time together and I knew that this was an important film. It was going to take all of me and I knew that Harris cared as much as I did. It doesn’t happen that often, in my experience, that you can really take the time and Harris is my friend as well, so I would call him at three in the morning or he could call me whenever, sending YouTube videos, pictures, all that stuff. We went into a prison and he spoke to a probation officer and then I spent a lot of time doing my own personal research as well.
When a lot of the issues that Mike deals with are cyclical in nature, I know the schedule of a film shoot doesn’t always lend itself to creating a linear performance. Was it a difficult performance to keep track of?
It was in the beginning. Before we started filming, I found it very difficult. After I got the part, I really sat down with the script. I went to a hotel in Eastbourne, which is this place by the sea for a week, and I went through the script, and I was like, I don’t go to the next scene until I understand this scene, what it could be and what it is. And I remember that being very difficult. It was only when I realized that that was the film — man walks into a room and forgets what room he just came out of. [The film is] the chaos of that, the fact that you couldn’t string it together was in itself the piece, and it was about every moment being new. There’s an interesting thing with heroine that I think about. Your cells are dying and being reborn constantly, so this feeling I always tried to keep with Mike, this [feeling of] always new, and always death and life, all the time. Every moment was everything forever, you know? So there was no past, there was no future. Which is a bit of a junkie mentality, I suppose.
Was it difficult to find the joy or humor that’s very much a part of this that makes it so buoyant when the condition lends itself to a much sadder story?
At times I did find that difficult. Harris would remind me of that constantly, and both Harris and I have quite funny bones. We laugh a lot. But at times the humor was difficult to track because I didn’t see much funny about Mike. Of course, I watch it now and there a lot of things that are funny about him, and he’s a very humorous person. Gallows humor, as well, is also something that people in certain situations lean on because if you’ve not got much, at the end of your own brain there is just a surreal, slapstick joke. It’s like there’s not much else to say off it.
From what I understand, Harris would occasionally ask the actors what they might do on the day of shooting for what characters might do in a specific situation. Were there any choices with Mike you were particularly proud of?
Not to sound too crazy, but by the time we got to filming and we were in it, I had created this person who I could talk to, so if ever I wasn’t sure what to do the next day or what to do in the moment, I would just ask him and he would tell me. It was a bit spooky like that. He was always alive in me and if I didn’t know what to do, Mike would tell me. And if we were not sure which way a scene should go — it could go this way, it could go that way — we always opted for dignity.
“Urchin” opens on October 10th in New York at the IFC Center and Los Angeles at the AMC Burbank 16 and the AMC Century City before expanding on October 17th. A full list of theaters and dates is here.