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When I was asked to have a chat with brilliant English actor Joe Dempsie, I felt excited because we are huge fans of GOT at Lewis. Nervous of getting star struck, but grateful for the opportunity to speak with such talent. First impressions… as soon as the camera went on, his demeanour made me feel like we had known each other for years. Friendly, chatty and above all very down to earth. We spoke about Joe’s background, discovered out common love for Toni Collette since Murials Wedding, his more memorable role so far and his latest project “Pieces of Her” now streaming on Netflix.
Best known for playing Chris Miles in the British teen drama Skins, Blacksmith Gendry or Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm’s End in Game of Thrones (HBO/Sky Atlantic), Higgy in Shane Meadows’ multi-award-winning anthology This is England, and Harry Clarke in Fox Network’s international espionage thriller Deep State opposite Mark Strong to name a few.
Growing up as a sporty, shy kid, acting was the last thing on Joe’s mind. As he said, ‘being an actor or a performer of any description was not something that anyone in my family would have pointed at me and said “Oh, he should try that.”’
As Joe explained, ‘having a younger sister with cerebral palsy, kept my parents busy, but they were always incredibly supportive of me experiencing new things. In turn that gave me a fair amount of freedom because they were always keen to keep an eye and an ear out for various things that I might be into.’ Then, when Joe was 13 years old, his mum overheard him tell her friend he was really enjoying drama at school, and she had the brilliant idea of getting Joe to audition for the Central Junior Television Workshop.
The workshop was a drama club for kids and teenagers in Nottingham, that met twice a week. Over the years it gained a reputation for being a place that produced good, natural youngsters for parts on-screen in television programs and films. However, competition was tough as there were only a handful of places available every year, so it all depended on how many boys and how many girls moved up into the older age group, but he happily applied for an audition.
Auditions took place during the Easter holidays and that meant Joe couldn’t do the normal things that friends were doing like playing football, going to the cinema, or bowling. After almost becoming overwhelmed with nerves, Joe fondly remembers his mum saying: ‘look, there’s a door, just see what’s on the other side. And if you don’t like it, you never have to go back.’ The two hours that followed ignited something within him and changed Joe’s life forever.
JD – I didn’t get in the first year I auditioned but they were interested enough to ask me to come back, and I got in the following year. From that point on I ended up having to make a choice between playing football and attending the workshop because it was tough. The remarkable thing about the workshop was that you had to audition to get in but once you were in, it was fully subsidized and because it was free to go you had kids from all over the area attending. All they expected from you in return, was a real commitment to it. They treated you like adults – if we’re working on a play, you come and you have your lines learned when you show up for rehearsals. Football and acting couldn’t live side by side anymore so I gave up football and was fully into acting.
As I got older acting became something that I thought I wanted to see if I could do professionally. They were always incredibly encouraging at the workshop, that was part of the ethos, but they were also honest and would never allow you to kid yourself. So, if you expressed an interest in either going to drama school, getting an agent or wanting to be an actor; if they thought that you had what it took, they would tell you, and they would encourage you and they would provide you opportunities to go for it. But if they really didn’t think it was the right thing for you, they would tell you that as well. I was fortunate enough to be told a few times that they thought I could do it and they encouraged me to give it a go. So, it wasn’t as if I was a five-year- old kid thinking I want to be an actor, I want to go to Hollywood, but it was something that as I got older and as I became an adult it was just the thing that I enjoyed the most and so I thought, ‘why not?’.
SD – You will be starring in the Netflix thriller PIECES OF HER alongside Toni Colette, Jessica Barden, and Bella Heathcote. Based on the 2018 book by bestselling crime author Karin Slaughter. Tell us a bit about it.
JD – The project landed in my inbox, and it was for me to audition for it. I’d heard of Karen Slaughter before and, although I had not read any of her books, I knew how immensely popular she was. Then when I saw who was already involved – Tony was already attached Bella Heathcoat and Jessica Barden – it was an easy decision.
I had been a huge fan of Tony’s for years and worked with Jess Barden previously on a one-off drama over here for Channel 4 called ‘Ellen’ which was one of my favourite projects to work on. So, my mate was already involved, a couple of actors that I really love and admire already were too so then it came down to reading the script. They only sent me the first couple of episodes, and I whizzed through them, which is always a great sign! Again, I’m extremely fortunate that I get to read a lot of scripts as an actor, but some of them can be quite heavy, you know? There’ll be some scripts that take me like three flipping days to read! And I feel like If I can’t get through the script in less than a few hours, I don’t think I should really do this job. But this one, I whizzed through it, sent the audition tape and was offered the job. So, at that point, I was like, right, better go and buy the book and read the whole thing, because not all the episodes of the show were available. And, similarly, with that, it was a real page-turner. So, if our show can be anywhere near as compelling and has as much drive as the novel does, we will be in a really good spot.
In many ways, it’s a classic thriller, Tony and Bella play mother and daughter, Laura and Andy Oliver, respectively, and they bear witness to a horrific act of violence. And that act of violence sets into action a chain of events that then propels the entire story. Andy realizes very quickly that everything her mother has told her about her own past and, therefore Andy’s past, has been thrown into doubt and her world is turned upside down. So, she becomes a woman on a mission to get to the truth of her family’s past and of who she is. However, in true thriller style, time is of the essence because while she’s running sort of headlong towards her past, her past is also catching up with her.
SD – What attracted you to the Nick character?
JD – Nick is the kind of character I’ve never really played before. He’s a young man who finds himself at Stanford University, searching for purpose as a lot of young men are. And he finds that purpose in student activism, campaigning on a lot of the progressive issues that were around in the 80s; whether that’s an anti-apartheid campaign, gay rights, anti-capitalism etc. I think it’s a reaction to the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the anti-capitalist movements that were really, really forming. And what he finds, I think, as someone who maybe struggled in his youth to make connections, he realizes that, because of his passionate for these causes, people listened to him, he feels seen for the first time, he feels people are impressed by him. Through this activism, again, he befriends Andrew Queller who happens to be a member of an incredibly wealthy family called Quiller’s, a pharmaceuticals giant. Therefore, he’s an ideal candidate for Nick to try and ingratiate himself with to get incredibly close to the kind of power and exploitative capitalist establishment organization that he wants to break down.
As this happens, Nick’s narcissism starts to formulate due to this attention, this adoration, this authority. And whether he’s aware of it or not, all of that is fed by his passion for these causes and fighting the good fight. As the story progresses it gets increasingly hard for Nick to know where to draw the line, to know when enough is enough and for him – at a certain point the ends justify any means. He loses sight of what is right and what is wrong and like a lot of narcissists, that confidence and that authority is a mask for a deep well of insecurity. But when that starts to be exposed, that’s something that he can’t contemplate, and that is when you get the sense that Nick is someone who’s prepared to burn the house down before anyone realizes how truly broken, he is. I like to try and take myself out of my comfort zone, hopefully, that’s something
I’ve managed to portray on screen.
SD – Thank you so much Joe for this wonderful description of Nick’s character. Do you think the audience will love him or hate him?
JD – And again, this is out of my hands. But I hope what they see… this sounds like a real cliche thing to say, but I hope they see him as a human, I hope that they see his flaws, I’m not saying that his flaws in any way justify the kind of things he finds himself capable of. But that they at least try to understand, you know we’re all quite obsessed with the why people do what they do? We all have shit to deal with in our lives, it doesn’t justify doing what you want. But I just hope that the audiences see him as layered as I’ve tried to make him really. The interesting thing is that he doesn’t visually come into the story until about halfway through the series, that’s when I start to portray him on the screen but because the action moves back to the 1980s, as Andy starts to piece these fragments of her past together, the action shifts and we see all this stuff play out. By that point we’ve heard Nick’s name mentioned in the present day but up until then he has this ominous, looming presence over the action. The audience then sees how the character unfolds. They’ve already been told how he ends up, then the story takes them back to the beginning to see how what happened. I hope that that’s what the audience will really enjoy.
SD – You are perhaps best known for portraying the role of Chris Miles in the British teen drama Skins, playing Blacksmith Gendry or Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm’s End in Game of Thrones (HBO/Sky Atlantic) Higgy in director Shane Meadows’ multi-award- winning anthology This is England, and Harry Clarke’ in Fox Network’s international espionage thriller Deep State opposite Mark Strong to name a few. Out of so many great roles that you have performed as an actor, which one was your favourite and why?
JD – Hmm, it’s a particularly good question. And it’s a hard question to answer because, and I’ve said this over the years, I enjoy being a part of this industry and feel so fortunate to be a working actor. The thing is that with every job you play a part and you think, ‘I just can’t get better than that, my experience has peaked, I’m not going to have more fun than that, I’m not going to make more friends than that I’m not going to enjoy the character as much as that….’ and then the next job comes along and at the end of it, the same feeling returns!
But having said that, I will always be the most thankful to Chris in Skins because in any career you need a break, and I feel that if it wasn’t for that role and that show, I wouldn’t be where I am today. There have been greater acting challenges later in my career paths that I found difficult and to this day still don’t know whether I really pulled off or not. But Chris is the one that I think will stick with me.
SD – So, we can next see you in Pieces of Her on Netflix on March 4th. Anything else in the works that you can talk about? any exciting projects?
JD – No, not really. When I came back from Sydney last year after shooting ‘Pieces’, I was firstly a bit tired and secondly it still felt like the industry kind of was waking up, things were happening, but there weren’t loads of jobs out there. I’m in this position in my career, which again is an incredibly fortunate one, where although I am not in the place where I’ve got five scripts on the table in front of me and they all want me to play the part in their show, I don’t have to take work that I don’t connect with.
So, I essentially spend my time reading scripts, if there’s something I really like, I audition for it and I make sure I put the work into the audition track, do myself justice and try and nail the scenes they want me to audition with and I then hope that they like it and offer me the job.
I’m in a privileged position where I can take my time and wait and see what comes up and of course there have been a couple of things that have not gone my way, so sometimes you must play the waiting game and just be patient. It feels now like the industry is getting back to full capacity and there is some great stuff out there. The upshot of it is we are living in this golden age of television, where there’s so much content being made across so many platforms and TV is the best it’s ever been – but the competition for that is fierce, movie stars want to do great TV now.
And with that very down to earth answer my time with Joe was up!
