Congratulations then, on this, this incredible role.
I was really absorbed in the film, I think it's fantastic
and it's such a big kind of English history.
What drew you to playing this iconic kind of detective?
I, I, I I think it's very difficult to be of a certain age in England,
not to put in you that obviously, but
that and not have been affected
by the Krays in any way throughout one's life.
I mean, my grandparents
were from the East End and they knew the Krays.
And so I'd heard legions of stories and and over the over the years
and I'd seen all the film adaptations of it and across the way.
And I certainly didn't think that we needed another one.
And so when it sort of came my way, I wasn't really
so thinking that it needed to be told.
But then when I when I looked at it and the producers
just sort of spoke to me about what they were trying to do with Nipper
I started looking at and researching and reading about them.
When I read the script,
I was actually kind of really fascinated by him and what they've managed to do.
We didn't have the money to recreate 1960s
East End, but that's
just not that kind of budget film.
And so when I zoomed with Ben Mole
who directed the film.
I was really taken with this idea of kind of creating a world in which
this warehouse is
they found in the middle Wales
kind of with all these labyrinthine corridors and alleyways
and these big turbine rooms and stuff were, you know,
Ben's words like the sort of inner workings of his mind.
And I really liked that idea.
And so we sort of ran with that.
And for me. I.
I really sort of
sort of tried to push that idea that that and I think it sort of works.
I hope it works.
And so is that is that
you know that?
He had failed. Nipper had failed.
two or three years before, because nobody would talk up against the Krays.
And so when he when he reluctantly takes the case
the second time,
he he he was like,
Right, we're going to do this, we have to sort of think in a different way.
We have to think we have to we have to really work on on on
getting somebody to talk because that had been an issue.
Nobody. Everybody was terrified
and which is obviously where code of silence comes from.
And the fact that if you grass, if you, you know,
snitches get stitches and you're going to get locked up, if you if you
do it.
So getting
his team into a place where I believed that
he'd got enough on them, that that they were going to go down without them,
without the Krays, then hurting
everybody, I think, was that was the key.
And I was really fascinated by that aspect of it.
And so, you know, I think he's a very modest man.
In his book, he didn't.
He had no desire to write his autobiography.
And he was pushed into it.
And it's a really very deep book because you sort of get a sense of this
how gentle he was.
But he was also a boxer.
The Krays were boxers as we know
it was also from a working class background, and he was from
left school with no qualifications and I think in some.
Version of
I like to think that there was sort of a mutual respect.
from the Krays , because it came from a sort of
similar place that they did,
yeah, it's really interesting you say that because I was going to mention that
it's like that one side, two different sides of one coin.
Yeah, well, like it flipped and you choose,
you choose your journey, don't you?
It's yeah, fate.
Fate plays a massive part in who would come
because, you know,
you literally sometimes would want in your life.
You end up in a fork in the road and you.
So I took many wrong turns when I was a young man.
And you know, and and and
and I often wonder like, Wow, if I hadn't done that, I wanted to work.
You know, he he was he was a very small man.
And at that time,
you couldn't get it's quite interesting, actually, because
I want to say that.
I want to say that to be in the police, you had to be five foot ten,
but to be in the Metropolitan Police, you had to be five foot eight.
Oh, OK. And you?
And he was from Nottingham.
So so he went down
and went to the metropolitan police, but was actually five foot seven.
So it was lying all the way from the beginning, you know,
and and so that I thought
that was really interesting as well, because because right?
He was also sort of dodging and weaving a bit and doing it, doing
everything he could to sort of
build himself up when he came from nothing and he ended up running the joint.
So very, very cool, man.
It's also so wildly successful.
I think I read that there's only a few cases that henever solved.
Yeah.
And even though he wasn't in charge of the operation, you know, he was he was on
a big fundamental piece in the in the
great train robbery. Yes.
Yes. And so,
you know, massively respected within within his.
Within his place in the in the in the
in the constabulary and people look it up to him.
Yeah.
And it's so interesting then that somehow in this film,
he feels like he's up against everyone in the Met, the Krays,
the people who the witnesses, that he's just kind of like this.
It keeps going well for him, doesn't it?
It's funny because I only watched it a couple of nights ago and I'd forgotten
that, you know, there's certain things that don't happen
in the way that he's hoping that they're going to happen.
And he sort of ends up back at square one. And
he's quite a sanguine fella.
It kind of is like, I'm not going to be beaten by this, you know?
And obviously,
there is a dramatic license, but this kind of historic evidence
for all of the little bits and pieces that happened
this this historic evidence for all of it, but we've had to condense it
because it's a film, you know, you're not selling like a ten hour
series.
You're telling a ninety five minute version of the story.
So you have to pick and choose which of the bits to
tell the audience as you're
changing the events along, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's so fascinating that we, like you mentioned before,
there are so many films and like TV series and books
about the Krays and Nipper and why it's kind of like Jack the Ripper.
It always, always put those to kind of like figure heads together
that we're so involved and entrenched in these East End figures .
Why do you think we keep going back to the Krays?
And it's so interesting.
You say it's
we have this sort of generalized idea in our society, and it's not just segments
of the sort of Robin Hood story,
you know, the bad guys doing good, but they were loving to them.
And and, you know, in Australia, Ned Kelly's very similar, you know,
and in the US, where everybody from Al Capone on and then you've got El Chapo
and all of these all of these characters that there they've done some very,
very evil things that become heroic because somehow they bucked the system.
Somehow they've taken on the system and beaten it.
And we love that, don't we?
I mean, I love an underdog story.
So I so and I also grew up with, you know, my family,
from my grandparents, from the extent I grew up in Essex.
But my grandparents, all of them also grandparents from the East End,
and everybody had stories about it because I knew them.
You know, everybody up a certain age, you know, knew them.
I actually I actually went to see my aunt, Joan.
Who was one of my
my nan's best friends,
and I went to see her because I knew that she knew the Krays and and
and I also knew that my nan and granddad knew the Krays.
So I asked, I want to ask him what she remembers.
And I hadn't seen Joan for 25 years or something.
And and it was it was really lovely,
and she talked about being in a nightclub.
It was really fun.
She talks about... This is the first time
I've told the story.
She was in a restaurant
with her husband, Jim,
and he was very successful businessman, total East Ender
But, you know, he'd done very well and done,
and Joan had got a like a fur coat on the.
62 or something.
Yeah, she got a fur coat on it and they'd asked
if she wanted to have the coat put into the cloakrrom at this restaurant
And she said, No, I want to keep it with me
because it was worth quite a lot money, you know?
So they had been draped over the back of the chest
and the Krays had come in and sort of sort of nodded to
them, looked over
and that they had got a big table at the restaurant.
And Joan at one point went up to the loo and at some point
they had, I think I think it was like a dance club or something.
So they got up and danced and when they'd come back the coat had gone.
Oh, and.
And they asked the restaurant for it and and said,
you my coat's gone... they said, we don't know anything about this.
So the next morning,
Uncle Jim had
said, you know, we've got... this needs to be sorted out.
This is not right.
And sure enough, somebody from.
That table had a half inched it,
and. And.
Finally had been returned like a few days later,
but in the back of the in the back of the pink stool
it had Jones name embroidered in
in the back and it had been
very, very carefully picked
because they were obviously going to flog it all.
I just thought that was such a great story
looks like, and it might not have been one of them.
It might be one of the boys, of course.
Of course, it's why would the Krays care, you know?
But I love the idea that everybody's always on the make aren't they?
I was trying to
like.
Get something, it's just like anything
that would would lead to a few quid in your pocket, you know?
Yeah.
Even even the coat on a chair, that's an amazing story.
I know.
And she said I was really upset because
that embroidery was really beautiful to get it done for me.
And she's like 85 now
bucks.
So everybody has a Krays story.
And so this this this this this this heroic idea
of these people and and.
And I mean, I remember.
I think I grew up not really respecting the police
because you always respect the demands and not the
not the authority somehow.
You know, so I think it's quite an interesting idea,
but I think I must have subconsciously been attracted to that.
Somehow the idea that was sort of telling a story,
then telling it from a sort of respectful, decent human interest
was trying to do the right thing.
Yeah, yeah, it works absolutely well.
I'm just sorry.
I'm still like the idea that you should do a sequel about Joan's coat
Krays! Overcoats! and yes, you know.
Yeah,
but there's a little short film there.
Definitely. There
is definitely little short film there, so it's really interesting.
I think more of a question is
playing opposite Ronan [Summers] because he plays the both the Krays.
Doesn't he do an amazing job?
He does. Great job at both of them.
Yeah, they like that scene when you're talking over the table was so good.
It's really interesting because
that's
where you end up taking a bit of dramatic license to tell a story.
You have to, you know, otherwise watch it because it's, you know, it's it's
whenever people ask me this, it's like, Well, that's the one.
Well, it's not interference, right?
I'm also not Nipper either and neither is,
you know, Tom Hardy,
where you are watching a piece of fictional narrative.
You know,
sometimes you have to take liberties
because you've only got 100 minutes to tell the story.
You know, there were there were fewer recordings and
and there was a similarity between the way that were and introduced.
But I really liked
Ronan's differentiation between the two.
It's it's.
And when he
when he became obviously, you have to shoot those things separately.
And it was a sort of an hour makeup
because there were a lot of little physical things that he had
that will make up that was slightly different.
And and there was a vocal register that he sort of placed them in.
That was slightly different, which is right.
And and they became two separate, two very separate currencies.
And then once once Ronan came in as one, he would stay as him.
It would be him for the time that he was on set,
which I really enjoy as an actor.
I really enjoy that commitment and
and I also really love the technical side of filmmaking.
So putting twins on screen, as you can imagine, is quite different
than having twins on screen while you're on sparring with them
is a very difficult thing
technically to sort of pull off.
And so they're the sort of things that I really enjoy just from a geeky,
film loving.
Point of view, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's just my final question, then was about a geeky film living thing.
What I quite enjoyed about this film and what you and Ben do together
is the inventive scenes when he goes into the crime. Yes.
He likes that.
Yeah, I really enjoy that.
It kind of gave it somewhat of a Sherlock feel, but like I quite enjoyed it.
Honestly that was one of my one of the things that I was.
He sold it to me on its it.
You know, we
were principally
in in Wales on this warehouse, but we had a couple of times
where we obviously you got to go to The Blind Beggar
if you were doing it during the crash investigation .
So we shot during the second lockdown and we found this really cool old pub.
And so obviously that's the blind beggar.
But he said, I want to put you in the blind beggar. I want to put you there
sitting watching it and almost
so it's the same preternatural action
ability to sort of place himself in in that in that moment.
And and likewise,
obviously, we go to the flats, but the Krays lived in as well.
But I loved the idea of sort of like if I was there, what would I have seen?
If I was the barmaid,
what would I have seen that day if I was, you know, it's
almost like a matrix thing of like going around and working out.
You know, I used to love.
When I was a student was a drama student, I used to go into pubs
and sort of listen to people's conversations and sort of earwig,
you know, and to do it on the bus.
Alan Bennett used to write down conversations that people were having
in front of him in the bus. I used to do the same thing.
And so, so I hear thank you for like, thank you.
So appreciate that Ben and I looked at different ways of being able to do that.
And and and so when we when we're going from the past
into the present, you're always looking for sort of bridging moments.
Well,
if I turned and looked to camera at this point,
that could flashes back to the present.
And you know, if what about if I walk
and and and I walk from the past into the present?
So how would that look? How would we make that camera work?
You know, things like that.
I mean, it's just stuff that I love.
It's so good. Say well done.
And your performance is really great, and I can't wait for people to see the film.
Thank you, Sarah. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you so much for talking with me today.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.