New Netflix thriller I Came By is soon to hit the streaming platform, introducing a dark, new side to the often-kindly Hugh Bonneville, as well as a stellar ensemble cast featuring George MacKay, Percelle Ascott and Kelly Macdonald.
A timely thriller set in London, I Came By, from Bafta-winning director and co-writer Babak Anvari, sees two rebellious graffiti writers, Toby and Jay (MacKay and Ascott), who target the homes of London’s wealthy elite with their work, come into the orbit of retired High Court judge Sir Hector Blake (Bonneville).
All is not quite as it first appears though with the well-liked and well-connected Sir Hector, and when Jay discovers a dark secret about him, it starts a shocking chain of events endangering himself and those closest to him.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk ahead of the film’s release, Mackay and Ascott were both enthusiastic in their involvement with the film.
MacKay revealed: ‘I was really lucky, Babak approached me, sent the script and we just had a conversation to begin with. He told me that he had had this idea since film school, and Kit [Fraser], our DOP [director of photography], had been a part of the idea film school as well, and the fact that he wanted to make a kind of Hitchcock thriller in London.
‘I just loved speaking with Babak – and I loved his first film, Under the Shadows. When I read the script, I just thought it was absolutely brilliant, like the way it twists and turns, and the kind of social messaging within it that doesn’t bang you over the head either. It felt like it was such a such a full piece of work, and the character of Toby was just a wild wee firecracker of a role. So yeah, hands down I was there!’
Ascott, known best for The Innocents and Tin Star, went through an audition process for his part, and admitted that he ‘didn’t think too much of it at first’ when he submitted a self-tape, before auditioning with Anvari and doing a chemistry take with co-star MacKay.
‘As the audition process was going along, I just grew more and more attached to the piece. I think as an actor, you know quite quickly if you really like something – and when you read the script – [and] it was just so exciting. The character that I’m playing, Jay, there’s just so many things that he goes through in terms of conflict and the stakes and the pressures and stuff. That’s so exciting and challenging for me as an actor, so I knew I really wanted to be a part of it.
‘Once I started to work with George and Babak and the rest of the team, and Kelly and Hugh, everything just clicked and I guess I knew I was a part of something really special from early on. I’m chuffed and grateful to be just to be a part of the process and be a part of this film – I’ve watched it and I really like it.’
As graffiti writers Toby and Jay, MacKay and Ascott play best friends who were raised together – Jay is also close to Toby’s mum Lizzie (played by Kelly Macdonald). They’ve always seen eye to eye on things, until a priority shift in Jay’s life causes cracks to appear in their friendship.
The two actors had never met before playing close friends, with MacKay joking that ‘it’s been a bromance ever since the last audition’.
Discussing their process in building a believable friendship ahead of shooting, Ascott explained: ‘We exchanged details quite quickly and just began talking about the characters over Zoom. Then I think it was also just through us learning how to do the graffiti writing – we spent a lot of time just kind of hanging out and talking. We would just find new things every time we would meet up and talk, and I think we’re just very on the same page in the way that we work. So it was quite easy, really! On the days of filming, as well, we both would get really sort of lost in the world and the characters and that made us create in this world a lot easier.’
‘Yeah, it’s just time spent really from the research that we had to do,’ MacKay added. ‘And then the conversations we’ve had about character beforehand, they all sort of embed themselves in the time that you spend together, and it’s snowballed into the kind of friendship and working relationship that we’ve got now.’
The duo also got stuck into the world of graffiti, learning plenty about its culture and detail, with Ascott able to pull in help from a friend in the small amount of time they had available before the cameras started rolling.
‘We had a bit of a crash course. We didn’t have loads of prep time – I think it was probably about two to three weeks before we were we were due to start filming – but I had a friend of mine called Barney and he’s been a part of the world and part of that subculture, and I messaged him and he came on board. I was really grateful to have a guy that I’ve known for years to be a part of the process and he just took us under his wing and we went and met other graffiti writers around London and asked loads of questions.
‘Every different graffiti writer had a different experience and they had a different reason for why they were doing it. And just in their techniques, there was so much stuff that we were learning – like, in the way that someone does something, they could be from a different part of London, or they started writing in a different sort of time period – whether or not you started writing in the ’90s, compared to say, the early 2000s, or the early ’10s. It’s all just different experiences, and all of that was useful information for us.
Despite good-humoured denials from MacKay, he added: ‘We went as far as creating our own tags basically, and giving it a good go – I mean, I tried… I think George’s one is really good, by the way!’
MacKay is perhaps best known to fans as the lead in Sam Mendes’ heartbreaking World War I film 1917, but has also appeared in Munich: The Edge of War, True History of the Kelly Gang and Private Peaceful – all period roles.
It seems more unusual to see him in a modern context, as well as playing quite a forceful character, which he agrees was part of his attraction to the project.
‘It’s one of the reasons, I think – mainly it was the script itself, and to work with Babak. Whatever the project, you’re just one of the cogs in the big wheel of that particular machine. And I really felt strongly about the script and how much I loved it. But then, of course, there’s an element of a hunger to play different characters in general, and not so much the outside perception of how people might see that necessarily, but just in terms of Toby was such a great pair of shoes to jump into, and such a wonderful character to explore. That was definitely a big consideration.
‘I always want to try and play as many different types of person in as many different types of contexts as I can, be that the historical or the medium of the piece as well. So yeah, it totally felt… healthily different.’
As far as advice comes from the actors ahead of preparing viewers to watch I Came By, which employs a few jump-scares, MacKay and Ascott happily agree on their warning: ‘Expect the unexpected!’
I Came By will is in select UK cinemas now and on Netflix from August 31.
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