James Anthony Pearson

After making a splash as Bernard Sumner in Anton Corbijn’s Control, James Anthony Pearson is ready to step into the foreground in New Town Killers, Richard Jobson’s stylishly shot, Edinburgh-set thriller, which sees Pearson shine as Sean, an Everykid forced into an extraordinary game of cat and mouse when he makes a Devil’s agreement with Dougray Scott’s sinister urban gangster. Violent and kinetic, it’s a refreshing change from your average Brit-flick grime. Pearson spoke exclusively to LWLies.

LWLies: Tell us about the audition process.

Pearson: It was up in Glasgow with Richard Jobson. I met him when I was younger. He won’t remember meeting me – it was for one of his earlier films that didn’t go anywhere at all. But it was great. I chatted to him. He was a big Joy Division fan and Control was just getting a big buzz around then. He doesn’t like standing still or sitting formally reading a script. He was straight away up with the camera and physically performing the scenes in the room, which I loved. That’s what it should be about. So that helped and about a week later he phoned to see if I’d go out for a coffee with him. And he offered me the part. I’ve never had that before. I had no doubts about taking it. I never thought I’d be an action hero.

LWLies: You did your own stunts, didn’t you?

Pearson: Yeah it took me a while to get people [the insurers] on my side. Richard was well up for it. The stunts thankfully weren’t until halfway through the filming process. I tried to explain to them, I mean, they wouldn’t even let you climb up a wall and things. I was told specifically you had to run up to the wall and stop. And then tomorrow they’d pay the stunt man however much money to do the climbing bit. I tried to the tell them, ‘I’m a rock climber. I can get up a wall so easy.’ But they have to get through all the red tape that goes with it and Richard was really on my side. Eventually they did listen and I managed to seduce them into letting me try a few of them. I guess the best one was climbing down the big Gothic building.

LWLies: When you’re on the ledge?

Pearson: No, the other one. I really loved doing that. That was the moment when I thought, ‘I really have to do this’.

LWLies: No hairy moments?

Pearson: We went to the top and I think it was six stories and I think it was looking over the edge with two cameras pointing up and the whole crew when they were rolling. You can’t back out from that. There’s so much pressure you just have to go over the edge and do it. It was brilliant.

LWLies: It’s very tense the whole way through. Did you find it difficult keeping that level of suspense or was the physical stuff more tiring?

Pearson: A bit of both. The film is really physical, and it was filmed in four-and-half weeks, which is so short. It’s kind of stupidly short. It felt definitely really intense. We did the whole thing at night as well. So our days would run six o’clock, sometimes seven o’clock in the evening right the way through to six o’clock in the morning. And you get a kind of jet lag and it all catches up on you.

LWLies: But you didn’t have to get to know a new location because you already knew Edinburgh?

Pearson: No, Edinburgh’s really cool. I think Richard has done it brilliant justice too. A lot of the time Scotland gets chosen because it’s pretty for these period pieces. But here it seems like a cool European city and that’s exactly what it is. Glasgow’s also really cool but I better not talk about that

LWLies: You grew up in Manchester, right?

Pearson: All over the place. I went to seven different primary schools. Yorkshire is where I’m originally from, moved to Aberdeen when I was about 10 and moved up there to the countryside.

LWLies: So Control was a Manchester film and now this, which is an Edinburgh-based film. Where else would you like to film?

Pearson: That’s the best thing about this industry. My first job filmed in Australia and that’s kind of the way I managed to break into this screen world. I was at university studying and I got a part that filmed over there for 10 weeks and I gave up university for a year to do that. The series was really successful and was re-commissioned and won a BAFTA. It was a British series for the BBC, Jeopardy. That filmed in Australia for three years. There was one year when I went to Australia and back to do Jeopardy and then went to St Andrews to do a season in rep and then later flew to New Zealand to do Kidnapped. Which was mad. You never know where you’re going to go and that’s the exciting part about it. Control was actually filmed in Nottingham so I didn’t get to see much of Yorkshire. Sorry, Lancashire I should say.

LWLies: So you know Edinburgh as a student, not as a character like Sean, who hasn’t had many opportunities, knows it. There’s a lot of division between students and locals isn’t there?

Pearson: Oh, very much so. Students are a very transient population and a lot of people don’t mix. Because this is filmed at night as well, part of the research process was spending a week in Edinburgh going out at night standing in alleys, just getting a feel for what it was like. One night on one of the estates where we were filming – and when you’re filming it’s such a protected environment as there are so many people there – but Richard took me and Charles [Mnene], who plays Sam, to one of these places one night and it was just really depressing. Not the people, the people are great. It was just depressing with all the boarded up houses and zinc-fronted houses everywhere you looked. Like it was a forgotten part of the world.

LWLies: Were you surprised that people had been living like that so near to where you’d been living quite a privileged life?

Pearson: No, I think you have to be quite naïve to be surprised at that. I probably am a bit naïve, but not that much.

LWLies: What plans do you have next?

Pearson: I’ve been offered quite a few different jobs in the past few months. It’s the first time when I’ve been able to, or have chosen to, be a bit selective about what I want to do. Before my career’s been going from job to job and taking a job when I’ve been offered it. The only power you have as an actor is to say ‘no’ to something. You can’t really generate your work. I’d like to do something really good next, which is a stupid thing to say but it’s true.

LWLies: Are you going to stick to indie Brit-flicks?

Pearson: Absolutely, I’d love to. It’s so hard though. Control was an absolute gem, and this was. But they don’t come up every day. Something that starts as a small project on paper suddenly becomes this amazing thing that you weren’t aware of and I just think it’s really lucky.

LWLies: Hollywood blockbusters?

Pearson: I’d definitely think about it. They money would be really good. That’s one thing the British industry lacks. Take Slumdog Millionaire for example, which has just overtaken the world, I mean they are teaching Americans that you don’t need a massive budget because everything gets diluted. The special thing about British films is that it’s one person’s vision

Like, Richard Jobson made this film because he is a powerhouse of… you know if other people don’t do it for him, then he will just do it himself. Like at the auditions, he just gets the camera and does it. He was out filming everything and making it happen and I used to underestimate how difficult it is to have that, to have an original idea, to bring an original film to fruition like this.

And it was the same with Control. That was special because it was Anton Corbijn’s sole vision. Whereas as soon as the money goes up, the budget goes up you get more and more producers in there to dilute the vision.

LWLies: Do you think of Control as your break?

Pearson: There were a lot of mini breaks. The thing that made people take me a lot more seriously was Control, I think. It had such integrity and was a brilliant film.

LWLies: And you studied Maths at university?

Pearson: I did, yeah, a very creative subject.

LWLies: Do you ever think you would have preferred to stay in academia or was it always acting?

Pearson: Absolutely. I always thought it was one of those things I just presumed that everyone wanted to do. Like at primary school when the teacher would go around asking what we’d like to do and I remember thinking I had such a boring answer because everyone would say this. And nobody did. I just couldn’t believe why no one else wanted to be an actor.

LWLies: How did you prepare for New Town Killers? Did you watch many action films?

Pearson: Richard gave me a viewing list. There was Rope, the Hitchcock film. A lot of the films he gave me referred to the evil element of the film. There was also the German film about two guys who terrorise a family, Funny Games. It’s horrific. All this evil, sick, manipulative kind of thing. Which is what this is. You’ve got people who are just being played with. Not to sound pretentious but it’s kind of like Greek tragedy in a way, when you have no control and you’re just dealt these fates, not because you’re good or bad but because someone’s just dealt them to you and that’s what a lot of those films refer to. Oh God, don’t write any of that, I sound like a wanker.