George MacKay on owning his privilege, challenging masculinity in ‘Femme,’ and the transformative power of a neck tattoo.
Variety Lounge presented by Zurich Film Festival
Variety Lounge presented by Zurich Film Festival
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 watching films as a kid, it was always the stranger characters
00:03 or the outsiders who were the most dynamic.
00:06 They're the things, the characters that affected me
00:08 because they're the sort of most alive.
00:10 They're the most kind of complex.
00:11 And it's just, it feels like there's the most meat
00:13 in terms of acting.
00:14 - George MacKay, welcome to the Variety Lounge
00:24 at the Zurich Film Festival.
00:26 - Thank you very much for having me.
00:27 - We are big fans of Femme here at Variety.
00:30 It's such a kind of powerful and surprising film.
00:33 Can you tell us a bit about kind of Preston as a character
00:37 and what you connected to in him?
00:39 - What I found so fascinating about him
00:41 is he's so full of nuance, he's so complex.
00:43 And yet all of those complexities are entwined with
00:47 or hidden by this very, almost larger than life performance.
00:51 He's kind of become the character
00:53 that he's created for himself
00:54 and therefore now is the character he's created himself,
00:57 but he's not because of the character was created
01:00 to hide something.
01:01 In the theme of masculinity,
01:03 it felt like so much of that was in the conundrum
01:06 that was Preston.
01:07 - I think you're a nice looking lad.
01:09 - I'm a nice guy.
01:12 If you disrespect me, fuck you up.
01:15 - Your co-star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett plays Jules,
01:18 who's a drag queen, which Preston is uncomfortable with.
01:21 Would you say he kind of constructs his own form of drag?
01:24 - Yeah, Preston, for sure.
01:26 I think the film is about drag,
01:27 that kind of maze of sort of layers of identity
01:31 was just so much fun to play and understand.
01:33 - And he has this hyper-masculine look,
01:35 which is not how we're used to seeing you on screen
01:38 with the muscles and the tattoos and the sportswear.
01:42 (both laughing)
01:43 How did those exterior factors help you find the character?
01:46 - They were massive.
01:47 They were absolutely massive because as we said,
01:50 that kind of is the character.
01:51 I mean, it makes him sound hollow,
01:53 which is not fair to the character or Sam and Ping's writing,
01:55 but there is truth to so much of him is his exterior
02:00 and the way he protects himself.
02:01 And so to put that on, to be honest,
02:04 I only really found that after working with Bukky,
02:06 our costume designer, and Marie, our makeup designer,
02:09 and changing my body as well.
02:10 When I spoke to the team
02:11 and was lucky enough to get the role, I was much slimmer.
02:14 I didn't have that body.
02:16 And so the process of sort of trying to put on the weight,
02:18 trying to put on that muscle,
02:20 it does also give you a feeling as well,
02:21 that you can start to understand
02:24 the very simple kind of animal power of like,
02:26 "I'm the strongest in this room.
02:27 You know, I could beat you in a fight."
02:29 And that's a sort of a very simple,
02:32 but clear route into Preston.
02:34 He's not diluted by many things.
02:36 He sort of refuses to be diluted by things.
02:39 And then the tattoos and the costume
02:41 was the next stage of that.
02:42 So firstly, with Bukky, our costume designer,
02:45 we just kind of began a costume play pen
02:48 because he almost creates characters
02:50 within the Preston sort of characters.
02:51 Like today, I'll be sort of 90s laddie Preston.
02:55 Today, I'm gonna be like Fred Perry,
02:57 old school, working class Preston.
02:59 And we sort of tried a sort of mixture
03:01 of all of these outfits.
03:03 And also kind of then went through the scenes and went,
03:05 "Okay, what's he trying to say?"
03:07 Because the whole film is a chess match
03:09 between these two men.
03:10 And then the tattoos,
03:11 it was always specified that he had a kind of neck tattoo.
03:13 That was part of how he was recognizable.
03:16 And it was actually Marie who pushed it further.
03:18 I kind of imagined something maybe quite small just there.
03:21 And then it was her who suggested this collar.
03:23 And I was kind of like, "Okay, we'll try it."
03:25 And then when it was on, it was like,
03:26 "Oh, this feels great.
03:27 This feels, I don't feel like me anymore."
03:29 - Your performance is so closely bonded
03:32 with that of Nathan Stewart-Sharratt,
03:33 who's really extraordinary as Jules as well.
03:36 How did you kind of collaborate and work together?
03:39 - As you say, firstly, Nathan is just astounding in the film
03:42 and such an amazing actor.
03:43 And our way of working together was kind of,
03:45 well, it was a mixture of just open and very pragmatic.
03:47 Like we didn't have a huge amount of time before.
03:50 We had a chemistry read
03:51 that was our last audition together.
03:53 And so we sort of knew the spark
03:55 of what we could kind of get to
03:57 or wanted to kind of keep exploring.
03:59 And then we only really had a week before.
04:01 And I think sort of the brevity of that week
04:03 kind of gave a frankness to like,
04:04 "Right, we've got to get pretty intimate.
04:06 We've got to get pretty violent.
04:07 We've got to really know each other.
04:09 We've got to fall in love with it.
04:10 We've got to do all of these things.
04:12 So it's going to require us to jump in,
04:14 you know, with all of ourselves."
04:16 And that was sort of, I think we really met in that sense.
04:20 That was, you know, that was also led by Nathan
04:22 as well as the lead of our film.
04:24 Kind of that precedent was set of like,
04:26 "Let's not beat around the bush. Let's go for it."
04:28 - It's also a very kind of physically intense bond
04:30 you have on screen.
04:31 And you worked with an intimacy coordinator on the set.
04:35 Was that important to you?
04:37 - It was.
04:38 And Robbie, our intimacy coordinator, was amazing.
04:40 So to have that kind of,
04:42 that person in between to sort of talk everything through
04:45 and also be informative about the nature of the sex
04:49 that we were having as well.
04:50 And kind of making sure that representation
04:52 was fair and correct.
04:53 And then the storytelling within it,
04:54 because every sexual act in the film is integral
04:58 to the story, why it's happening for both characters,
05:01 what the other is trying to perform to the other,
05:03 what it means to the other.
05:05 And so there's definitely a journey.
05:06 It wasn't just like, you know,
05:08 this is the bit when they have sex.
05:09 This is the bit when they kiss.
05:10 This is the bit where this happens.
05:12 It's a complete power play or a falling for each other
05:15 or a destructive thing.
05:17 And it's different for both of them all the time.
05:19 So we spoke about how to articulate that.
05:21 It was just amazing.
05:22 Adding a level of nuance and practicality
05:25 to something that is just also very physical and sensual.
05:29 And that's where things,
05:30 the lines can get blurred without that.
05:32 - I think Femme is also very perceptive
05:34 about how black men like Jules
05:37 are discriminated against in society,
05:39 even within the queer community.
05:41 Did making this story make you more conscious
05:45 of your privilege?
05:45 - I mean, of course, Femme has taught me about privilege
05:48 that I myself has had.
05:50 I've come from a upper middle-class upbringing of London.
05:53 As you meet the world,
05:54 you sort of see how much you've been encased unconsciously
05:57 by your privilege.
05:58 That just the fact that you weren't aware
06:00 that you had privilege speaks massively
06:03 to the amount of privilege you've had.
06:05 And that's why I'm very grateful for the work
06:06 that I get to do.
06:07 And, you know, being part of these different stories
06:09 where you invest in people other than yourself,
06:12 where you're part of the telling of a story
06:13 told from someone who has a different sort of understanding
06:16 or experience of the world,
06:17 you go, "Oh, right, I completely missed that.
06:20 And I'm glad I know that now."
06:21 - Is queer representation on screen important to you?
06:24 - I think it's so important
06:25 that sort of everyone's stories get shared.
06:27 And so often the industry has not reflected
06:31 the breadth of society.
06:33 And it's important that the changes that we're making now,
06:36 the kind of conscious shifting that we're having,
06:39 they're almost not needing to be that question,
06:41 not being defined by the nature of the story
06:43 or the nature of the person telling it.
06:45 So I think if we can make work of true intentions,
06:48 it will stand the test of time,
06:50 whether it's a commercial success or not.
06:52 (upbeat music)
06:55 (upbeat music)
06:58 (upbeat music)
07:00 (upbeat music)
07:03 (upbeat music)
07:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]