THE DANISH GIRL

November 15, 2024

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Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

Clara Rugaard tells Hollywood Authentic how she no longer wants to ‘fit in’ and about the music that has run through her career from her first role.

The corridors of Ealing Studios are echoing with the sound of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ being sung as actor Clara Rugaard recalls her first role as a kid in Copenhagen. She can still remember the tongue-twisting lyrics she belted out as a 10-year-old on the national theatre stage, a game changing moment when she realised what her true vocation was. ‘It was the first time that I’d been given a platform to do what I innately felt like I was good at,’ she laughs. ‘At the time, I was already singing loads, and wanted to be, you know, a pop star! My dad saw in the newspaper that they were looking for kids to come and audition for the lead children’s role in Mary Poppins at the New Theatre in Copenhagen. It was one of those things where I queued up with hundreds of children, and it was all very overwhelming, but really exciting. There was loads of waiting around that day. But the moment they invite you onto the stage, and you’re standing there, and you’re singing the song, and you’re playing with all these other kids in a safe space where it’s encouraged, was something I had never experienced. I remember having that sense of belonging and being like, “I need to be doing this. This is for me.” I didn’t really stop to breathe. I felt the need to do it all, and keep going. It felt so good.’

Rugaard has been chasing the feeling ever since, across theatre, TV and film – before moving with her Danish dad and Irish mum to London as a teen, when her father’s work required a relocation. In her native country she had voiced the lead character in Disney’s Moana in the Danish version of the blockbuster. ‘Your imagination and your creativity is so potent when you’re that age,’ she says of being a child actor. ‘We don’t run around with as many defence mechanisms as we do the more we grow up. When you’re a child, you just take it all in. You’re just feeling it all.’ Then, at the age of 16, she found herself in a new city and life, trying to fit in. ‘Because my mum is Irish, I was like, “It’ll be a piece of cake. I’ll just rock up, have a scone, and I’ll feel right at home,” she laughs as she remembers the move. ‘But you’re quite often reminded that you’re other, or that you’re different. I guess I used to see that as being a bad thing. When I first came to London, I remember I had a teacher at drama school who said that I needed to get rid of my accent, otherwise I’d never work. I then started to feel like I needed to change or fit in in order to be successful or have a career. Which is funny because the older I’m getting, the more aware I am of how brilliant it is, bringing something that’s unique and different and having a different perception of life.’ 

clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere

I remember having that sense of belonging and being like, ‘I need to be doing this. This is for me.’ I didn’t really stop to breathe. I felt the need to do it all, and keep going. It felt so good

Rugaard now celebrates her European background. ‘I want to lean into that, I’m super-proud of that now. I definitely feel Denmark is my home, and I do still spend quite a lot of time there. My brothers and grandmother are out there… loads of my family. My parents are in Belgium, but we all congregate and meet in Denmark. However, I’ve been in London for 10 years now, so this city obviously has a very special place in my heart as well. I’ve got my group of friends here and I’ve got a life here.’

The key to making the transition and feeling safe in a new country was surrounding herself with ‘good eggs’. ‘My parents really were my good eggs. They provided a really great safety blanket for me. Even though I was exposed to this big, scary world through my work, they protected me, and kept me grounded, and made sure I never got too excited about myself,’ she nods. She played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet TV reimagining Still Star-Crossed in 2017 and then starred in Max Minghella’s Teen Spirit as a singing teen the following year. Throughout, music was her constant companion – as she played an aspiring pop star on screen she was also composing her own songs. And it’s something she still does now with an EP out soon. ‘It’s all just an outlet for expression. But I have found a lot of comfort in being able to rely on writing and creating my own things from home. Sometimes, as an actor, you feel like you don’t really have the platform unless you’re on set, and you’ve booked a job. And, as we know, actors have quite a bit of downtime. Music is so tangible. It’s within my control, and it’s always there for the taking. So I really love having the musical side of it alongside acting.’

Since moving to the UK, Rugaard has worked in a wide range of genres and countries; playing opposite Hilary Swank in sci-fi I Am Mother in 2019 (‘I can’t really believe that I was in a bunker for that many months with Hilary Swank. She’s incredibly empowering to be around, and to watch, and to learn from’) starring in the Mazey Day episode of Black Mirror, and associate producing as well as acting in period drama Love Gets a Room. That experience has given her a taste for more producing roles: ‘It’s another channel to create – finding things, and then making them, and putting them together. I’d definitely love to explore that more.’

clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere
clara rugaard, verona’s romeo & juliet, desperate journey, hollywood authentic x npeal, cashmere

Her upcoming slate is varied; Desperate Journey – a WW2 thriller based on the true story of Freddie Knoller who fled Vienna under Nazi occupation via the world of Parisian burlesque clubs. Rugaard plays a cabaret performer he meets along the way. ‘She’s an empowered woman, very confident. I haven’t played anything like that before. For that reason, it was brilliant and super challenging.’ Then she’ll be essaying Juliet Capulet again and using her pipes in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet, a pop musical with songs by Grammy winner Evan Bogart retelling Shakespeare’s tale. Rupert Everett and Rebel Wilson play her Capulet parents with Jamie Ward as Romeo. ‘She’s more of a modern Juliet, she’s got quite a lot of moxie. I’m very honoured to take on a role like that, and to play something as iconic as Juliet again. We filmed in Verona, Palma and this tiny, little Italian village called Salsomaggiore, where we all lived in a hotel, pretty much the entire crew, in the middle of nowhere. We got some good bonding time in there, that’s for sure!’ She’s also filming murder mystery The Crow Girl for Paramount+ alongside Dougray Scott – and is attached to play Mary Shelley in period drama Mary’s Monster, which looks at the inspiration for and creation of Frankenstein. ‘I’ve been quite lucky to have dipped into different genres and different characters. It feels very explorative for me. I love diving into very different characters’ shoes, and learn from their experience.’

The projects she’s now looking for are those that leave an indelible emotional mark, like the films that moved her as a child. ‘The movies I’ve always loved are the ones that leave you gut-punched. That’s ultimately what I look for when I go and watch a film. I want to be punched in the stomach, and feel something so deeply. I remember watching West Side Story when I was about 10 and it completely shattered me. I think it was the first time that I started to understand this grand concept and idea of love and devastating heartbreak. I couldn’t believe how sad it was. I still talk about it now because I remember that moment so well.’ She smiles as she considers the kid who loved Maria and Tony, who grew to a young actor playing Shakespeare’s doomed lover in Still Star-Crossed and is now headlining that classic role in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet. That 10-year-old standing on the national theatre stage would no doubt approve. ‘It does feel like a full-circle moment to be playing Juliet again, and also with music once again.’ 

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Clara Rugaard stars in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet and Desperate Journey, both set for release in 2025
Clara wears the Hollywood Authentic × N.Peal cashmere collection

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THE PLAYER

November 15, 2024

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Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

Slave Play alumnus James Cusati-Moyer tells Hollywood Authentic about the art of ‘holding on tightly, letting go lightly’ and the seminal nature of a Rodgers & Hammerstein score.

When Hollywood Authentic meets one of the leads of hit controversial West End show, Slave Play, in his dressing room at the Noël Coward in the heart of theatreland, he’s near to tears thinking about the imminent end of the production’s run. It’s hardly surprising – the 35-year-old has had a long journey with the show. After playwright Jeremy O. Harris wrote the part of Dustin with him in mind, he originated the role off-Broadway in 2018 then on-Broadway in 2019 before Covid, returned to it after shutdown and was nominated for a Tony before transferring to London in July 2024. A challenging, polarising play that explores the intersection between race and sexuality via couples therapy, James has been wrestling with the emotional and physical demands of essaying the character of gay actor Dustin for six years. After 13 weeks of living a London life, he’s  preparing to fly back to his adopted New York and finally let go of Dustin.

‘I think any stage actor will say this – when you finish the completion of a play, it feels like a death in the family. It feels like someone died. There’s an emptying out, internally,’ he says. ‘This one is even more significant because this is probably the last time I’ll do this play. When I close it’s also letting go of something that’s been in my DNA for six years; I think it’ll be a similar death. But there’s something beautiful in that. And the play will live on, and be done around the world by many other beautiful, fantastic actors and directors and theatres and spaces. That relationship with the audience is what I’ll miss the most, because I’ve never felt so connected – as if I was breathing the same oxygen as them – as I have on this play.’

Certainly the play asked audiences into an uncomfortable conversation in terms of subject matter, and to reflect on their own relationship with race during the performance – not least via the mirrored set. The production also provided ‘blackout performances’ during its runs on Broadway and the West End, creating an exclusive space for Black-identifying audiences. During the potent two-hour show James is stripped to his underwear, physically grappled and emotionally flayed – quite the endurance when undertaken for eight shows a week. He smiles wryly when asked how he does it. 

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I wouldn’t want to do anything in my day that robs the audience of any bit of energy from my performance. It’s really about conserving the energy and the stamina . And that’s by sleeping, eating well, and exercise – and then saving it all for [the stage]

‘Well, to quote Elaine Stritch via Ethel Merman, you have to live like a fucking nun! The rigour and demand of the play is sometimes so intense that there’s not much life outside of it. But it’s a happy sacrifice. I wouldn’t want to do anything in my day that robs the audience of any bit of energy from my performance. It’s really about conserving the energy and the stamina. And that’s by sleeping, eating well, and exercise – and then saving it all for [the stage]. Then right after curtain, it’s straight home. It’s probably the most difficult job I’ve had in my life.’

The Pennsylvania native’s life is something he doesn’t take for granted. Growing up in working class Allentown in a Syrian/Italian blue-collar family, he reckoned with death at an early age; the literal scar of which can be seen on his chest and in his approach to life. ‘I had open-heart surgery when I was 14 years old. They found four holes in my heart. They said if this would have gone on undiscovered or unnoticed, that I wouldn’t have made it past puberty. Being that close to death, that close to not being actually supposed to be alive, that second chance that I got – that’s what stays with me.’

A kid who grew up singing along to the Rodgers & Hammerstein records his grandma loved and played (The King And I was a favourite and he sometimes still plays the music before going on stage), James can’t recall a time when he wanted to do anything other than act. ‘I think it was just one of the first thoughts I had as a child. My grandmother had the VHSs. I would watch. I just knew I had to memorise it all and perform it all in the living room. I knew that this was going to be my profession and my life.’ His mom’s   was across the street from a community theatre and the budding thespian started hanging out and performing as a youngster – grasping at opportunity with both hands. ‘When I wasn’t in school, that was where I was. I wasn’t playing in the streets with the kids. I wasn’t doing any sports. I wasn’t getting into trouble. I was in the back of the theatre. I went to an arts high school that was formed right when I was a freshman. That saved my life.  I moved to New York. I went to college, then went to Yale School of Drama for grad school.’ If that sounds like an effortless trajectory – the theatre kid who transitioned to Yale, Broadway and on to TV and film – it wasn’t, he says.

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‘I had two figures in my life – my mother and my grandmother – who kept saying, “yes”. And I’m really grateful for them. But I’m also grateful for the people in my life who told me “no”, and there were many of those in my family. Many teachers that didn’t encourage me to continue. That contrast flooded into my experience. Whenever those things happen, it just gives you room to spread your wings and fly. It shows you what you don’t want, and it shows you what you do want. I’m just always grateful for both. I got kicked out of school, I got dropped by agents… it’s all informing me. Everything is a lesson and a gift.’

It was while at Yale that he met Slave Play writer Harris and after Cusati-Moyer debuted on Broadway in Six Degrees Of Separation, the duo worked together on bringing Slave Play to stages. At the same time he also juggled TV and film work, in 2022 starring in both Netflix hit Inventing Anna and DC blockbuster Black Adam. Last year he appeared in Maestro and this year, Tyler Perry’s Sistas. ‘Those opportunities were very different from anything I’ve ever done in my career, since I got out of drama school. I never thought that I would be on the set of a superhero film! It’s what you dream of as a kid. You’ve got to remain open to the jobs that come. My acting teacher used to say it specifically about the craft of acting, but I think it applies to the spiritual practice of the industry: “Hold on tightly, let go lightly.” When you have that job, hold on, but also let go. Have some fun. Enjoy it. It’s play.’

Now that he’s finished with Slave Play and is flying back to NY with ‘British biscuits and tea’ in his bag, James has more world-building to create. Firstly, his immediate surroundings. ‘Listen, like any true New Yorker, I’ve got to find an apartment when I’m back,’ he laughs. ‘That’s almost as difficult a job as this one. So that’s actually the first task.’ Then he needs to find the next project to pour himself into. ‘I have so many dreams and things that I want to do. If I could orchestrate my life and the next job that comes in, I’d say, “Oh, I want to do this hit TV. I want to do this hit movie. I want to go to the Venice Film Festival next year. I have a list of filmmakers I want to work with.” But sometimes you’ve just got to flow where it’s warm. I just want to keep on working. That’s the goal of it all.’

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Work is, he says, important to him transactionally as well as artistically. ‘I don’t come from money. I grew up very, very poor. So the ability to be able to pay my bills, pay for my food, pay my rent, and do what I love – that’s happiness. The rest of any glitz and glamour that comes along with this profession sometimes? Fantastic. But if I can keep doing this and pay my bills, I’ll be good.’

His grandmother passed away in the last couple of years but must be very proud that the little boy who stomped around the living room to The King And I is still marching to the beat of his own drum. ‘What a gift she gave me,’ he smiles. ‘And now she’s gone. But she’s not gone. She’s here, and she’s on the stage with me.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘This play has shifted my DNA – I’m forever changed because of it. I’m stronger. I’m wiser. I’m more naïve. At the same time, I have more humility… You know that innocence of a child in a playground where the world is a wonder to them and it’s scary? I think that’s the place that any good work or any play or any good acting performance rests in. It’s that fine line between fear of the unknown and yet simultaneous ecstasy of discovering everything all at once. If I can maintain that feeling that I’ve achieved in this play, with any other job, then I’ll be really happy.’ 

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
James wears the Hollywood Authentic × N.Peal cashmere collection

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ADRIA ARJONA

June 7, 2024

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adria arjona, hit man, andor, true detective, hollywood authentic, cover, greg williams

Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

When I arrive at Adria Arjona’s Hollywood Hills home, she’s prepping for her goddaughter’s birthday party in her pyjamas. She landed in Los Angeles the night before, and decided to undertake some DIY on her first owned home. ‘Get ready for my outfits, Greg,’ she laughs as she offers me some birthday party chocolate-covered strawberries. ‘There’s no Versace, no Armani, no Saint Laurent. It’s Carhartt and dirty T-shirts!’

The Spanish-style house isn’t just a place to rest her head, it’s a physical representation of the actor’s success – an ambition fulfilled. ‘I think that you get to define what the Hollywood dream is for yourself, and I believe in mine. I am very much living my dream – just being able to do what I love, to tell stories for a living, to be an artist, and to get paid for it.’

Arjona has lived at her house for six years and revamped the property from a place she describes as initially looking ‘like a weird porn video was filmed in the 80s here’. Her roof recently leaked and rather than get contractors out, she climbed up to her eaves herself to fix it. Today, she needs to patch up another rogue spot and has invited me along to help with the home improvements. It’s a change from our usual set-up; ‘I love that every time that you’ve shot me, it’s always been really glamorous and elegant… I’m always in a really nice dress and a full face of makeup when I see you. But there is a different side of me that I don’t think a lot of people know, which is: I’m a little more of a tomboy, and I am a fixer. It’s really empowering to know that I can fix something, and I don’t need anybody else to come and do it. I find beauty in things that are kind of broken. I think that kind of relates to my job as well. I find broken characters really beautiful, but I don’t try to fix them.’

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Had I not been an actor, maybe I would have been a contractor. I just like the idea of having an empty canvas – an idea in your head – and then gathering a group of people and bringing a vision to life

In her latest role as Madison, an abused wife who hires Glen Powell’s contract killer to off her hubby in Richard Linklater’s comedy, Hit Man, Arjona certainly plays a character struggling to repair herself. It doesn’t help that Powell’s character is a police informant and not a murderer – or that sparks fly between the duo. ‘The movie is really sexy, and Madison is really comfortable with her own sexuality, and kind of uses it to her own advantage,’ Arjona nods. ‘Had I not been an actor, maybe I would have been a contractor. I just like the idea of having an empty canvas – an idea in your head – and then gathering a group of people and bringing a vision to life. It’s very similar to filmmaking, in a way.’

Rocking chunky boots that her character wears in Star Wars series Andor and a look she terms ‘contractor chic’, Arjona climbs on a cooler box, onto her barbeque, along a precarious wall and jumps onto the roof, inviting me to follow. We make our way across the sloping expanse to the leaking tiles – it reminds me of the rooftop scene in Once Upon A Time In…Hollywood. Arjona is already checking tiles to see if they’re watertight, the city sprawling below us and the hills rising behind. 

adria arjona, hit man, andor, true detective, hollywood authentic, greg williams
adria arjona, hit man, andor, true detective, hollywood authentic, greg williams

Having trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, Arjona started her acting career on the East Coast, juggling waitressing and working kids’ birthday parties (‘I got fired when they realised that I wasn’t really that good at face painting!’) in between auditions. The discipline of the Strasberg school is something she feels helped build resilience. ‘It almost felt like therapy, in a way. I went there to discover a lot about myself, and heal a lot about myself, and learn about the craft.’

Her big break came with a role on season two of True Detective, which meant a move to LA in 2015. ‘I first moved here to an apartment in West Hollywood, and I always saw the hills as this big dream of mine. I was like, “One day I will live there.” The fact that I’m already living here and I’m 31, it’s kind of epic for me. I don’t take it lightly, and I don’t take it for granted. That’s why I take care of it.’

Self-taught via YouTube tutorials, Arjona has tiled her own bathroom and incorporated friends’ work in the detail (a friend’s ceramicist boyfriend contributed features), plastered her living room walls and fixed her air-conditioning unit. ‘I’m getting my hands a little bit dirtier than in filmmaking. It’s making things – when I was little, I loved arts and crafting. I think as I’ve gotten older, and as I own my own house, I come home from four months of being away and I see it completely different. I’m like, “Ooh, now I want to do this with it.”’

The daughter of musician Ricardo Arjona and Leslie, a beauty queen, Adria was born in Puerto Rico and brought up in Mexico City until she was 12 – a place she considers a big part of her heritage (‘You can hear it when I speak Spanish, right? There’s a twang. I have a little bit of a Mexican accent’). They moved to Miami when the family felt unsafe due to her father’s growing fame, but Arjona ‘ran away from that city quick’, north to New York. ‘I was 17 when I moved to New York. I got a modelling job, I think it was a cleaning commercial, that never came out. But it paid me so good, and it really allowed me to move to New York, and kind of run away, and not really ask for permission.’

She has just completed work on Andor season two, returning as intergalactic mechanic Bix Caleen, and on Los Frikis, the true story of Cuban teens infecting themselves with HIV to live in a government treatment facility. ‘It’s probably one of the most special films I’ve ever, and probably will ever, be a part of,’ she says as she kneels over the leaking roof and begins sealing the tiles with a sticky, black sealant. Working with six young non-professional Cuban actors in the Dominican Republic, the actor saw the world differently having viewed it through their eyes. ‘You know, they had never seen a full chicken before. They had never chewed gum before. We went to a supermarket, and one of them walked out and just started crying. I asked him what was wrong. And he said, “Now I can’t unsee it.” He had never seen a full supermarket. We were in the chocolate aisle, and he goes, “Why are there so many chocolates?” It was really humbling to see life, and live, through them.’

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With the roof sorted, we climb back down to the ground to head off to Home Depot for supplies in the actor’s no-nonsense Toyota pickup. Rather than a sports car or vintage runaround, this is Arjona’s ‘dream car’ and she also has the truck bed camper so she can camp out in the back. ‘I got it this year, and it gives you so much power on the road. A pickup is so cool. I learned how to drive in Mexico City. I feel like if you can drive in Mexico City, you can drive just about anywhere in the world.’

As she pilots the pickup down the ribboning canyon road to the city grid where the Hollywood sign comes into view, she recalls how she landed the role of Madison in Hit Man – a potentially game-changing gig given the rave reviews for the film out of the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered last year. Writer-director Richard Linklaker was sold on her as his femme fatale with a twist, but skipped a traditional chemistry read with his star and co-writer, Glen Powell. Instead he simply sent his potential co-stars out for a drink.

‘We went to a restaurant, and it was supposed to just be an hour meeting. We talked about the character and the story for maybe 10 minutes out of the five hours we were there,’ she laughs. ‘We weren’t the most responsible. We just got to know each other. We were both doing Dry January, and that also lasted 10 minutes! We both looked at each other, and I was like, “I kind of like you.” He was like, “I kind of like you, too. Do you want a shot?” We just started drinking mezcal… I just felt so comfortable and so safe. We talked about our lives. We talked about relationships… We sent a picture to Rick of us together after five hours, quite tipsy, and we were like, “We just left the meeting.” I think after that, we just knew that he was going to be in my life forever, and that I was going to be in his forever. Whether he wants it or not, I think Glen’s kind of stuck with me now!’

We stop off for construction supplies, Arjona zooming down the aisles of Home Depot, filling her trolley and squealing with excitement as we pass the power drills. We head to a friend’s nearby art gallery where the walls are in need of some love. ‘It’s this beautiful technique – to put it on the walls,’ Arjona enthuses about plastering, unloading her equipment from her truck’s cargo bed. ‘It’s kind of alive, it gives a zen vibe, and it’s minimalist and beautiful. But it’s pretty hard to do… The reason I go there is because I can fuck up her walls, and not mine!’

As the daughter of a beauty queen, this sort of downtime activity wasn’t necessarily Arjona’s family’s dream for her. ‘I think my whole family, grandmother included, really wanted me to be Miss Puerto Rico one day, and they had this big dream of me going to Miss Universe. I’m quite shy in front of the camera, I have to hide behind something – whether it’s an outfit; whether it’s a hair and makeup look; whether it’s a character. I need to feel like I’m hiding behind something. It’s a little too vulnerable to just be pretty, or just to be myself, I think. I get too self-conscious. I enjoy the fact that I’m saying words that aren’t mine, and wearing an outfit that doesn’t belong to me, and walking in someone else’s shoes. Red carpets, for me, are probably the scariest thing in the world.’

She gets stuck into mixing the plaster in a bucket, her hands covered, her boots splattered. ‘As a kid, my parents thought I was deaf. They took me to all of these doctors to find out if I had an actual hearing problem. And what they found out was that I was just so in my head, and I would create all these worlds in my head. I just really lived in my imagination. I wasn’t deaf; I was just ignoring the shit out of everybody!’

adria arjona, hit man, andor, true detective, hollywood authentic, greg williams

But that rich interior life led to an aptitude for acting. ‘There weren’t that many opportunities for Latin American actresses, even when I started. I see this younger generation, and I see more new faces, more Latin talent. I think we have a lot of work to do, but it’s really exciting that this new generation won’t have it as hard as my generation did. I didn’t have many people to look up to, to say, “I want that career.” It was definitely a hard start, because I saw myself as something, and no one else seemed to have the same vision that I did. They just saw me as this tough, Latin woman who was destined to be a cop, or the tough roles, in movies. And I wasn’t really interested in that. I wanted to play complex women, and there kind of was no space for that when I first started. I had to veer off to other things, and play in different genres in order for me to get those roles like in Good Omens. Or The Belko Experiment. Or Irma Vep. I think genre kind of saved my career, and saved me as an actress. It allowed me to have fun, and be weird, and to play different characters.’

Now she dreams of playing real-life character Lolita Lebrón, a Puerto Rican nationalist who was jailed in 1954 for attacking the US Capitol, and Arjona is in the process of developing her story for the screen. ‘She did a lot for our island, and fought for our people. She’s someone who I admire a lot, and I would love to play her.’

With the wall plastered, we head back home to the birthday party and a house full of relatives. Arjona’s mother is delighted to see her daughter after she’s spent time away working, describing her as ‘the most selfless, loving, kind, hard-working, tenacious, smart, bright, amazing human being I know.’ She kisses her and adds, ‘made in Puerto Rico!’

‘And this is what we call the Puerto Rican flag!’ laughs Arjona, slapping her backside. Both women repeat the movement in sync and giggle. ‘The Puerto Rican flag!’

Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Adria Arjona stars in the Netflix movie Hit Man, out 7 June

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AIMEE LOU WOOD

October 13, 2022

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Aimee Lou Wood has just stepped inside her house having touched down in the UK from Toronto (and before that, Colorado and Venice), but she’s energetic and lively, just as you would expect from seeing her on screen. She’s currently in film-festival mode, promoting new project Living, and this evening she will head off for a BAFTA event. ‘I thought I would just decide that time zones aren’t real… but it didn’t quite work out that way!’ she laughs.

It’s an exciting time for the 28-year-old. Living is her first lead film role, starring alongside Bill Nighy in an adaptation of the much-loved Japanese 1952 film Ikiru, which was co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story is kept largely the same, but with the setting seamlessly transposed to post-war London. Nighy is a pen-pushing civil servant working in the town planning department of London’s County Hall, whose rather humdrum existence is upended when he is dealt a terminal cancer diagnosis and given less than a year to live. Keeping this news largely under his (bowler) hat, he searches for meaning and is ultimately inspired to do something worthwhile in his final days via an unexpected friendship with his vibrant young co-worker, Margaret Harris (Wood).

Wood shines as Harris, balancing humour and naivety with quiet ambition, and joy for the small things in life (such as her character’s first ice-cream sundae at Fortnum & Mason). Her wide-eyed pathos is genuinely affecting, and she has natural chemistry with Nighy, for whom she has nothing but praise.

‘Bill is just amazing,’ she enthuses. ‘I’ve loved him forever, so it was a bit of a moment when we went for lunch – me, him and Oliver Hermanus, the director – and I was like, “be cool, be cool!” I did have a bit of a freak out, internally, but he would never have known, thank God!’ The admiration, it seems, is rooted in her respect for his skill: she admits that pivotal scenes with Nighy didn’t require her to act ‘whatsoever’. ‘There’s a scene we have in the pub together and when I left that day I could not stop crying because I’d just witnessed something so special,’ she says. ‘It’s the best acting I’ve ever seen up close.’

Living is Wood’s first major film role, and her next big-screen outing is in the upcoming Seize Them!, starring British comedy heavyweights Nick Frost, Paul Kaye and Jessica Hynes.

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Before being catapulted to fame in her BAFTA-winning role as the guileless Aimee Gibbs on Netflix megahit Sex Education, Wood dabbled in theatre while studying at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London). She returned to the stage in 2020 in a critically acclaimed version of Uncle Vanya in the West End. The Stockport native says that she was captivated by movies and shows as a youngster and recalls a theatre production of Beauty and the Beast that utterly entranced her. ‘I think I saw it about four times,’ she says, ‘but what was great was that I grew up watching everything. My mum would show me all the John Hughes movies and all the ’80s stuff. I always wanted to be Ferris Bueller! My dad showed me all the Oscar winners like Doctor Zhivago. So I had this quite nice breadth [of movies], and then obviously I started exploring my own stuff.’

Drama school was an eye-opener. ‘RADA was quite classical training and most of my peers got into acting through loving the theatre… but actually, looking back on it, it really was film for me, because I didn’t go to the theatre like other people. Some people at drama school grew up in London and would go to the Royal Court regularly from like the age of 11. When I went it was normally to see a pantomime.’

To begin with, she says, she wanted to be a writer. ‘I always had a really vivid imagination and I wrote plays and stories all the time,’ she says. But acting took over: ‘Drama helped me so much because it was where I could really express myself. It was also such a protective shield for me. Like it made school so much easier. Because I had, you know… I could be funny… it was like a comfort blanket for me.’ And it is liberating, she says: ‘Sometimes I feel more like myself when I’m acting, like there’s things I can’t express, usually, that I can through characters and from different people’s stories.’

‘I love Aimee,’ Wood says of her namesake, Aimee Gibbs in Sex Education, who has been a fan-favourite from when the series aired in 2019,due largely to the actor’s impeccable comic timing and the character’s eccentric sincerity. ‘I love how she’s so her own person and so in her own world and says things that are ridiculous with such conviction.’ Aimee’s ‘total space cadet’ character entered more complex and darker territory in season two when she became the victim of a sexual assault. The fallout has been sensitively portrayed over the course of two series.

‘I’m glad they took so much time with it and that it spanned over two seasons,’ Wood says of that plot narrative. ‘It is something that will always be with Aimee. It changed her. It’s not the kind of thing that just “goes away” and they depicted that honestly and delicately. With Sex Education, you can always guarantee that they’re gonna go deeper and deeper into a character, and Aimee was perfect for this storyline because she’s such an everywoman. She is someone who has such faith in people. It’s that sad thing where someone who is so optimistic begins to question the world. It was tectonic for her.’

Aimee Wood seems plenty optimistic herself, though, if a little tired. Warm, witty and chipper – despite the lack of sleep – she heads off for an evening at BAFTA, all smiles.

Living is released in the UK on 4 November; Gemma Billington is a writer for Brummell magazine

SIMONE ASHLEY

April 9, 2022

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‘I like making breakfast; whether it’s a smoothie or just scrambled eggs, it’s the first thing I think about, to be honest, in the morning,’ announces Simone Ashley. But her signature dish is curry. ‘I’m South Indian, so I’m Tamil, and the food… I mean my mum, she cooks the most amazing food.’ Today, in honour of Mum, Simone is making us a vegan curry. It’s vegan ‘because it’s just easier to do’, though she was vegan for a while, but started to eat meat again on the set of Sex Education, the Netflix series that turbo-charged her career. 

Today’s recipe is, says Ashley, nothing special, just a go-to from a book. First up is the rice: ‘The trick is getting your ratios right. Ratio of rice to water and just low heat. You don’t want it to burn at the bottom, you don’t want it to overcook. Just take your time with it.’

Then she takes command of the kitchen, asking for a vegetable peeler – ‘This is a weak peeler!’ – and adds coconut oil, garam masala and black mustard seeds to butternut squash, not to mention the ready-peeled garlic she’s brought with her, as if she always travels with ingredients to hand. ‘I love cooking,’ she says. ‘I don’t really get to do it much with traveling around all the time and being on set, so it’s nice and a bit therapeutic to use my brain in a different way.’

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Simone Ashley, now 27, says she grew up on Disney classics. ‘We always had The Jungle Book playing or Snow White… We went to Disneyland all the time.’ She knew the words to the whole of the remake of The Parent Trap – ‘Me and my brother used to recite that film in the car whenever we had long journeys’ – but admits that she thought the Lindsay Lohan character was played by real twins. 

Then in adolescence it’s fair to say she developed very non-Disney tastes: one favourite film was Boogie Nights, and another, Kill Bill. ‘I loved Uma Thurman in Kill Bill… Everything about that film, the colours, the cinematography, the music, everything, and just how driven this character was.’ Tarantino’s world was, however, a far cry from her own, growing up in Surrey with her parents, both academics, who were first-generation immigrants from India. She did the normal teenage things like waitressing and getting fired from a hairdressers – ‘I messed someone’s highlights up and I washed them off in the wrong way’ – and claims that unlike her Sex Education character, she was not ever part of the cool gang at school.

‘I failed at everything in school. It was just my attention that was bad,’ she says. And she also failed to learn Tamil or Hindi, which her mother encouraged her to do. In the end, Mum got her playing French video games to try and get her to pick up the language, reasoning that as she’d been named Simone, French might be the answer. It wasn’t. ‘I was awful – at maths, all of that stuff. Just had no interest. And my brother would force me and sit me down, bless him, and get me to revise, get me to study. He tried so hard and I just had zero interest in it. I was very stubborn in that sense. If I didn’t like it, then I just wouldn’t do it.’

That stubborn streak paid off, though, when she found acting. She says now that she was just determined to make it work. Shortly after her first job as ‘a background artist’ in Straight Outta Compton, she did more TV work in the UK and then landed the role of the bubble-gum-bubble-blowing Olivia in Sex Education.

During lockdown she moved to LA to try and jump-start things stateside. ‘I do love LA,’ she says. ‘I have more fun here, when I’m out here, and I eat better; I think it’s the sun. It just makes me feel a bit more energised and proactive.’ She spent her days walking a secret hiking trail through Griffith Park to admire the view of Los Angeles spread out below while eating sandwiches. And then occasionally she’d hit the road. ‘I used to drive a little Mustang when I was living out here, and I loved it. I’d always have Fleetwood Mac blasting and I’d just take off.’ The music was inherited from her dad, she says: ‘I grew up listening to that kind of music. The Doors, Rolling Stones, Fleetwood.’

Ironically, the next job required Ashley  to relocate back to the UK for Bridgerton, the hit period drama, famous for being colour-consciously cast. Ashley is front and centre of Season 2, so front and centre that when she looks out of her hotel window on Sunset today, what stares back at her is an enormous billboard: ‘When I wake up and I’m getting hair and makeup done or I’m having breakfast or a coffee, I’m literally looking outside at mine and Johnny [Bailey]’s and Charithra [Chandran]’s faces!’

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She’s been overwhelmed by the response to the series: ‘We’ve seen such really positive feedback from people seeing people that look like me and Charithra on this show,’ she says. And she admits that the role has changed her. ‘I used to think, “Oh, I want to just be seen as an actress”, but I now realise that in this line of work you are representing and you do have a voice. I think a part of me was quite scared of owning the fact that, yeah, I am representing a minority. And I think it would be quite naive of me to think I’m just an actress, because, to think that is to think that the problem’s been solved and that we are in an industry and in a world where it’s completely normalised, and we’re far from it. Hopefully, in 20 years’ time it won’t be an issue, but we’re not there yet.’

She confesses she hasn’t talked about this before because ‘there is something quite scary about owning that position’. But then she smiles. ‘But I can have so much fun with this and I don’t need to be afraid. And it’s not about just me. It’s about sharing space with so many other amazing South Indian, South Asian actors.’

It sounds like she’s had a revelation. ‘Whatever industry you’re in, whatever you do, we all have a voice, we all have the power to speak,’ she says. ‘And I think that’s something I’ve never addressed in my life until now, when I’m dipping my toes a bit further in, I guess. Yeah it’s a bit scary, but it feels limitless when it’s positive, like you can just keep going downhill, like on a bike, speeding forward. It’s like when you’re on a swing, that stomach feeling. There’s nothing to stop you.’ And we’ll eat to that.  

Peter Howarth is the former editor-in-chief of Arena, British Esquire and Man About Town

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