Imagine being a an actor in theater school without an agent or any professional credits to your name. You then find yourself cast not only in the lead role of the big screen adaptation of a major musical, but one set for release under the banner of one of the world’s most famous movie studios. Set studio even releases a trailer garnering millions of views and significant social media excitement. And then, COVID hits. You may be able to ascertain the rest of our tale from there.
The musical in question, “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” has been a West End hit since the stage version debuted in 2017. But the concept was originally sold to producers as a film and said production company, Warp Films, wasn’t interested in waiting to max out global theatrical receipts (one reason it’s taken so long for “Wicked” to hit the screen). So, in 2019 Jonathan Butterell began production on his directorial debut casting unknown Max Harwood in the title role.
Harwood plays a character based on the real-life Jamie Campbell, a 16-year-old Sheffield student whose passion for being a drag queen was chronicled in a popular documentary special in the UK. In the film, Jamie decides to attend his prom in drag, much to the chagrin of his school’s faculty. But, his friends, and most importantly, his mother (Sarah Lancashire), all support his passion. Along the way he meets a legendary queen who gives him some necessary tips (Richard E. Grant) and confronts his homophobic father who has affectively abandoned him (Ralph Ineson).
Financed by New Regency and Film Four, 20th Century Studios was originally set to release “Jamie” in October 2020. The pandemic pushed that to a potential late awards season qualifying release in February, 2021. And then “Jamie” disappeared from the release schedule. In the interim, New Regency and Film Four took the film to Amazon Studios to guarantee a release during a worldwide fluctuating theatrical environment. There are pros and cons to the move, but Harwood is looking at the bright side.
“I didn’t know for a long time what was going to happen with the film. And now it has such an amazing destination and an amazing release date, I’m absolutely thrilled,” Harwood says. “And it’s now going to go out into over 250 countries globally on Amazon. And young people, queer people who maybe not be out to their parents are going to be able to sit with a laptop in their bedroom with their earphones on and escape for two hours. And that is the safe space that I wanted us to have done and created for this film.”
Importantly, Harwood adds, “Similarly, because it feels like a film that a queer person could sit and watch with their mom or their dad, it can be a tool for lots of people to start having those quite difficult conversations as a teenager I definitely have had.”
During a conversation last month, the talented Harwood discusses his long audition process, his favorite numbers and how he focused on the real Jamie Campbell instead of the stage version.
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The Playlist: You were still in theater school when you landed the role. What was the audition process like?
Max Harwood: Yes. So, I was in school. I did not have an agent. My friend Lydia, I went to college with her, and she basically forced me, encouraged me to put myself forward for this role, and was like, “You’ll be great.” And I was like, “No. I’m not a movie star. Absolutely not. They’ll be looking for someone whose a name,” and all of this sort of stuff you tell yourself. And then I did seven rounds of auditioning because obviously, I sing, I dance, I act, I have to do heels, I have to do drag. So, the process for auditioning for this movie has been very different to other ones I’ve auditioned for. Because I have to do a lot more to sort of gauge whether I could do everything that was required of the role. After doing about seven rounds of that, the director sat me in a room after I’d read with all of the boys that they were looking at for Dean. And he looked across the table after we did another read together and was like, “How would you feel if I offered you the role?” And offered me it directly in the room. I was like, “I’m unsure what you’ve just said.” I was completely mind blown by that situation. It was just crazy.
Did you know, after the fourth or the fifth one that it was down to just a couple of actors vying for the role? Did you have any idea where you were in the process?
Do you know what? No, I didn’t because I never saw any of the other boys. I’d never bumped into them. Apart from my first audition, where there were a few of us in a dance hall together. It was all individual meetings. But I knew that they were still seeing other people and you just never know because a casting team they’re dating other people, right? They’re seeing other people. And you know that they’re keeping their cards close to their chest. And yeah, I was shocked, but I think, to be honest with you, by the time I was reading with all of the Deans…I had a friend who had been in for the casting director before and she’s like, “You’re going to read with all the boys, they’re not going to read anyone else with all the boys. I think we’ve got the role.” And I was like, “No, don’t say it, don’t say it.” But turns out she was right.
In theater school you’d done all sorts of projects, but had you performed in drag before? Did you have any drag experience?
Not really. Not as an adult. When I was a kid, I used to dress up with mine and my sister’s dressing up box with a packet wig putting my mom’s skirt around my neck to create a dress and stuff like that. But I never did drag. I’ve always been a complete fan of it, but no, I’d never done it. So, that was another thing that I was super, super excited to do with this film because I don’t have the makeup skills to create a drag [persona]. And that was an amazing process to sit and have someone put me in drag for the first time, being such a fan of it.
And yet you exude so much confidence not only when your character is in drag, but in the film overall. Where did you get that from? Or were you secretly nervous on the inside the whole time or?
Yeah, I was like a duck on water. My legs were literally like this the whole time [shakes his legs nervously up and down]. But to be honest with you, I think maybe that calmness on screen comes across from such a nurturing creative team. I was absolutely held throughout the whole process from the moment I got the job right through to the end. Not only by Jonathan, our amazing fierce leader, but our producers, they were on the ground, producers of this film at Warp Films and Film4, They were. Cat Marshall, our associate producer was. Everything was in check. Everyone was making sure my mental health was in check. My physical health was in check. I had a job to do that was quite big for 12 weeks and 12 hour days. And I was completely looked after. I had an amazing acting coach, Alison Rashley, and a vocal coach, Anne-Marie Speed, and an accent coach, McKayla Keenan. And I felt so supported and actually being on a set and having that many hands-on you felt really different to my experience in drama school and of the theater world. It felt like a stark difference because I felt like for a long time at drama school, I didn’t feel like I had the support that I did when I was on set. So, it was a nice change to feel like I was creating something with everyone. And it wasn’t just me that was out there on my own doing it and doing it for me. So that’s probably why that confidence comes across on screen because so many people were there to create those shots you see. So many people are involved in it. It’s not just my inner anxiety.
I was talking to Richard earlier and he told me that he purposely did not go see the musical once he was offered the role as he didn’t want to be influenced by whoever was portraying it on stage. What was your relationship to the stage production?
Yeah, I’m a huge musical theater fan. So, I’d seen the show a year before I was in the process of auditioning for it. And I loved it and I didn’t return to see the show.
Did you try to put what you’d seen out of your mind?
No, I honestly didn’t do that. But what I did is I just use Jamie Campbell, the Inspiration, as my anchor point. And I used that documentary and I was really thorough in my observation of him. I got to meet him and I got to have some really personal, sensitive conversations that were super complex about him and his life and his experience and I wanted to completely draw on that. And we were working with the original creatives who made the musical. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t going to be hitting what they wanted to be hit creatively. I also was allowed and was openly told by Jonathan that he didn’t want me to do anything anyone else had done and that he wanted me to pull myself into it and give myself over to the character and do my own prep. And I spent some time in Sheffield, where I’m not from, and I spent a week there working on my accent, meeting my accent coach, walking around the town center, and just living and breathing in that world. Film is very different from being on stage for many reasons. But specifically in film, you have to really, really feel rooted in “real” at all times. Even in the musical numbers.
You have so many numbers in the film. Was there one that you thought was most daunting before you did production?
Yeah, “Work Of Art,” I was terrified for because that is the moment Jamie, although admittedly trips up and tells his classmates that he’s doing a drag show, I had to feel the power of a drag queen without all the armor. In that moment when he says to Dean, “I am a drag queen.” I had to feel like that in that power, in that room without all of the makeup. I had to get into that mood. And then also production-wise for that number, the black and white section with the choreography we shot twice. It wasn’t an inverted flip, we shot it on a black soundstage and in a white soundstage. And in black costumes and in white costumes, on two separate days. We had marks, we had specific sets were recreated exactly the same. And we were frame-matching. So I had to frame-match, do choreography, belt my heart out, stay in character and in the moment. And it was just so, so difficult to do and achieve. But watching it back, it’s one of the moments in the film that I go, “Oh my God, like, yes.” I’m so glad we sweated for hours to do it because I think the hard work we all put in to create Jonnie’s vision that he really wanted for that.
So is that your favorite number in the movie?
I really love all the numbers. My favorite number of that fabulousness really is “And I Don’t Even Know It.” I really just got to be a pop star for each segment. Especially in that nightclub scene, full of 500 queer people, all eyes on you, all cheering you on, it’s your 16th birthday and you’re a pop star. And I was living the dream, nervous as I was. I was like, “Oh, I’ve just got to really enjoy it.” And I did really enjoy it. And again, it looks so beautiful, it’s my favorite number to watch back because I just remembered having so much fun and going through those different looks as well. They were all so different from Jamie sat in the classroom daydreaming. It was so cinematically pleasing to be able to create something like that. But on an emotional level, my favorite song is, the scene in the kitchen at the end with Sarah Lancashire, because again, from an acting perspective, that was probably the biggest moment in the whole process that I poured my heart onto the kitchen table. And poured so much of myself in that in the sense that I’ve definitely been in a place that I’ve pushed away people that love me, out of my own fear of being, “Am I O.K.? Do wish I was normal?” All of those. So I really just poured myself into Sarah and she poured herself back into me. And it was a real lesson in just being with a human and sort of just living in and experiencing through song, especially training in musical theater, I think you often get people are like “Oh, music is”… Those moments in these things can be a bit maybe cheesy, but it felt like the right time to sing. And I hope that comes across that it feels like a conversation between us because the vocal was live and it was intimate and we were at the kitchen and it was such a joy to film with Sarah.
This is your big break, your first big production. You shot it in 2019, you were told it was coming out in the fall of 2020. And then COVID hit and you have now waited over a year for it. Granted there were more important things going on in the world, but from just a personal level, how hard has it been for you to just sit on your hands while it was in limbo?
I knew it was going to be tough. And I found it tough. Looking back now this year has obviously been tough for everyone. There’s been so much going on like you say, but I am grateful for the time to reflect and to have moved on to other projects, and to be working on myself creatively as a human before this happens. Because I’m in a much better position now creatively than I was just after doing my first job than I am now after doing my third job. Now I can go and promote this film with more information and more knowledge about film and feel more confident before my public profile increases, which is going to be quite intense. So I’m grateful in retrospect for the time to reflect. But no, it was hard. It was really hard. I can’t lie. And I wanted the film to be out as much as the fans of the show wanted the film to be out. Social media can be really difficult to navigate when you have people messaging you all the time and tweeting you being like, “When’s it coming out?” And often than not you don’t know, I didn’t know for a long time what was going to happen with the film. And now it has such an amazing destination and an amazing release date, I’m absolutely thrilled. And it’s now going to go out into over 250 countries globally on Amazon. And young people, queer people who maybe not be out to their parents are going to be able to sit with a laptop in their bedroom with their earphones on and escape for two hours. And that is the safe space that I wanted us to have done and created for this film.
So true.
Similarly, because it feels like a film that a queer person could sit and watch with their mom or their dad, it can be a tool for lots of people to start having those quite difficult conversations as a teenager I definitely have had.
“Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” is available on Amazon Prime Video worldwide on Sept. 17