– A Modern Family-Infused Approach –
by Andrew Dex | Starburst Magazine | October 18, 2024
Adapted from Matt Haig’s novel of the same name, The Radleys steps away from vampire movie cliché with its dysfunctional, Modern Family-infused approach! When a tragic event rocks their suburban lives, a family of vampires attempting to live like humans are forced to embrace their natural, blood-filled powers. Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers) inhabits vastly contrasting twin brothers Peter and Will Radley, and he is here to tell STARBURST everything you need to know about his journey as an actor within this unpredictable vampire outing! As well as starring in and producing The Radleys, Damian has contributed a Halloween-soaked track titled Suck My Blood!
The Radleys is in select US theaters, Video on Demand, and various streaming services like Amazon Video and AppleTV, and released in the UK cinemas and SkyTV/NOW today.
STARBURST: How did you get involved with The Radleys?
Damian Lewis: Very simple. I made a film with Euros Lyn a couple of years ago, called Dream Horse, and he asked me to do this, and I enjoyed working with him. And I’m a fan of Matt Haig. Euros asked me to play two roles, not just one, and I thought, “Sure”.
STARBURST: The film is adapted from Matt Haig’s novel of the same name. What did you enjoy the most about the book, and why do you think it works so well for a movie?
Damian Lewis: The book is playful. It explores themes of addiction. There are things in the book we couldn’t have in the movie. We wanted to concentrate it down into a film, and really, a family drama. It’s much more about interpersonal relationships between the family and their struggles with addiction, and trying to find happiness. Matt is always so playful, we were able to, I hope, retain the humour from the book, and the playfulness. Where the book becomes big, and you’ve got people flying everywhere and going off into different cities, there were things we had to take out of the book in order to reduce it into a movie that was containable within the length of a movie. I think we’ve done well.
STARBURST: There are a lot of really great vampire movies out there. Did you revisit any of them while preparing for the movie? And why those ones in particular?
Damian Lewis: A couple of the old classics, Nosferatu, I watched again. The Lost Boys, I sort of grew up with, it’s my generation. I love Jim Jarmusch’s movie Only Lovers Left Alive, which is basically about vampires being bored because they’ve seen everything. They’ve been around for so long that nothing entertains them any more. I wanted to watch that, because, you know, what is the classic vampire movie? It’s difficult to know what that is because vampires are used as platforms and metaphors for our own lives, and that’s why I particularly wanted to watch Only Lovers Left Alive and because I love Jim Jarmusch films. It spoke to me because our film is not a classic vampire film; it’s not a gore fest or a fright fest. It’s not camp-like vampire films can be, sort of, wildly over the top. It’s a bit like Modern Family, this dysfunctional, interesting, funny, varied family out in the suburbs who are all sort of miserable and pale, and then you realise why. It’s because, essentially, the parents have put them in the vampire programme because they’re desperately trying to reform, like, they’re in AA and live a normal, sensible life. And of course, everybody is miserable as a result, it’s like being on a horrible diet. So, I just liked the comic premise of that. There’s an event that happens about ten minutes into the movie, and all hell breaks loose, and then the only way it can be fixed is by calling in the naughty vampire twin brother, who is a committed, hedonistic, eternal living bloodsucking vampire. Which means he retains all of his powers. So he comes in, fixes the problem, but then of course, he spreads absolute carnage because slowly, bit by bit, he introduces each of the family members to their darker sides, to their darker selves. Then suddenly, everyone is having a ball, they’re all having the time of their lives, but, at a cost. That’s sort of the delicious thing about vampire movies: the mixed messaging. Essentially saying, “Live a sensible, normal life, and be miserable” or “Fill your boots, and have fun”, but “Do it with caution, because the dark side is never far away.” It’s sort of a dramedy, a drama-comedy about this family, and the vampire aspect of it is almost like, “Oh, and they’re also vampires, by the way!” it tickled me.
STARBURST: Brilliant! You act as twin brothers Peter and Will Radley within the movie, so what was that whole experience like for you, and how do you go about making something like that feel realistic on-screen?
Damian Lewis: Peter is a doctor trying to live a normal life; he moved his family to the suburbs, and then Will is committed, an immortal vampire brother who is an English lecturer at university, so Matt, in the book, has tried to base them on real life. So I suppose what I’m saying is that the differences are subtle. They’re clearly different. One shows up looking like Keith Richards after a big night out, and Peter is sort of an uptight, sort of, slightly overly sensitive man, trying to do the right thing, but he is in a miserable, dull marriage because no one is happy. We tried not to step into cliché or anything that was too archetypally a vampire. We tried to make the differences about attitudes to life, although they clearly look very different, they do behave differently within the film. It’s all within the context of an odd suburban reality, if you like, which was part of the challenge for me, not to just… you know, embrace the temptation of playing a vampire, where it’s like, “Oh great! I can chew the scenery here” Just be this malevolent, blood-sucking, over-the-top, camp presence in the film. Although there are moments when Will is clearly those things, he is also, an English lecturer at university, and that was sort of interesting to me. So, it plays within the reality of the film.
STARBURST: And going on from that, what were Kelly Macdonald (Helen Radley), Harry Baxendale (Rowan Radley) and Bo Bragason (Clara Radley) like to work with, and what did you all want to see from that family dynamic?
Damian Lewis: Well Kelly is an absolute joy, I hadn’t worked with her before. We met previously, and we had done some fancy photo shoots back in the day, such as “Young actors on the rise!” or something like that. Half of us currently residing in the “Where are they now?” file. You always worry when you do those photo shoots, you think “Well, this could be it!” a group of young actors doing really well, let’s put them in Vogue, and you think, “Well, that’s that. That’s the end of it!” So I had met her once before, and she’s an absolute delight, I loved working with her. I shouldn’t have been surprised; she’s so good, and I’m a fan anyway. And then, working with the young and upcoming actors! Who are probably in a photo shoot today, doing something similar. Bo Bragason, Jay Lycurgo, Harry Baxendale, they’re all going to be big stars, they were fantastic. Their energy, enthusiasm, curiosity about acting, craft, and being on film sets, all of which they’re doing now, in their own right. There was that lovely, hungry enthusiasm that comes with being young actors, in something that’s exciting. It was an exciting project for all of us, to be part of. The family dynamic is, the event in the movie which happens to Bo’s character, Clara Radley, and then there’s a very funny scene where the kids sit around with the parents and they say “What’s just happened? I was being attacked in the woods by a nasty boy from school and I ate him! So could you please explain that to me? Because I just started drinking blood from his neck!” and Harry has this fabulous line, where he is like “Sorry, is this a metaphor for something?” So the film is comedically knowing at the same time, about the genre that it’s in. Then, simultaneously, Rowan, the young boy played by Harry, the son, he then starts having this lovely relationship with Jay’s character, Evan Copeleigh. So there’s this lovely coming-of-age love story as well, which is also part of the movie. So the family dynamics are very rich, it’s quite Modern Family. The younger and older generation are coming to terms with their new selves, the seemingly new people that they’re all suddenly living with, they thought they knew, and they don’t really any more. As I say, they just happen to be vampires, that’s the sting of the tale.
STARBURST: Obviously, the parents are hiding the fact that they’re vampires, so as an actor, it must have been quite fun to capture that secretive atmosphere.
Damian Lewis: Yeah, I suppose the other way of looking at it is, what if the family that you live next door to are vampires in real life? They’re all abstaining from something and hiding in plain sight. It’s a bit like that series The Americans, about double agents being sent to America, who assume identities in American suburbs, they’re all working for the Russians. I love that secret, clandestine world, but it blows up in their face. The daughter is vegan; she can’t understand why she is always vomiting. She’s ill! Because what she really wants is just bacon, and pork sausages, steaks. They’re all miserable and pale because they’re denying themselves, they’re denying themselves oxygen. They’re vampires, they need blood, they want it.
STARBURST: The movie is set in Whitby, England, which has links to Dracula. What do you think this particular location brings to a vampire story, and what was it like to work there?
Damian Lewis: For anyone that knows about vampire lore, and the genre will all know exactly why Whitby is important. It’s where Bram Stoker wrote parts of Dracula, the OG of vampire stories. So, for us, it adds a texture, a little sense of an inside joke, that can be shared with the viewer as well. But it’s very evocative, being right out there on that northeast coast. It’s beautiful, so it was great to be there.
STARBURST: You have a great career in music as well, so we have to ask, when did you decide that you wanted to contribute a track to the movie? Through Suck My Blood.
Damian Lewis: I offered a track, and everybody was keen on the idea, so I wrote a track that, in its original form, is very different from what it sounds like now. I gave it to Keefus Ciancia, who is the composer of the score, and he fell in love with it, and just went to town on it, so it’s very much a collaboration between myself and him, and he turned it into this fantastic, high octane, essentially, dance track. I hadn’t written it in time for it to by synced into the movie unfortunately, but it will be there on the soundtrack, it should be just a fun additional part of the soundtrack I hope. It was fun to do.
STARBURST: Can you tell us how the track came together? And, as it was for a movie, then how did the creative process compare to what you normally do as a musician?
Damian Lewis: I sit and write at home, with my guitar or the piano, and I write melody and lyrics, and song structure, and in this case, I called up Keefus. I said “Look, I’ve got this song, I’m not sure if stylistically, it was a bit more bluesy the way I had written it, and I just don’t know stylistically if that would fit with your composition” which I had already heard at that point, “if you want this to sit somewhere on the soundtrack, maybe we could do something together?” He just started working on it, he just started adding sounds, changing the texture of sounds, essentially, turning it into an electronic version of what I’d written on my telecaster, my electric guitar at home, it just transformed into something else, and it was just brilliant. I’ve never had something so radical done before to one of my songs. I feel like I’m learning all of the time in music composition and music production because I’ve come to it quite recently, so it was a really good lesson. A really fun experience of getting together with a producer, and they hear something, and they want to take it in a certain direction, just letting them do it, seeing where the song ends up, it was really fun to watch him work on it.
STARBURST: Finally, why should STARBURST readers watch The Radleys?
I’m guessing the readers really like their vampire and fantasy films, and they will know all of the different kinds of vampire films that exist out there. What I would say about The Radleys is that it is a bit like Modern Family; it’s a group of slight misfits, funny individuals, who find themselves in this dead-end, suburban existence because the family have been brought there by the parents in order to live essentially in the programme, like vampires anonymous, just trying to live a sensible life, and there is an event that turns the whole thing upside down, and it spreads carnage and chaos, especially with the arrival of the wicked twin brother, who is a committed vampire. I think people will get a kick out of the fact that it is a comedic family drama about vampires, and that’s where it sits. I think it’s a brilliant film actually, because it’s not a gore fest, and it’s not a fright fest, I think it’s a brilliant film to go and watch as a family, actually. It’s not too upsetting and scary for mum and dad, but it’s just scary enough for the kids, it’s just got some of those serious themes thrown in, that vampire films have, about addiction and love, lust, and longing. It’s got love stories in there, and it’s funny as well. I’ve made it sound like every movie you’ve ever seen, but it’s got these elements in it, it’s a fun ride. I came out of it thinking “That was really fun!” and my teenage children really enjoyed it as well, so I think that’s what I’m saying, “mum and dad take your kids, you can all go together.”
Read the rest of the original article at Starburst Magazine