Taron Egerton channeled a pop god within the Elton John biopic “Rocketman,” successful raves — and a Golden Globe — for his portrayal of how a shy piano prodigy blossomed into a world celebrity.
But in his newest function, as a convicted drug supplier within the new Apple TV+ drama “Black Bird,” he had no outlandish sun shades or feather boas to solid off when capturing wrapped every day. For “Black Bird,” which is predicated on a real story, he needed to solid off one thing darker: the confessions of Larry Hall, a person convicted in connection with one girl’s death who was suspected to have kidnapped, raped and killed many extra.
“As much as it was a great experience creatively, there were days where I went home feeling like, I don’t really want to listen to this stuff anymore,” Egerton, whose character’s job is to elicit these confessions, mentioned in a current video name from his London kitchen.
Egerton, 32, who has lent his soulful tenor voice to characters each flamboyant (John) and furry (the mountain gorilla Johnny within the animated musical “Sing”), may have taken his choose of nearly any musical function after “Rocketman.” And then there are these chiseled beauty and piercing inexperienced eyes, which appear to beg for a cape and spandex.
Instead, he wished his subsequent main on-camera function to be one which confirmed the world he was greater than a song-and-dance man.
“I wanted to do something that felt really different from ‘Rocketman,’” he mentioned. “People tend to think of you as the last thing you did. They don’t want to take that risk on giving an actor a role that they’ve not seen them do a version of before.”
He discovered it within the psychological thriller “Black Bird,” a six-episode mini-series that the writer and screenwriter Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”) tailored from the jail memoir “In With the Devil,” written by James Keene with Hillel Levin.
The collection, which debuts July 8, facilities on Egerton as Jimmy Keene, who is obtainable an opportunity to commute his 10-year jail sentence with only one situation: He should persuade Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) to inform him the place he buried the physique of at the least one lacking lady, and maybe a dozen extra.
“A part like Jimmy — or, indeed, a part like Elton — they are absolutely the roles I want from my career,” Egerton mentioned. “That’s not to say everything I want to do needs to be heavy and dark — I’m definitely drawn to that stuff — but it’s really, really creatively nourishing to have writing like that because it makes you want to bring your absolute best.”
EGERTON WASN’T ALWAYS SO ENTHUSIASTIC about appearing. He was born right into a British working-class household, with a father who ran a bed-and-breakfast in Liverpool and a mom who labored in social providers. They divorced when he was 2, and he moved together with his mom to Wales.
When he was 12, he moved to a distinct a part of Wales, Aberystwyth, which left him feeling desperately lonely. “I lost all my friends I’d had as a child when I moved,” he mentioned. “I was quite cocky and quite confident, but that was to mask the insecurity I was feeling.” He didn’t dabble in appearing till he was 15. “It was as much about trying to be social and make friends as it was an interest in acting,” he mentioned.
The appearing caught. After he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2012, he landed some smaller roles, performing in a stage manufacturing of “The Last of the Haussmans” on the National Theater in London and showing within the British TV dramas “Lewis” and “The Smoke.”
Then got here his large break: The director Matthew Vaughn (“Kick-Ass,” “X-Men: First Class”) solid him because the street-rat-turned-spy Eggsy within the 2014 British action-comedy movie “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” The function made him a colead, alongside Colin Firth, regardless of Egerton’s having by no means been on a movie set.
“He came in and did a perfect audition,” Vaughn mentioned by cellphone. “He was Eggsy. I liked that side of him in the role because Eggsy was also about being around a world you’ve never been in and growing.”
On the heels of the success of the primary “Kingsman” movie, which grossed greater than $414 million worldwide, he landed roles in “Eddie the Eagle,” the animated movie “Sing” and a sequel, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle.”
Then he hit a tough patch, first within the title function in Otto Bathurst’s 2018 “Robin Hood” adaptation, after which because the antagonist of the 2018 biographical crime drama “Billionaire Boys Club.” Both have been critically lampooned box-office flops.
“I ignored my instincts on those two jobs because I was offered quite a lot of money to do them,” he mentioned. “And that’s just fatal. You can’t pick roles that way.”
“But I feel like I should be kinder to myself,” he continued. “I was a 25-year-old kid who was raised by a single mother with very little money. I wanted to make money, not just for me, but for people who are important to me. And as much as I was not pleased with how those two movies turned out, I can see very clearly, in retrospect, why I did them.”
Things circled with “Rocketman,” for which he realized to play the piano and sang lots of his numbers reside.
“He has an incredible singing voice,” mentioned Dexter Fletcher, who directed “Rocketman.” “But he was also an actor who was willing to go to a place where he wasn’t afraid to make a fool of himself. He wasn’t wrapped up in being this supercool, emotionless, good-looking dude.”
Vaughn, who was a producer of “Rocketman,” mentioned he believed the function had helped show that Egerton may “literally play any role.”
“He’s in a rare, rare club,” Vaughn added. “Hugh Jackman is the only other guy who’s genuinely an action star and a musical star.”
It was that versatility that caught the attention of Lehane, who developed, wrote and govt produced “Black Bird,” when he was wanting for a number one man.
“I’d just seen ‘Rocketman,’” he mentioned, “and I was like, ‘My God, the range on this kid.’”
Egerton wanted greater than vary to shoot “Black Bird”; the collection was additionally extremely heavy. Lehane mentioned that crafting a scene in Episode 5 had made him cry — the primary time he had skilled that whereas writing a script. Hauser mentioned he was so affected by his function as Hall that his life started spinning uncontrolled. He finally needed to get sober.
“Being Larry Hall 12 hours a day, you want to go home and eat junk food, drink booze, have an edible,” he mentioned in a current cellphone name. “It was like living in a haunted house.”
But Egerton, whose character serves as a sounding board for Hall’s disturbing revelations, managed to stay largely above it, Hauser and Lehane mentioned, regardless of a taxing six-month shoot in New Orleans.
“It’s a hard thing to do,” mentioned Egerton, who bulked as much as play Keene, a burly former highschool soccer star. “Especially with long days, working nights, it can be hard to switch off. But you find a way.”
Egerton, who additionally earned his first govt producer credit score with “Black Bird,” mentioned he was immensely pleased with the end result, notably his scenes with Ray Liotta (“Goodfellas,” “Field of Dreams”), who performed Keene’s father. Liotta died in May, and the function seems to be Liotta’s final for TV.
“I loved that relationship,” Egerton mentioned of his and Liotta’s characters. “These two complicated, very, very flawed, imperfect men, but with this real love for each other.”
“He had such an edge and such a toughness to him,” he added about Liotta, “but also this incredible capacity to be very open and quite childlike and vulnerable.”
IN THE THREE YEARS SINCE THE RELEASE OF “ROCKETMAN,” Egerton has completed loads of voice work and likewise returned to the stage. In March, he made his West End debut in a revival of the Mike Bartlett comedy “Cock” reverse the “Bridgerton” star Jonathan Bailey.
On opening evening, nevertheless, he collapsed onstage on the first efficiency and, after a profitable however transient return, examined optimistic for Covid-19. Ultimately, he left the production, citing what producers at the time said have been “personal reasons.”
“Toward the end of last year, a close family member was diagnosed with cancer, and I dropped out of a film to come home and be with that person,” he defined. “I thought that, with the play, I was ready to go back to work, but I wasn’t. I had to leave, and it was sad, and absolutely one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make.”
Things look like again on monitor, and looking out forward, he has no scarcity of appearing work. He has a starring flip because the Tetris Company founder Henk Rogers within the Apple TV+ movie “Tetris,” which is scheduled for later this yr, and a return to the “Kingsman” franchise.
He additionally hopes to succeed Jackman as the subsequent Wolverine and has met with Marvel Studio executives, together with the corporate’s president, Kevin Feige.
“I don’t think it would be wrong to say that,” he mentioned, laughing. “I’d be excited but I’d be apprehensive as well, because Hugh is so associated with the role that I’d wonder if it’d be very difficult for someone else to do it.”
He paused, then flashed a smile. “But hopefully if it does come around, they’ll give me a shot.”
