Director Kirk Jones was feeling nervous. This filmmaker was two weeks away from filming his latest film, a biopic of trailblazing Scottish Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson, and he still hadn’t seen his main actor perform any of the screenplay. Jones had been impressed by Robert Aramayo in the supernatural Netflix series The Netflix Series Behind Her Eyes, and liked the actor when they met over Zoom.
He then asked him to Galashiels, to meet Davidson in his hometown, where he was convinced Aramayo was the perfect choice for the role. “I was assured enough not to feel the need to meet 50 other actors and audition them,” he says. But “I didn’t request him to perform”, he confesses. “In hindsight, I believe that was insane.”
His risk succeeded. When the film I Swear debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, prominent publications deemed Aramayo “perfect”, praised his “remarkable, star-making performance” and identified the actor out as “a major cinematic talent”. Aramayo is most recognized for portraying Elrond in The Rings of Power, Amazon’s megabudget TV prelude to the LOTR franchise, although HBO's Game of Thrones fans will remember him as the young Ned Stark. But his latest film feels like a return to a certain kind of British movie; like Billy Elliot. The film is a social issue film, a emotional drama and a uplifting comedy, too. It’s a peach of a role for Aramayo, who depicts Davidson’s multiple involuntary movements with technical detail and care, and crucially, captures the campaigner’s charm.
Encountering the Actor
A week before the film’s premiere, the interviewer meet Aramayo in the lower level of the Curzon Soho cinema in London. The actor in his early thirties is unassuming in a tan Patagonia hoodie and jeans, square-jawed but still youthful, and clean shaven with a mass of curly hair. He welcomes me warmly, requests a cappuccino and launches into a self-deprecating story about how he’s spent the morning making “a poor audition tape”. A “proud Yorkshireman” and “huge Leeds United fan”, Aramayo has lived in New York since moving there to train at 18, but keeps his East Yorkshire drawl.
Strolling the walk … Aramayo with Francesco Piacentini-Smith in I Swear.
In the first scene of the movie, the adult John Davidson is awarded an MBE, and on accepting it, inadvertently exclaims “Fuck the Queen!” Tourette's is a nervous system disorder that induces bodily and verbal twitches such as twitching, yelling and spitting. According to relevant organizations, there are over 300,000 people affected by the condition in the UK. Aramayo says meeting Davidson was the initial time he’d met someone who has Tourette’s, though he’s quick to mention he may have met others without knowing it.
Davidson first developed Tourette’s at the age of 14. When he was a teenager, he was the focus of the BBC documentary John’s Not Mad. First broadcast in 1989, it is a time capsule of comparative ignorance about the condition. The film portrays his efforts to pursue a typical life despite that misunderstanding, one involving work, dancing and relationships.
“I spoke to John about anything and anything. Not to impersonate him, to discover his energy”
“People used to call John Davidson ‘Fuck off John’,” says Aramayo. Before making the film, he says, “like anybody else who has not yet had the awareness, I might have believed it was all about cursing.” But involuntary swearing, or uncontrollable cursing, only impacts around 10% of people with Tourette’s, he says: “It is far more complicated than that.” In the film, we see Davidson also juggling intrusive thoughts and OCD.
Preparation and Insight
Aramayo, who does not suffer from Tourette syndrome, began to do further investigation. He studied Evie Meg’s memoir the book My Nonidentical Twin and was struck by how the author “finds humor in” her condition and “enjoys it”, he says. “It’s an aspect of who she is.” He also spent time with Davidson in Galashiels, leasing a house close by “for approximately a month, maybe more”. He accompanied Davidson to the local centre, where he has a job as a caretaker, to understand the pride he takes in his work. They went on dog walks, watched football and attended choral concerts together. “I just tried to get him talking about everything and anything,” Aramayo says. “I didn’t want to copy him, but I wanted to capture his energy.”
Now we’re in Middle-earth … Aramayo in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
A significant part of that vitality is Davidson’s playful streak. Aramayo’s portrayal is a serious one, but the situations in the film are often funny. At a job interview, his future employer asks him to make a cup of tea. “I use spunk for milk,” he accidentally blurts out. As a comedic set-piece, it’s hilarious, but Aramayo doesn’t play the scene for comedy. “A lot of the scenes you see in the film are things that John himself laughs at,” he says. “I’ve been informed those stories, and I know how he reacts about them.” The film’s mood, he says, was something he and filmmaker Jones discussed daily.
“I wasn’t worried about depicting the level of humour that comes from a syndrome where you have zero command over what comes out of your mouth,” Jones explains over Zoom. But, he says, “it’s not Carry On Tourette’s”.
Selection Considerations
Before the film had been approved, Jones was thinking about selecting an actor with Tourette’s. He tried a few scenes with Davidson, but the result was “an absolute disaster”. He felt awkward asking Davidson to control his tics, and worse, to perform tics on command. He says Davidson found the experience difficult, too.
“I had trepidation, of course I did,” says Aramayo. The actor’s union Equity lately criticised the selection of a able-bodied actor in the lead role of a new production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, while a recent analysis found that the majority of impaired characters on TV are played by able-bodied actors. When asked how he intends to address any criticism he might face for portraying a condition he doesn’t have, Aramayo chooses his words carefully. “Look, it’s unavoidable. But if we’re talking about casting, we’ve got to talk to the filmmaker, and to John, and the people who cast me in the role, and I was just truly excited to play John,” he says.
Early Origins
Aramayo was raised in Hull in the 1990s. His mom was employed in protective clothing, stamping the names on high-visibility jackets; his father, he says, made sofas. At school, he was a entertainer who would often mimic his teachers. “In a naughty way, yeah,” he says with a grin. “I had one Irish math teacher … I got sent out frequently.” When he was nine, he enrolled in Hull Truck theatre’s young people’s programme. He’d seen his older sister, who was 11 at the time, in Richard Bean’s production of Under the Whaleback, which also included an actor called Paul Popplewell (24 Hour Party People). “I was like: ‘Wow. He’s cool.’” At school, acting didn’t feel like something he could pursue. But with Hull Truck, “that’s when it started to get professional”, he says.
The route to becoming an actor was obvious: audition for the London acting schools. “I desired to do that,” he says, “but at the identical moment I wished to try various things.” When he guilelessly Googled ‘Top drama school in the world’, the initial answer was Juilliard School, the arts conservatory in northern Manhattan. “It was stupid of me,” he says, laughing. “I was, like, 16.”
A couple of years later, Aramayo was standing outside his new student accommodation with his dad and sister when he saw two American college students with blue wheelie bins, running towards them at full pace. “They were yelling: ‘Welcome to Juilliard!’” he recalls. “It was like they were coming to assault us. We were just a trio from Hull.”
Move in the correct path … Aramayo and Kirk Jones.
New York Experience
New York City was a {
