Conrad’s performance is something to shout about . . .
CONRAD KHAN, now 20, shot director Henry Blake’s heartstopping film County Lines two years ago.
This ‘nice middle-class boy’ plays a 14-year- old teen coerced into carrying drugs from central London to buyers in the Home Counties.
Director Blake, a former social worker, helped the actor see how drug kingpins target vulnerable youths and lure them into a lifethreatening world. There’s a startling — often gruesome — realism to the film (available, for a fee, on BFI Player).
As Conrad noted: ‘This is just make believe for an actor, but real kids go through this and often don’t get to sleep in their beds at night.’
His character, Tyler, goes from being a timid, bullied schoolboy to one who sells dope in crack dens, shouts at — and hits — his mother, and gets beaten to a pulp by hoods. ‘Being angry was one
of the harder things,’ Khan told me. ‘I’m not an angry person. I don’t think I’ve ever shouted at anyone. It required several takes.’
He added: ‘You have to be careful about tapping into those emotions. It’s not an on or off button and, if you go to that place, it’s not certain that you’ll come out of it as quickly as you think.’
Ashley Madekwe, who plays his on-screen mother, was crucial to getting it right. ‘Having that tension from her helped me. Her energy was electric.’
It is no surprise (to me) that both have been recognised at the BAFTA Awards on April 11: Madekwe for Best Supporting Actress, Khan as an EE Rising Star contender. (Voting for that is now open at ee.co.uk/baftas, where you can read up on all the Rising Star nominees.)
Watching Khan’s dynamite portrait in County Lines put me in mind of a young Gary Oldman and Daniel Kaluuya, when I saw them tackle meaty screen roles for the first time.
Khan (pictured) began his acting career aged 15 in The Huntsman and has alternated these jobs with playing the cello for a youth orchestra.
He is now studying cinema at university (via Zoom) and is also playing a new character in Peaky Blinders.
SAMANTHA BARKS and Ramin Karimloo will star in a feature film version of Laurence Mark Wythe’s 2006 musical Tomorrow Morning, about one couple’s relationship, playing out on parallel timelines.
Director Nick Winston, making his film debut, told me Barks and Karimloo (right) will be required to age ten years as their stories unfold (and rewind).
A stage revival had been planned for this year, but Winston and producer John Danbury decided on a big-screen version instead, incorporating several new songs by Wythe.
Omid Djalili and Harriet Thorpe will also star in the film, which shoots on locations in Wapping, East London, in May and June.