Four clueless youngsters head into the wilds for their Duke of Edinburgh Award in Get Duked! asks the cast about their DofE disasters

IT is an age-old tradition that (in pre-Covid times) a horde of teenagers go stomping off across the countryside on the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.

The award was founded by the Queen’s husband in 1956, and sees young people volunteer in the community, develop new skills and take part in an expedition.

One of the young people who ventured out on such an adventure was Ninian Doff, now a music video director who has worked with musicians including Run the Jewels, Miike Snow, Migos, and Mykki Blanco, who decided the topic was perfect for his first film.

“It’s not entirely autobiographical,” he admits during a chat over Zoom. “I did go on Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and I did definitely get lost multiple times and probably wasn’t as wholesome as I should have been the whole time, but I never fully hallucinated or got shot at, so I did better than the cast of the film.”

Get Duked! follows four teens – the pseudo-streetwise Dean, Duncan and DJ Beatroot – and sensible, outdoorsy Ian, who are sent on a character-building expedition in the Scottish Highlands, but when left unsupervised in the wild, veer off the path into remote farmland and find themselves being hunted by a mysterious masked duke (Eddie Izzard).

“The teacher in the film says ‘I’m amazed they let teenagers do this, it’s so dangerous’, and I was like ‘That’s right!’

“Sixteen-year-olds who don’t know how to navigate a city bus route are now walking into the Scottish Highlands with a map. Who can read a map these days?

Everyone uses Google Maps!”

Both Rian Gordon, who plays Dean and Lewis Gribben, who plays Duncan, also took part in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme – “both of us failed, spectacularly”, Lewis admits – but for Viraj Juneja, who plays aspiring hip hop star Beatroot, making the film was one better.

“It was so much fun, just the absolute adventure that these kids go on, this is what I’ve dreamed of doing,” he says.

Samuel Bottomley, 19, who plays Ian, felt the same: “You don’t normally get excited before you get a part, but reading this script it was quite hard not to.”

And despite his less-than-successful endeavours with the DofE, 24-year-old Lewis felt as though he was reading about himself when he devoured the script.

“I thought Duncan was me, so I was like, if I don’t get this part then I’ve failed at being me so I have to get it!”

One person who won’t see himself in one of the characters is the Duke of Edinburgh himself.

“If a lawyer is listening, it’s not actually THE duke, it’s A duke,” Ninian stresses of the film’s villain.

“The lawyers have to read your script and I was nauseous, but I was like ‘This is where the whole