Don Logan as a character is so far away from who I am in everyday life that I was just thrilled by the challenge of that

Iconic British gangster film Sexy Beast is the inspiration for a prequel series on Paramount+ which sees Scottish actors James Mcardle and Emun Elliott play the roles of Gal Dove and Don Logan. The pair talk about the difficulties of taking on roles playe

There’s a scene a few episodes into Sexy Beast, the hard-hitting TV series prequel to the iconic 2000 film starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley where East End gangster Gal Dove says to his lifelong friend and fellow bad lad Don Logan: “People are always asking me why I’m friends with you?”

It’s a good question, given Don’s penchant for extreme violence, reckless impulsivity and obsession with the TV gameshow Catchphrase.

We don’t have long to wait for the answer, which is loyalty. The kind of loyalty where one will take a bullet for the other despite a complicated relationship which is explored through the eight episodes of the new series set a decade before the film in 1990s London where the characters are played by Scottish actors James Mcardle (Mare of Easttown, Angels in America, Ammonite) and Emun

Elliott (Guilt, The Gold, The Rig).

It’s fun to interview the duo together as Sexy Beast is about the friendship of Gal and Don and what happens to make them the way they are and what they become, and as well as spending eight months filming side by side in the UK and Spain, they have worked together before in a televised 2021 stage version of Macbeth. This ease in each other’s company is palpable and the pair riff off each other in conversation, as well as having a shorthand when it comes to getting to grips with characters who don’t always see eye to eye.

“When Emun and I did Macbeth together it ended with us wrestling in this pool of water and in Sexy Beast there’s the exact same wrestle,” says Mcardle.

“Yeah, we’re doomed to be wrestling in the elements,” says Elliott. “I think the Macbeth choreography was still in us...”

“And we said, ‘don’t worry guys we’ve got this’,” says Mcardle and laughs.

“Yeah,” agrees Elliott, “we didn’t choreograph that fight scene. It was just ‘roll camera, fight’. We’re half joking about Macbeth, but we have such a trust with each other in many ways and one of them is physically, so we just went for it. It was a hoot.”

Best friends and thick as thieves, Gal and Don are small-time criminals in East London, happy big fish in a small pond who become embroiled in a more dangerous world of crime when they are recruited by gangster Teddy Bass, played by Stephen Moyer. There’s further tension when Gal embarks on a love affair with adult film star Deedee, played by Sarah Greene and Don comes under pressure from his terrifying older sister Cecilia (Tamsin Greig). Loyalties are stretched, things take a violent, dark turn and the duo’s friendship is tested to the limit.