Sope Dirisu OF ‘GANGS OF LONDON’

ON AMC+

You had some impressive fight scenes as Elliot in “Gangs of London.” Is this the most you’ve done for a role in your career?

Definitely in that amount. I had a fight scene in “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” with Jessica Chastain, so that was sort of my first introduction to stunts on camera. And I’ve done quite a lot of stage fighting in my theatrical work. I mean, I’ve been a physical person all my life. I played a lot of contact sports growing up, I did a couple of martial arts, so using my body isn’t new to me. I’ve always been quite physical and muscular in everything I do. But marrying that with performing on camera, yeah, this was definitely the first time I had to do as much as I did.

After doing “Gangs of London,” are you considering more action roles?

I grew up watching action films and I think my dad is a big believer that film should be entertaining and transport you away from the humdrum of real life. And action films or fantasy films do that best but I wouldn’t necessarily want to pitch my tent in just doing action films. I’m really looking forward to doing “Mr. Malcolm’s List” next year, which is a period romantic comedy. I love having a diversity of roles that I tackle and I love the challenge of that, so I think I would never want to be known for doing one genre only and I’m really looking forward to sort of just doing as much as I can in different and diverse roles.

You don’t want to be pigeon-holed.

Yeah, I mean like sometimes people are really comfortable in one genre but I think I never really want to be comfortable in anything. I want to constantly be pushing myself and testing my limitations and hopefully learning that I can do more than just one thing.

And also the diversity of storytelling, you know. The world is full of different stories so we don’t have to tell the same ones over and over.