‘It’s really nice playing a male character who isn’t closed off’
Josh O’connor talks to Laura Harding about challenging conventional ideas of masculinity in his roles, including new film Only You
Josh O’connor has had such a busy day he barely knows if he is coming or going.
He’s just wrapped up a photoshoot for the upcoming series of The Crown, in which he plays the Prince of Wales, he’s promoting his new film Only You, and he’s en route to a meeting about another film.
“I literally don’t know what I’m talking about,” he jokes. “I’m really confused.”
But this proves far from the case. Ever since he first found fame in the ITV drama The Durrells, as aspiring writer Lawrence, the 29-yearold from Cheltenham has made a name for himself in thoughtful and varied projects.
He starred as repressed farmer Johnny Saxby in the critically-acclaimed movie God’s Own Country, played Maurius Pontmercy in the BBC’S Les Miserables, and his latest project is the romantic drama Only You, about a couple who start a passionate relationship after a chance meeting but struggle to navigate a battle with infertility.
“When I first read it I didn’t think it was a film about infertility,” O’connor says.
“I think it’s a love story, about two people who fall in love very quickly and then are presented with a problem.
“The younger person, who is a male figure in that relationship, is the one that presents the idea of having children and I found that really fascinating.
“A year before I had played Johnny Saxby in God’s Own Country, which felt very different, and this was a role that had so many likenesses in many ways to myself, and I thought that’s a real challenge, the idea of playing someone whose idea of marriage and being in a couple is very much that you find someone, you fall in love and you’re with that person for the rest of your life.
“You have kids, you buy a house and it’s this perfect formula. But then watching someone with that perfect idea crumble because stuff
doesn’t go like that in real life, s*** goes wrong.”
He pauses. “When I say I took the role because I thought it would be interesting to play something close to myself, now I look at Jake as a character and I don’t see anything like me at all. I don’t see any resemblance at all.”
What he does see is a recurring pattern throughout his career, of characters that represent different elements of modern manhood.
“If I’ve curated the work that I do, it’s a sort of ‘notes on masculinity’ and challenging masculinity and what that means, what masculinity means.
“Jake [his character in Only You] is a perfect example of that. He is the emotional one, he is emotionally articulate and Laia’s character [Elena, played by Laia Costa] is far less articulate with her emotions and her feelings, and that is totally different to both Prince Charles and Johnny Saxby.
“Generally speaking we know men as being closed off or not able to engage, and it’s really nice playing a male character who isn’t and who wants to engage.”
O’connor made headlines last summer when it was announced he would play the heir to the throne when the third series of The Crown launches on Netflix, with Oscar winner Olivia Colman taking over the role of the Queen from Claire Foy.
“At the moment, masculinity seems to be a huge theme for me, partly because for men it’s a huge challenge right now in society.
“Our leaders are archaic masculine figures, in so far as they are aggressively old fashioned in their masculinity, people like Trump, potentially Boris Johnson.
“I don’t know what masculinity means and I guess that is what my interest is.
“I would describe Johnny [his character in God’s Own Country] as a negative form of masculinity, where he drinks and numbs any kind of emotion and doesn’t engage emotionally with someone on that level.
“Jake is someone who fully engages, and someone like Prince Charles is someone who engages with it to a point, but publicly can’t really engage with it. Then there is someone like Lawrence Durrell, who is comically engaged with it all of his life.”
When he was cast in The Crown he made a gag that he had “the ears for the part,” and now he laughs at the memory.
“When I was at school I was embarrassed by them and I wanted to pin them back and now it’s like, ‘Thank God I didn’t!’
“Hopefully I would have been considered for the role regardless, but it certainly helped.
“And the way I see it, it just saved The Crown production on some prosthetics.”
“It’s a love story, about two people who fall in love very quickly and then are presented with a problem”
● Only You is in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema now