1917 star Dean-Charles Chapman interview: ‘I was traumatised by the themes of what we were doing'

In the trenches: Dean-Charles Chapman stars as Lance Corporal Blake
Matt Writtle

Dean-Charles Chapman speaks with the weight of a man who’s lived through the horrors of war, which is probably because he has, in many ways. “I was in the First World War for nearly a year,” the Game Of Thrones star tells me, in the same loveable Cockney twang as his on-screen character in double Golden Globe-winning film, 1917.

The thriller, co-written, directed and produced by Skyfall director Sir Sam Mendes and starring acting heavyweights from Benedict Cumberbatch to Andrew Scott, scooped best director and best motion picture at Sunday night’s starry LA ceremony and Essex-born Chapman, 22, was one of just two of its stars to join a trophy-clutching Mendes on stage.

His character, Lance Corporal Tom Blake, is one of the film’s two protagonists: a pair of young British soldiers sent on a high-stakes and seemingly impossible mission to deliver a message that will prevent a massacre among fellow battalions.

Lance Corporal William Schofield (George MacKay) is the more dour of the two — a disillusioned twenty-something who traded a medal he won at the Somme for a bottle of French wine. His comrade Blake, 18, is a baby-faced country boy whose own brother (Richard Madden) is one of the 1,600 men they’re sent to save.

“It’s sort of like therapy, talking about it,” Chapman tells me over a pre-Christmas coffee at Westminster’s Corinthia hotel, five months after filming and midway through two jet-set press tours around the US.

The film lands in UK cinemas tomorrow and has already been called one of the year’s “mightiest technical achievements” for its immersive, real-time feel. Set in a single day in April 1917, the entire 117-minute film has been meticulously stitched together to give the impression it is one continuous shot — the first time the technique has been used on a film of this magnitude. “It really was a fully choreographed dance between the actors and the camera,” says Chapman, recounting how he and MacKay were put through six months of rehearsals and a rigorous military boot camp to prepare for filming.

“The scene needed to be the length of the set and the set needed to be the length of the scene. So every rehearsal was done full-out with full emotion to judge how quickly we were moving towards the camera and how quickly the camera needed to catch up.”

Shooting all 117 minutes in one take would have been impossible so cuts were carefully placed in moments that were unnoticeable to viewers — explosions that clouded the screen or brief CGI shots — and scenes were often several minutes’ long. Chapman’s longest lasted nine minutes. “That was the hardest scene for me because we’d only read it through once,” he recalls. “Sam just wanted to let us do it on the day to see what came out. The first time I did it, I couldn’t stop crying after they called cut… I was just so wrapped up and traumatised by the scene and the themes of what we were doing.”

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Filming took place across Scotland, Hertfordshire and on military land in Wiltshire, where a mile of trenches were built to full scale with “real mud and dirt”. Chapman had shin splints during shooting and conditions were “exactly how they would’ve been”: mud was “like ice”, dead horses looked like dead horses, “over-the-top” scenes saw 500 extras scrambling out of the trenches.

“It was really, really difficult to just walk,” he says, admitting there are several accidental slips and falls in the film where he and MacKay missed their footing in the mud. Their fear, too, was “really real”. “When you’re 10 minutes into a scene and you’ve got those surroundings looking how they would have actually been, there’s almost no acting required,” says Chapman. “It’s mostly a case of living and breathing and reacting how the character would react.”

What was it like working with stars like Scott and Cumberbatch? Chapman says he was “blown away” by the detail they brought to the characters, though shooting such long takes meant he didn’t get much chance to bond with them on set. “Because we went from start to finish [of each scene], when it came to the finish we’d have walked miles away. It literally felt like it was just me and George. We were on our own.”

Chapman felt an affinity with Blake because of his accent and strong family ties but admits his character is much more brave. In a war situation, he thinks he’d be more like Schofield: “A bit defensive, less open, maybe I’d be in tears… Blake never showed any of that. Even though he’s in literally the worst situation you could be in, he still looked happy. He was just a normal boy and he was enjoying it — a lot of the men were.”

Poignant: Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay in 1917

Reading war diaries as research helped bring soldiers’ human sides to life. Chapman discovered that his great-grandfather, a soldier in the cavalry, worked in London’s first poppy factory after being left paralysed from being shot and Mendes passed on many stories about his own grandfather, a message runner who was the inspiration for the film. “He said [his grandfather] used to wash his hands every two minutes because he still remembers the mud from the trenches,” says Chapman, solemnly. “He couldn’t quite get clean.”

He hopes the film will remind people of their ancestors and the fact that “we all would have been part of [the war]” if born 100 years ago (at 22, he would have been “old” for a soldier).

Chapman still lives at home in Romford and describes his parents and two sisters as “just a normal family”. “My mum’s a stay-at-home mum, my dad’s a recovery truck driver, so if I wasn’t an actor I’d probably be a recovery truck driver like my dad.” Acting came about “by chance” when Chapman’s older sister’s theatre agent recommended that their mother put him forward for auditions. His first job was an advert for Nickelodeon at the age of four before going on to land his breakthrough role as the longest-serving Billy Elliot in the West End musical.

More recently, he starred as young Tommen Baratheon in Game Of Thrones where he became close friends with fellow actor Isaac Hempstead Wright. Wright remains one of his closest friends in the industry and the pair still FaceTime every day, though Chapman insists his “best mate” is still his next-door neighbour. “He’s just a normal dude and his film knowledge isn’t that good so he keeps me normal with normal chit-chat.”

Chapman was nervous for friends and family to see 1917 because it felt so “personal”. He’s now watched the final edit five times and admits it still makes him cry, “even though I know exactly what happens and every single beat of the film, the jump-scares, the laughter, the sadness, I still get affected by it”, so he is glad viewers have been affected too.

His parents were “very caught up by the emotion of it” at the royal premiere in December and Chapman thinks he spotted Prince Charles “wiping a tear” in the audience. Could they win an Oscar at the Academy Awards next month? “Hopefully,” says Chapman, bashful at suggestions that 1917 will sweep the boards. Maybe he’ll finally get to stop and chat to Scott and Cumberbatch there, too.

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