The actor reflects on why he chose acting, the high of getting deep on set and being bored of normal.
By Leah Commandeur
Since his debut as young King George in the Bridgerton spin-off, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, East London native Corey Mylchreest has yet to slow down. Starring in two of the most streamed Netflix watches of the summer, first being the romantic drama My Oxford Year where he plays charming Oxford local and romantic interest of Anna (Sofia Carson) who travels across the globe to fulfil her dream of attending Oxford University. As always, there’s more than meets the eye and the story sends you and your emotions on a whirlwind journey, something Corey is particularly talented at tapping into.
More recently, Mylchreest can be found in the streamer’s limited political thriller series Hostage, as he stepped into the shoes of Matheo Lewis, step-son to the French President (Julie Delpy). Matheo gets unwillingly tangled in the action as the blackmail that the plot follows, catches him up in its net.
In his candid conversation with us whilst travelling through London for a costume fitting for a project due to start soon, reminiscence was in the air. He recounted where his love of performing began, at tender age 13 in the stalls at The Royal Court as he witnessed Tom Brooke’s range in The Ritual Slaughter of George Mastromas, to revisiting more recent awakenings such as his love for researching his characters as much as performing them and how he has the emotional capacity to deliver devastating after devastating blow on our screens. This is just the beginning for Mylchreest, and it is a pleasure to witness his evolution.
Leah Commandeur: Hi Corey, how are you?
Corey Mylchreest: I’m good, dude. How are you doing?
LC: Not too bad, thank you. Are you on the move right now?
CM: Oh, yes, I am. I’m off to a fitting for a job, I’m meeting the costume team.
LC: How glamorous. I’d love to start with your new show Hostage, which came out in August, seeing you unlock a new type of role for the thriller genre. How was it switching it up from your past two projects which were in the romance realm?
CM: From an actor’s standpoint, it doesn’t really ever change. You’ve got to try and treat the person that you’re playing as a person who – as we all are – completely naive to their life being made a film out of or what genre it would be. Going around thinking about what genre your life is a bit strange. So I don’t think that in terms of the departure from rom-com to thriller, it was necessarily that difficult. I think if anything, there’s slightly more freedom to be real. Although on the other hand I don’t know if I agree with that.
LC: Was there anything that went into behind-the-scenes preparation for Matheo that was new to you?
CM: Well this character worked for an NGO. He worked in trying to re-stabilize and rehouse asylum seekers, very topical now, and he was fighting the good fight shall we say. I really don’t know how I did it, but I did some research on different NGOs and what companies I thought he might have worked with. I sent a few emails out, made a few calls and ended up speaking to someone really high up. I won’t name them, but it was brilliant. I had an hour and a half conversation with this person who was really kind enough to give me some time. So, I really felt like I was able to fill out Matheo as a character, fill out his life, because in a different sense to Queen Charlotte [A Bridgerton Story] and My Oxford Year that had come out before this, Matheo’s not on screen all the time. It meant I’d got a lot of his life to fill out in my imagination and for me, that stuff’s really important. I wanted to know exactly what his day-to-day life was like and what kind of duties were expected of him. Then you have to explore all the family stuff and what’s his social life like, plus class, culture, education. But I wanted to do that, and it was very fun to do.
LC: That level of research is really impressive. You speak some French in the show, alongside your co-star and famous French actress, Julie Delpy. People online have been saying you did a great job at the accent, so firstly congratulations. How much preparation went into honing that skill?
CM: From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I was so terrified of doing it. I really was convinced that I had done an awful job. I did quite a lot of ADR, which is a dialogue replacement when you’re in a booth and you’re just talking in a microphone replacing the words that you said while filming the scene. I did those two French lines about 60 times. Literally, no joke. I used to be quite good at having a conversation in Spanish or German but now I’ve lost both of those because I haven’t used them in so long. French I’ve never done anything with. With German, it’s at the very back of the throat, and with Spanish, there’s a lot of rolling your Rs, which is right at the front of your mouth. Whereas, French feels like it’s all in the middle. To say those lines right now, I’d do maybe the worst job out of anyone.
LC: Good thing you don’t need to do them again. I read that music is a huge tool that helps you get into the mindset of your characters or performing in general, so I was wondering what was your playlist for getting ready on the Hostage set?
CM: Oh wow, that’s such a good question. I’m actually very intrigued myself so I’m gonna pull up my Spotify playlist for Matheo Lewis. Here he is. We’ve got a bit of Hans Zimmer in there. Some Kurt Weill. Nora Jones. I’ve got quite a lot of Rod Stewart in here, and Glen Campbell. ‘Question It All’ by Lucy Rose was the song that I would listen to in the mornings.
LC: I need to go and listen to this playlist. I noticed that a lot of the characters you have played have a level of devastation to them or in their general storylines. Is that something intentional when choosing a project or just purely coincidental?
CM: I’m clearly trying to sort out some stuff, aren’t I? It’s not intentional. If I’m completely honest, I don’t think I’m the best actor in the world by any margin but I think that I do have a hunger to play the characters that are maybe not “normal”, whatever that means as there is no normal, but when I get artistically invested in something I look for that three-dimensionality or that inner conflict wherever I can. The roles that have come my way have had that or a thing that they hide in a similar way. They present in a similar way because at the end of the day it’s me who’s there on the screen.
LC: When you’re having these heavy days on set, do you ever think, I really should have signed up to a comedy, or does it inspire you to go for the even more complex roles?
CM: I’ll tell you what, after you’ve done a scene where you’re in tears or you’re distraught about something and you finish filming it, for the next 10 minutes, because you’ve been crying and your body is now releasing loads of dopamine, it’s really satisfying. I find [filming those scenes] really difficult and taking yourself to that place, trying to do the best by your director, the DOP, the whole crew and your fellow actors, and also trying to do by right by the character by investing in that moment to try and tell their story with as much of your heart and vulnerability. So when you’ve got that the next 10-15 minutes, people could say the same stuff that they say before and suddenly it’s the funniest thing in the world. It has a way of balancing it out. You spend two and a half hours in that horrible mindset and then and then you come out and you have a great two and a half hours. If you’re doing a comedy you might have a great two and a half hours and you’re laughing, and then suddenly you haven’t hit the mark or you actually do need to land a beat and you can’t quite do that and then suddenly that’s annoying and then the comedy isn’t funny but other people are finding it funny. I just love making films and TV – honestly I just have the best time in the world so whatever it is there’s always gonna be stress and there’s always gonna be amazing, lovely times too.
LC: Off the back of that, when it comes to filming a tragic death like in My Oxford Year – how do you begin to prepare for that character journey? How do you get into that mindset?
CM: It’s really tough. I know actors that are amazing that would just go with it in the moment but I’m not like that. I have to do a lot of preparation, and for me that was to truly believe it in my own head. It took months of research. I spoke to people and got stories firsthand. I went to people’s houses that had suffered or were lost and had some really mind-blowing conversations. Jake Gyllenhaal actually said something ages ago when I was 14 that’s really interesting – he said that when you’re preparing for a role you just immerse yourself in it. It doesn’t matter if you think that thing is useful or not at the time, you just surround yourself with as much stuff about that character, the story, the energy and the tone of the piece and the person that you’re playing, and slowly your subconscious, the the atoms in your in your body slowly shift towards a subconscious understanding for that thing to the point where you can slightly cheat and convince yourself that you are that thing for a little bit. Not in a bad way, between action and cut you don’t go home thinking you are. Also, a lot of meditation. You have to sit for hours sometimes and just really think what what would this be for me, how would it be different going to the shop, how would it be different cooking for people, if I was to cook for my partner would they they think in a different way than if I was to cook tonight as me who isn’t dying? It’s so strange the things that stand out to you. The thoughts that are the ones that really grab you are sometimes, these really abstract ones that you’ve got to spend time thinking about.
LC: It’s so interesting because as a non-actor who doesn’t get thrust into these opportunities, you likely don’t think about those things day-to-day.
CM: Why would you? I think that might be the thing that I love about acting – that I’m constantly thrust into situations, especially when the character’s so far from you, where you’re just discovering about the world. At the end of the day, you’re learning about people, you’re learning about the world, and you’re expanding your understanding of class systems, different cultures, religions, mindsets, jobs, countries – you learn so much and it’s great. I love it.
LC: Was there a performance you saw when you were younger that made you think – I want to do that, I want to be an actor?
CM: There’s an actor called Tom Brooke and he was in a play called The Ritual Slaughter of George Mastromas [in the 2013 production by Dennis Kelly]. It was phenomenal. He was phenomenal. It takes place over generations and decades, and he plays the same character – late teens, early 20s, to 90 years old by the time the play ends. This is so reductive, but I’d never seen someone cry on stage, and here he was about my age now, about 27, and he was playing an entire life of someone. His voice changed, his physicality changed, he was funny, he was subtle. He was performing to the back row and the front row – he was doing all of it. He was emotionally raw but his technique was incredible. At the time, I didn’t understand how he was doing the things that he was doing. I didn’t even really understand the ways in which he was being brilliant. I just knew that there was this thing happening, and it was amazing. I already thought about being an actor, but I wasn’t sure. Actually, the play was reviewed really badly but for me, at least, it was life-changing.
LC: I’ve never heard of that play, but I wish I could go back in time to see it. I was wondering, is there a dream role that you would jump at the opportunity to play one day, or does your brain think that way?
CM:I do find it very hard to think that way. Ultimately, I think I want to play something that’s not me. You know, I think everything that I’ve done so far has been versions of me. So far what I feel I’ve done is, oh, this character shares these characteristics with me, and although they’re the main characteristics of this character, they are things that I really don’t show a spotlight on in my everyday life. I think, sometime soon I’ll read a script and go, I don’t know who the hell that person is. There is not a time on that script where they say a line that’s similar to something that I would have said. I’d love to build someone from the ground up, I’m really interested in that.
LC: I’ve never had that answer to that kind of question but it makes a lot of sense.
CM: Well, usually I just say I want to play a bit of a bastard. Although that is technically me saying that I’m not a bastard.
LC: On that note, what’s next on the cards for Corey?
CM: To be honest, quite a lot of things that I don’t think that I can actually talk about. There’s a couple of things coming out soon and there’s three or four things that I’m either imminently starting or will carry me into the end of the year and the beginning of next year. I’m really excited.
Talent COREY MYLCHREEST
Photographer CHRISTIAN OITA
Stylist JUSTIN HAMILTON represented by A-FRAME AGENCY
Hair Stylist / Grooming JOSH KNIGHT represented by A-FRAME AGENCY
Gaffer HARRY REED
Camera Assistant AHMAD AL-DABAGH
Styling Assistant JADEN SALMAN
Production Assistant MIA WALTON
Words LEAH COMMANDEUR