CONNOR SWINDELLS CAN LAND A PUNCH

When he was a student, Connor Swindells was asked to audition for a school production of The Wizard of Oz. The powers-that-be wanted him to play the lion, but while that big cat may have lacked courage, he did in fact have a solo. “I refused to sing because I can’t,” the actor says, “so they wrote me a part.” This version of Dorothy skipped along the yellow brick road with a lion, a tin man, a scarecrow and… an army private. That is catnip for an armchair psychologist/profile writer: an early enthusiasm for setting boundaries, a talent so undeniable that a classic story had to be rewritten and, most obviously, Swindells and I are here to discuss his role in SAS Rogue Heroes in which the actor plays a member of the British Army. If only he had had a part in the Wicked sequel.

In Steven Knight’s fast-paced drama about the origins of the Special Air Service, Swindells is David Stirling, a real-life lieutenant who breezes through life with a public schoolboy swagger. In the first season, as the war escalated and the risks soared, it became clear that Stirling had a serious case of daddy issues and a dangerous need to prove himself. Nevertheless, he persisted: Swindells is back for the second round, which may surprise viewers (he ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp and does indeed spend a lot of this season in a cell). “Whenever you finish filming, there’s always this build-up and then it airs and it’s out in the world, but you don’t really get a sense of satisfaction,” the 28-year-old says. “The only way around that is if you’re given an opportunity to go back and do it again. I felt that with Stirling more than anything, and maybe it’s because I felt like I’d only got a good grasp of him after he had gone.”

The series was a turning point for the actor, who brings warmth and vulnerability to the role. “No one was putting me up for parts like David Stirling before,” he says, “I remember saying when I was going up for it to Tom Shankland [the first season’s director], ‘Thank you for having such an open mind and seeing me for this part.’ Before, it was working class, troubled youths.” How do you get into character as a posho? Swan about in black tie? Indulge in tax evasion? Swindells cannot really remember: he had to discard all his preparation in the end. “That was a really vital lesson,” he says. “You can go in thinking, ‘In this scene, I’m going to walk through the blue door and then turn left,’ and then you show up on the day, and you’re in a cave and there’s no door.”

Swindells was born in Lewes, East Sussex. When he was seven, his mother died from bowel cancer, and he moved with his father to live with his grandparents in West Sussex. His dad was a cinephile: “He had a Criterion-level room of DVDs lining the walls, and I used to just go in there, pick a few and go to my bedroom.” Young Swindells liked Airplane!, Superbad, but he really lights up when talking about The Bourne Identity. “I felt like I was in the film, running hand in hand with Matt Damon through this craziness,” he says, “I think I wanted to be there in that environment. I probably did want to be him.”

At 13, Swindells, perhaps inspired by Damon, took up boxing and clocked up hundreds of hours learning drills and movements (“it’s choreography under an intense, dire situational constraint because someone is trying to tear your head off,” he notes). At 18, he saw an audition poster for a local play and, spurred on by a friend and perhaps inspired by Damon once more, he went for it. After a few stage appearances, Swindells signed with an agent. “I always knew I wanted to be an actor, and boxing was a way of me running from it,” he says about that High School Musical-esque crossroads. I had a certain vision of what it meant to be a man and acting, this world that I’m in now, didn’t fit into that at that time.”

“Everyone around me was very confused but I think all of the people that knew me best knew that it was the right thing. I had always expressed an interest in drama, and it was the only thing I was naturally gifted at. It’s only thing I’ve done in my life where it felt like I wasn’t pushing a giant boulder up a hill.”

Swindells appeared in supporting roles on television but broke out in Netflix’s 2019 high school-drama Sex Education where he played Adam Groff – a sexually confused school bully – and nailed the one-liners. In 2023 came his most visible role yet: Barbie. In Greta Gerwig’s pastel wonderland, he was not a Barbie (d’uh) nor a Ken (despite having the physique and comedy chops for it). He was instead Aaron Dinkins. As his character poster read: “He’s like an intern or something.” Swindells was able to work with heroes like Will Ferrell (who played the Mattel CEO), Ryan Gosling as well as fellow Brits like Jamie Demetriou. It was Gerwig who appears to have left the greatest impression. “She creates a world of play, on such a huge scale,” Swindells says. “I feel like I’ve been burned by that experience, because it was such a big blockbuster film set, but it felt like we were making an independent film, and there was no pressure. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get that again.”

We are talking in the lead up to Christmas, both nursing what we suspect might be the start of illness (it is also, we realise as our conversation takes a superstitious turn, Friday 13th). It has been a busy year: in October, Swindells married his Emma co-star Amber Anderson in Scotland (the ceremony was officiated by Swindells’ on-screen Sex Education father, Alistair Petrie) and he appeared in Scoop, Netflix’s dramatisation of the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview. He is kicking this new year off with William Tell, based on the Friedrich Schiller’s play of the same name about the Swiss folk hero.

“I must start by saying I didn’t know anything about William Tell beforehand,” Swindells says, but he had always wanted to play around in a “medieval action epic”. And so it was not difficult for director Nick Hamm to coax the actor into joining the adaptation. Swindells plays Gessler, a villainous bailiff from the Habsburg court who goes head-to-head with Tell (played by Claes Bang). It is an enjoyable caper: full of screensaver-worthy scenery and court politics, and about six times more fun than it sounds on paper. And also violent: Gessler spends a lot of time in fistycuffs.

“I think the stunt guys were a bit unsure of me before coming in because my filmography doesn’t really show [my history of boxing],” he says. “But the moment I got into rehearsals, they were like, ‘Oh we have to write in more fight scenes for Connor because he picks it up quickly,’ and I felt oddly very proud of that.”

Up next is Lockerbie, a six-part series about the 1988 bombing (and not to be confused with the recent version with Colin Firth) and he has just wrapped on a Christmas film. He has not really stopped working since he first set eyes on that poster, though he remains, in his own words, pessimistic about his own abilities. “I drive my wife crazy sometimes with my view of the world and my place in it,” he says. “I always hold myself to quite a high standard, and a standard which I don’t think I’m ever going to reach.”

Towards the end of our conversation, Swindells, who is clearly comfortable with embracing life’s contradictions, returns to that point. “I’m happy not to hold myself to a standard anymore of who I think I should be. For the longest time in the beginning of my career, I really thought I knew who I was, and I’m at a point now where I think maybe I don’t know at all, and that’s okay, you know?”

‘SAS Rogue Heroes’ is available to watch on iPlayer; ‘William Tell’ is in cinemas from 17 January

2025-01-16T15:10:51Z