James McAvoy Doesn’t Love Musicals, but He Directed One Anyway

It’s ironic that James McAvoy chose a musical biopic for his directorial debut. The actor “never responded that well to musicals or biopics,” he recently told Vanity Fair—“and my first film is just that.”

California Schemin’, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last weekend, tells the true story of a struggling Scottish rap duo, played by newcomers Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley, who decide to remake their image by posing as two American rappers from California. They wind up with a record deal and living in London as they expand their fan base—but things fall apart as their fame grows and people begin to uncover their Scottish roots.

Last week, Vanity Fair and the St. Regis Hotel in Toronto hosted a Little Gold Men live with McAvoy and Riz Ahmed (read about his convo here) to discuss their respective projects at the festival. Following the conversations, guests enjoyed drinks and hors d’oeuvres—if you’ve ever been to a festival, you know that you’re always in need of both—provided by St. Regis.

McAvoy spoke candidly to a room full of Little Gold Men listeners and festival attendees about the difficulties of directing his first feature, while remaining charming and positive about the likelihood of going behind the camera again. “I mean, if the acting work dries up, I will definitely be directing lots more,” he joked. “But as a director, I definitely want to do it again.” You can listen to the full episode with both conversations above, and read on below for an excerpt from our conversation with McAvoy.

Vanity Fair: There are actors who never want to direct, and there are actors who are always interested in directing. When did the directing bug hit you?

James McAvoy: I had never done any acting before in my life. And I was 16 or 15, and a director came into my school to give us a talk about Macbeth, and he was a movie director. Six months later, I’d asked him for coffee. And he said, “Do you wanna come in for an audition for a part?” I did, and I got the part. And I’d say from my experience in that film, I decided I wanted to direct as well. So, from 16, I was interested in directing.

But I think there’s a third kind. There’s an actor who doesn’t want to be the director, but they still want to direct the fucking movie. And that is sometimes really difficult.

Why make this story your directorial debut?

I got lots of scripts sent my way. They were predominantly working-class Scottish scripts. Which you could argue is kinda weird, because I’ve played like four or five Scottish people in my entire 30-year career. But there wasn’t a lot of hope in those films. There was a lot of drug abuse, a lot of unemployment, a lot of…I wouldn’t say they were all like poverty porn, but there was a lot of that.

I did want to tell stories about people from the same kind of background that I came from, which you guys might call projects, we call council estates. But I still wanted to be able to entertain. I still wanted to make people laugh as well as cry. And California Schemin’ was the first one that came along that gave me the opportunity to do that. It gave me the opportunity to entertain and delight at the same time as holding onto a very real story.

Tell us about some directors who helped inspire you to make this film.

Jamie Lloyd, who’s a theater director, but I’m sure he’s gonna direct a movie at some point. [Lloyd directed McAvoy in Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth.] Joe Wright, John S. Baird, Danny Boyle. But the only one that I actively copied was Jamie. I’ve been on the receiving end of this note from Jamie, which is, “‘you’re enough.” If you can play the character, that’s great—but if we don’t have you, we’ve got nothing.

Danny Boyle has an incredible cheerfulness that is so disarming when you’re going, “I really think that the character should say this, or I really think I should jump off this building right now.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” He never stops being engaged and being present, but at the same time, you realize he’s never going to do it.

What did you find hardest about directing?

Everything. The thing I thought I would have an easier time with is communicating with the actors, because I’ve been doing it for 30 years. And I’ve also been in the position as an actor, where the director clearly needs something else, and they don’t know how to get that from you. They don’t know how to put it into words.

And then, within two hours of directing my first movie, I realized what directors feel like. This is why they get frustrated. What you think is so clear is just in your imagination. It’s so fully formed in your mind. So every step of the way is about communication, communication, communication. And what I learned, as an actor over 30 years, is that the problems start to pile up when the director isn’t able to communicate, either because they can’t express the problem or they don’t have an answer.

So I made a rule that if I’m asked a question, I need to give an answer. If I don’t have an answer, we treat that as a problem, and we try and find an answer together and collaborate because otherwise people can’t work.

Were you a fan of rap growing up? What kind of music did you listen to?

Do you know what? I am not. I’d never have. I mean, I don’t dislike it. I was an Eminem fan, but I wasn’t really a music fan. Isn’t that weird? I don’t really play music that much. I don’t dislike music; I just never think to play it. And when people have this sort of encyclopedic knowledge of music, I’m like, where do you find the time for that?