Words: Lucy Ford
At this point, Jay Lycurgo is very comfortable being covered in blood. Fake blood, that is. “In real life, if there is going to be blood on my body, on my face, I hope that I would react well to it,” says the 26-year-old laughing on a video call from his flat in London. You might have seen Croydon-born Lycurgo in 2022’s The Batman, where he was part of a gnarly fist fight in the opening scenes. Or maybe you watched him lead the tragically short-lived witchy Netflix seriesThe Bastard Son & the Devil Himself (based on the popular Half Bad book trilogy) where he was doused in sticky red syrup more often than he wasn’t.
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This year, he’ll star in two more blood-soaked projects –The Radleys, co-starring Damien Lewis, an intimate film about an unassuming British family of vampires. Then there’s Generation Z, a gore-filled zombie series by Ben Wheatley that studies the generational divide between boomers and zoomers through the lens of flesh-eating bloodlust. In both Lycurgo stars as a teenager navigating the throes of adolescence, like rebelling against your parents and raging hormones, with the added threat of monsters that have a desire to feast on him. In his still-burgeoning career (he got his first acting credit after graduating from London drama school ArtsEd in 2019 in the now-defunct daytime soap Doctors, which he recalls being “ecstatic” to book), Lycurgo has felt the pull of what could probably be called the British domestic fantasy drama. “Anything that I’ve done genre-based, there is a real nice foundation of truth. It’s like, what if a person with an abusive dad was also in a zombie world?” he says.
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Both projects explore how the life-altering introduction of blood-hungry villains affects people across class boundaries differently. “The beautiful thing aboutThe Radleys and Generation Z is that they are grounded in realism, they’re very British, and they feel very British. We’re just in our English homes with our English mums and dads.” The same can be said forThe Bastard Son& the Devil Himself, which was dubbed Harry Potter-meets-Skins when it first premiered back in 2022. In it, Lycurgo played a work-ing-class teenager on the receiving end of a literal modern-day witch-hunt thanks to his lineage as the illegitimate son of the most dangerous sorceress in history.
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Despite launching to critical acclaim, Netflix made the show a one-series wonder, which Lycurgo says he now looks back on as a solid lesson going forward.“ I grew a lot from it. I did it when I was 23. I’m 26 now,” he says. “There is grief, but there’s grief in anything, even finishing a job. It sucks, right? But the beauty in it, and something that I had to learn, was that you still created that amazing show. I didn’t know or realise that it would affect me so badly. I thought everything on paper was going to get us to season two, but there are just so many things that you can’t control. You have to learn how to just trust yourself and trust your instincts.”
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Those same instincts are already leading Lycurgo in the direction he wants for his career. For his next role he’ll be starring alongside Cillian Murphy in the new Netflix film Steve, about the life of a struggling headteacher. Lycurgo is making sure to use his time alongside screen greats as a learning opportunity (he managed to get some invaluable tips from Damian Lewis that “was for something else that I don’t want to spoil”, he cheekily deflects).
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Lycurgo is drawn to characters with trauma that he can unfurl in real-time on screen. It’s part of what makes occupying that sweet spot of the ability to convincingly play kids on the precipice of adulthood so compelling. “Trauma is so fascinating. How it manifests, how it’s nurtured and how you look after it,” he muses. “Because at one point, your par-ents look after it, and then you have to, andit’s part of something so subtle, it’s some-thing that you can’t see.”It’s also why he wants to play a rock starone day. That, and as a way to combine acting with his other obsession in life, which is music (he calls The Beatles his one big hyperfixation). “Not a pure one, though, you don’t want, like, an innocent rock star. They’re the boring ones,” he laughs. Basically, he wants one that has really been put through the wringer.
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Beyond anything, he’s not letting imposter syndrome or insecurity hinder his instincts.“ I want to keep improving,” he says about pushing through the discomfort of watching his work. “A lot of the time I’ll watch myself back like, ‘Oh, that could have been better’,” he adds. “I’m not hard on myself, but I would just say I’m constructive. You have to give yourself props when you can, because it’s hopefully going to be a long career."
Photographer: Ahmed Hassan
Styling: Zak Maoui
Creative: Freya Anderson
Grooming: Paul Donovan
This feature was taken from our Autumn 2024 issue. Read more about it here.
Want more interviews? We pay a visit to Charles Leclerc…
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