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Johnny Flynn had a distinct advantage when he auditioned for the role of George Knightley in a new adaptation of Emma. He’s loved Jane Austen’s novel ever since he studied it at GCSE — he is still in awe of his teacher for getting teenage boys into a Regency love story.
“Emma is about the implications of those tiny social interactions you have,” says Flynn, spreading a generous slab of butter onto a bread roll — it’s lunchtime, he’s not had breakfast, and he says he needs to eat before his blood sugar drops and he stops making sense. We’re at the Groucho Club in Soho but he doesn’t want me to think that he’s the sort of actor who hangs out at members’ only haunts. “I was given free membership and it’s useful,” he says as a sheepish disclaimer, before pointing out Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky behind us.
Flynn attracts a few looks too. He cycled here from his house in Clapton and his thatch of blonde hair is ruffled. His colouring and features have earned him comparisons to a young Robert Redford as he’s made his name by singing with band Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, and in a range of roles. These include the brooding anti-hero in the film Beast with Jessie Buckley, Lee in Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem, and the romantic lead in Channel 4/Netflix hit Lovesick.
Flynn would be the toast of any Jane Austen book club. He tells me Emma was playwright Samuel Beckett’s favourite novel “because it seems breezy and trivial but it goes beyond that”. When he met Anya Taylor-Joy who plays Emma, “we instantly started teasing each other in the way Emma and Knightley do.
“Knightley is an interesting study of manhood. He is essentially good, but can be overbearing, though he realises his impact and apologises. I don’t think there’s enough people saying sorry at the moment. The age of social media is conducive to a climate of conflict. It’s like road rage, being in your car and sticking your finger up at someone.” He pauses. “I’m thinking of Trump.”
To get into character, he searched for common ground with Knightley. “I don’t have a f**k off pile like him. But I’ve been with my wife on and off since we were 16 and in a way we have quite a similar relationship to Emma and Knightley,” says the actor, now 36. His wife, Beatrice Minns is a set designer. “We’ve grown up together like them, we squabble and fight and we are such different people but that keeps us stimulated.”
As well as reading Emma, Flynn liked the Nineties film take on it, Clueless, and has seen the Gwyneth Paltrow adaptation. So why do we need another version? “Every generation shines a new light on stories. They show where we are as a society.
“Because Jane Austen didn’t marry, people project a tragic story onto her, but there is something heroic in how she didn’t sacrifice herself to the age in which she lived and remained master of herself. Knightley is a man drawn by a woman as a kind of ideal in terms of where his heart is. We can’t cut ourselves off from history — if you want to learn about the rise of populist politics look at Thirties Europe. And I love that you can read something written by a human heart in 1601 and it connects to you now.“ There should be new stories too but to think you’re at the most important point in history is both lame and artistically negligent.”
Flynn “can’t get enough” of history books — at the moment he is reading The Time Traveller’s Guide To Medieval England. Period costumes are fun too, “when I’m not acting, I’m prudish about clothes and think I have to be anonymous. I wish I had the guts to be more expressive.”
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Next, he’s donning Seventies get-up to play David Bowie in Stardust. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival next month, it’s a snapshot of the artist’s life before he became famous; about a trip to America Bowie made in 1971, when Space Oddity was his only hit. “It’s not quite a biopic because it’s just about a tiny moment. It makes you realise that every genius at some point didn’t have a profound thing to say.”
Then he’s Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat, about an intelligence mission the Bond author masterminded during the Second World War.
Playing 007 himself would be “fun, but I’d be badly cast”. Should it be a woman? “That would be cool. I like Bond films but there’s so many that are the same formula; we can change it. I like Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who.
“In Emma, Knightley realises in his own small way he is part of the problem. That spoke to me as a white person in film; that old idiom is true, talent is everywhere but opportunity isn’t. Anyone in a position of power in any industry needs to give a platform to voices and stories which don’t get heard.
“Change isn’t happening quickly enough because the people who hold power at the Academy or Bafta are still a certain generation and skin colour so there’s this predisposition to certain stories. I see it with climate change. You can’t wait for good will to kick in, we must legislate and hold our hands up.”
He hopes Trump doesn’t win a second term, but “all bets are off, we can’t be complacent. I see things as tides of energy, as soon as one voice pops up, another comes in opposition. I found the recent general election results here depressing and discouraging. There’s nothing polite or graceful about the way these issues have been argued in public. We’ve lost the art of being nice to each other.”
Last month, Magnitsky The Musical, the satirical play he wrote with novelist Robbie Hudson, aired on BBC Radio 3. It’s about the Magnitsky Act, which Obama passed in 2012 to punish Russian officials for the death of accountant Sergei Magnitsky, and Flynn hopes to adapt it for stage. His mother-in-law keeps calling it “Magenta the Musical” and he jokes about fears spies are watching him now.
The biggest film releases of 2020 still to come
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Theatre runs in the family. Flynn’s father, Eric, was in the RSC. He went to South Africa with a play (where Flynn was born), so from early on Flynn, “developed a romantic love of being backstage with the storytellers”.
Work meant his father was often away from the family, which Flynn is conscious of avoiding with his own children, aged eight, three and one. He went to boarding school aged seven, but his kids will attend the local comp. “I was given an amazing opportunity but it was traumatic being separated from my family. My sister and I were really close, we played a lot, and I didn’t understand why we were in different places. There was one payphone and during breaktime there were queues of sobbing kids wanting to speak to their parents. My kids fight a lot but they are tight — I wouldn’t want to deprive them of that.”
After our interview he’s taking his daughter swimming, while his son is currently absorbed by the Nintendo Switch he was given for Christmas. “My wife is a bit horrified. And even my son came home from school the other day and told me social media was quite dangerous. I told him yes, it is fun sometimes but like everything there’s useful bits and dangerous bits.”
Flynn is a man of many talents – he wrote the Detectorists theme tune, plays the violin in Emma and composed a song for it. Has he ever had to choose between music and acting? “Early on people thought I couldn’t do both but I didn’t listen. It’s hard because you don’t do these things on your own, my agent and band are patient with me, but I’d be lost without one or the other.”