Harris Dickinson: ‘It was actually quite scary improvising with Lola’

Since burst­ing onto the scene in 2017 with his pierc­ing turn in Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats, Har­ris Dick­in­son has been carv­ing out a career as one of the most promis­ing young actors work­ing today. From star­ring in block­busters like The King’s Man and Where the Craw­dads Sing to Palme d’Or win­ner Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness, he’s just as at ease work­ing on big bud­get stu­dio films as he is on the indie scene. Case in point: his turn as bleach blonde club promoter/​absentee father Jason in Char­lotte Regan’s Sun­dance prizewin­ner Scrap­per, about an 11- year-old girl rais­ing her­self fol­low­ing the death of her mother.

LWLies: You worked with Char­lotte Regan before, on the short film Oats & Bar­ley back in 2019. How would you describe her as a collaborator?

Dick­in­son: When I first met Char­lie, and I hope she won’t mind me say­ing this, but she was deeply shy. But clear­ly had a lot to say as a film­mak­er and had a lot to say from an expe­ri­ence point of view. As a result, she was com­ing at it from a direc­tion that not every­one comes from. She has this ten­der­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty, but she’s also real­ly frank and hon­est and upfront, and avoids any unnec­es­sary over-dis­cus­sion of things, which I like. She put so much impor­tance and care in Lola Camp­bell, who plays Georgie, that it just set up this real­ly nur­tur­ing and car­ing envi­ron­ment on set.

How did you feel about play­ing a dad at your age?

So, it’s one thing play­ing a dad, but it’s anoth­er thing play­ing a dad to an 11 year old! But I think there wasn’t real­ly much pres­sure, because I didn’t have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for being a real sort of inte­gral father fig­ure. I was just this kind of neg­li­gent, incom­pe­tent guy who wasn’t quite able to face up to respon­si­bil­i­ties, but then slow­ly, slow­ly he does.

Scrap­per is close to home for you geo­graph­i­cal­ly, as you’re an East Lon­don local. Was that some­thing that appealed to you when you read the script?

I think it was the lan­guage and the text, and I guess it was that chance to tap into some­thing that you know, but also find there are big gaps and chal­lenges with. I mean, I’m not a dad and I’m in such dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances from Georgie and Jason. But you know, it’s fun­ny, I was in Amer­i­ca just after shoot­ing Where the Craw­dads Sing, and I was fed up, I’d been play­ing this guy who wasn’t a very nice char­ac­ter, I’d been liv­ing in the south for three months, and every­thing felt a bit odd. I remem­ber I went on hol­i­day, and I shaved my head, and I dyed my hair blonde for Scrap­per. I sent a pic­ture to the make­up design­er, and she was like, ​‘Why have you done that?’ So I said, ​‘I think it’s some­thing Jason would do.’ So I did have to apol­o­gise for that. But I want­ed to jump straight into the character.

I know you’re a bit of a film buff – did you and Char­lotte dis­cuss any ref­er­ence points for Scrapper?

I know that we spoke about Paris, Texas at one point, because we were talk­ing about the mag­i­cal real­ism in that. I did ask Char­lotte for ref­er­ences, but she didn’t real­ly have any, and I think that was nice, because it end­ed up with how me and Lola did the scenes. Not to dis­cred­it Lola, but some­times she would get bored, and right­ly so, because she’s nev­er done it before and she’s 11. After a while we realised that she was just real­ly good – she didn’t need tons of rehearsal, she would just do it. I think that the tone just became how Lola was going to react, which was fun because we didn’t have to over-intel­lec­tu­alise. I was just rock­ing up each day, pre­pared but not map­ping out exact­ly what I was gonna do and how it was gonna happen.

How did you find the impro­vi­sa­tion process, par­tic­u­lar­ly work­ing with a young scene partner?

If I’m hon­est, it was actu­al­ly quite scary impro­vis­ing with Lola, because you don’t know where it’s gonna go. She’s so unafraid, and so mature, but she could be quite bru­tal and total­ly cut you down.

Kids are brutal!

They’re total­ly unashamed, which was amaz­ing. With the impro­vi­sa­tions, there was struc­ture to them, and we would we would impro­vise around the script, and some­times we would just be left to go any­where. Because also, at that age, some­times Lola didn’t want to be nice to me. She was embar­rassed to be nice to me! But I real­ly loved work­ing with her. Every day I was prop­er excit­ed to come in.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by our sis­ter mag­a­zine Lit­tle White Lies.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them. You can sup­port them by fol­low­ing them on Insta­gram and Twit­ter, buy­ing the mag­a­zine or by becom­ing a mem­ber.