Actor Russell Tovey isn’t down with the manosphere. Paradoxically, that’s what made him ideally suited to play the lead in I Am the Prize, a role that just won him the Best Performance Award at the prestigious HollyShorts Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Tovey stars as Anthony Selvon, a polarizing self-help influencer with a dangerous message for young men nearing adulthood – embrace hypermasculinity and hate on women. During the film directed by Sai Karan Talwar, Selvon’s carefully-constructed bro posture is exposed as an imposture.
“I didn’t like him,” the British actor says of Selvon, adding, “I think it’s really important to play characters that you can emphasize with and love, and also ones that you don’t like, and you’ve got to try and find empathy for them so you can play them. He’s a really challenging character. He’s very timely. It’s of the zeitgeist.”
Nothing is more of the moment than the manosphere, that online realm where young men absorb the lesson to bulk up their bodies and narrow their minds. For examples of manosphere avatars, see the Tate Brothers (Andrew and Tristan), and arguably Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who likes to display his jacked physique and wants U.S. soldiers screened for their testosterone levels (he has also gone out of his way to block promotion of many women officers in the military). I Am the Prize’s Anthony Selvon is that kind of dude, evangelizing to an impressionable audience.
“They say the most dangerous place for a teenage boy to be is alone in his bedroom with his phone,” Tovey notes. “It’s terrifying what is happening. And what I really want as a society is for kindness to be seen as a superpower. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you’re able to look to people and see that generosity and kindness and empathy is actually a beautiful quality rather than being seen as a weakness? That’s something we need to shift.”
Tovey continues, “I play [Selvon] because I want him to be held accountable. The work I’m drawn to is work that helps that message get out there of kindness and of connectivity and being part of your community and small gestures. I think that’s so important.”
In conversation after the HollyShorts awards ceremony, the actor tells us about his approach to the performance.
“I wanted him to be like a shark. Like, dead behind the eyes,” he explains. “He’s full of shame. He’s got to this stage in his career, and he’s sold his soul and he’s living a lie. And what he’s perpetuating is not the lived experience that he’s going through. So, we’re able to pull the curtain back on this man and see actually who he is. And then the rest of society discovers that. And that was really seductive to get behind. But I wanted him to feel like he’s damaged and he’s full of shame. Shame is a very potent emotion as an actor to play. Shame is really tantalizing and this character’s full of shame and he’s scared. He’s scared of getting found out.”
Tovey, a native of Billericay, Essex, shot the film in Liverpool last year over the course of two days. The acting challenge didn’t end with figuring out the character. There was the matter of memorization.
“The script starts with a seven-minute monologue,” he tells Deadline. “And I said to Sai, the director-writer, ‘Are you going to break this up?’ He said, ‘No, I want to hold it in one [take].’ So, I was like, ‘Okay.’ But it’s a challenge and I think it’s good to be scared. If you’re a creative person, you have to step out of your comfort zone. You have to test yourself and be scared and it’s definitely one of those projects.”
Tovey tested himself recently with another demanding role, portraying late fashion design Alexander McQueen in the upcoming short drama Wild Bird directed by Andrew Haigh and written by Tovey. He stars opposite Oscar winner Olivia Colman, who plays Isabella Blow, the magazine editor who discovered McQueen. Tovey could see himself returning to HollyShorts next year with that project.
“This community is my community. And I feel really emboldened to be part of it because it’s so exciting,” he says. “What I love about this is you’re meeting people at the start of their careers and they’re so generous… There’s no money. No one’s got any money. They’re here because they want to tell stories. They’re desperate to connect. And there is such a generosity of spirit here of meeting peers, exchanging ideas. What is the algorithm of festivals? How do you build on that? How do you get contacts? How do you get money so you can tell more stories? That’s really important to me.”
Tovey will soon be heading to another important film festival – the one in Venice. He’s an executive producer of Queer Edward II, a documentary premiering on the Lido that’s directed by Theo Rollason. It looks back at Derek Jarman’s 1991 film Edward II that came out at a time when “queer life [was] under attack in Britain,” as the Venice program notes. “Told through unseen behind-the-scenes footage, this is a story of the power and cost of queer visibility — then and now.”
“There was all this footage [of Edward II] that nobody knew where it was that Seamus McGarvey had shot, and then they found it in someone’s attic,” Tovey says, “and then they’ve made this beautiful documentary.”
Cinema of social and cultural relevance fits with Tovey’s worldview, whether it’s the documentary Queer Edward II or I Am the Prize, a film critiquing the manosphere.
“Art has the most incredible responsibility, but art can also change minds,” the actor-producer-writer insists. “It really can, whether that be film, theater, TV, art galleries, music — it does make a difference.”
English (US) ·