The unique heist musical drama The Score is out today in theaters and will be released via video on demand services on June 10. ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Score star Will Poulter about working on the film’s musical numbers, his relationships with co-stars Johnny Flynn and Naomi Ackie, and much more.
“The Score boldly combines real time heist-thriller suspense with offbeat romance and a killer soundtrack; starring and featuring the music of Johnny Flynn, alongside Naomi Ackie and Will Poulter,” says the synopsis. “Two small-time crooks, Mike (Flynn) and Troy (Poulter), are on a mission – the ‘score’ – that they both expect will transform their circumstances. At a roadside café, as they wait for a rendezvous hand-over, Troy falls in love with the waitress, Gloria (Ackie), and begins to question his life choices… while the threat of real danger is driving to meet them.”
Tyler Treese: I wanted to ask you about singing in this. What was your background? Did you take any lessons? You sounded like a natural.
Will Poulter: That’s kind of you, Tyler. Thank you. No, truthfully I wouldn’t classify myself as a natural. I sang a little bit when I was younger and I hadn’t sung outside of the shower in about 15 years or something. It had been a while. I sang when I was much younger. I stopped training my voice and only just kind of sang for fun to myself. So it was picking up some slightly rusty tools again, but I had a lot of help from Johnny [Flynn] and luckily the songs are so beautiful that, given enough time with them, they’re gonna speak for themselves. But it was definitely a fun element of this whole process.
I think you’re being a bit modest because we all heard you sing a classic rendition of “Waterfalls” in We’re the Millers.
[laughs] Yeah. I don’t even know what we classify that as that as. It wasn’t rap. That was just sort of ridiculous. [laughs]
You mentioned Johnny and he’s such an accomplished musician and such a talent. What kind of advice did he give you when performing these beautiful songs he wrote?
He was really, really invaluable to me and [co-star] Naomi [Ackie]. because he was able to not only give us pointers that were specific to the music and how to sing it, but also bring performance to it and how to sort of act our way through those instances where we were singing the songs. It was really critical to have that kind of guidance. So when it came to the musical numbers, [writer and director] Malachi [Smyth] and Johnny [Flynn] would collaborate and they’d be in co-director roles. And that was really helpful for me and Naomi.
Naomi mentioned having stage fright when doing these performances. Was there any like stuff to overcome for you while you were singing in the booth and then performing for the film?
Yeah, it was fun for me and Naomi to get a chance to do that together in the recording booth. It was a really great bonding experience. It was sort of the first time that we’d had a chance to hang out as well and get to know one another. So that was great. And in a way, through recording those various songs that chart the journey of the individual characters and their relationship to one another through the course of the film, Nate and I were able to rehearse our sort of relationship in a way, which was really great. And she’s phenomenal. She’s playing Whitney Houston. Do I say anything more? I was nervous to be alongside Naomi in those musical numbers and she’s got such a beautiful voice. When you get to duet with someone who’s got a voice like Naomi does, it makes it a lot easier.
There’s such great chemistry between you two. Were you able to build that offscreen? I know you two have like stayed in touch and have a real connection.
Yeah. It’s really lovely. We’ve become friends through the experience. The same applies to Johnny, which is really nice. But me and Naomi really hit it off from day one. And COVID restricted us all as far as how much we could interact with one another. So that chemistry had to be built up fairly quickly. And we had to hope for some organic chemistry from the off, but we had that and we’ve both got weird senses of humor and we’re both kind of goofy. But we both really also loved the story and loved the script. And as a foursome — Malachi, Johnny, Naomi, and me — we all got on really, really well. And if you pardon the pun, we were all kind of singing off the same sheet from the beginning, which was really nice.
There’s a scene early on when your character is talking and we see him taking a piss. What’s the movie magic there? How’s that filmed?
[laughs] I’m trying to remember because we were on a relatively low budget, so I don’t think we had a proper rig. I can’t honestly remember. It might have just been a water bottle or something, but that was funny. A lot of the road trippy stuff that I did with Johnny, because there really are three locations in this film — it’s the car, the gas station, and the diner — and the road trip stuff, including the stop for a piss, was chockful of just Johnny being hilarious and me struggling not to laugh. So much of our gag reel is made up of me laughing at what Johnny’s doing in the car and in those moments. That was one of them that was also making me giggle.
There’s like a great sense of humor to this film and just the whole premise itself of it being a musical heist film is just so off the wall and unique. What really drew you to this project?
I think exactly that. It was so unique and it couldn’t easily be defined. I loved the fact that it didn’t belong to any one genre and it was just as much a musical as it was a romantic drama, as much as it was a thriller, as much as it was a heist movie. It was all of these things neatly wrapped into this small little bundle and being able to join a cast as talented and accomplished as this made it a no-brainer.
You’re 29. You’ve been acting for at least 15 years already. Is it odd that you’re almost like a veteran already? Where do you view yourself in your career?
It’s weird, man. Like coming up on 18 years and I feel very, very lucky because I don’t know what the hell I’d be doing if I didn’t do this. I’ve got nothing else going for me, so I’m really glad it’s worked out to date. But I’ve just been very fortunate. I’ve had a lot of support, a great team behind me, a family who backed me from the beginning, and my passion and my hunger for it hasn’t waned at all. I still love what I do. And I think also when we collectively face difficult times, there lies a great opportunity in entertainment to lift up people’s spirits or educate. We look to entertainment for some support in some form or another. I really hope I can sort of contribute in some very kind of small way to that.
I recently played Little Hope and thought your performance in that game was really great. Can you speak about just the motion capture and what went into that experience?
I’d never done really any motion capture before, so that was my first experience and it was super fun. I really enjoyed it. It was actually a really fun creative challenge. And I have to confess, I’m not a big gamer, but I’ve got plenty of friends and family members who are, so it was cool to be involved. And it was a real learning experience. I’m really grateful that a part and parcel of this job is having to adapt to different styles of filmmaking, forms of media, and genres. And that was just a really, really cool opportunity to do something very, very different and flex some new muscles.
It was such a unique story, too, because you played three different characters and all of them had different accents, like the old-timey one. How fun was that to put on for the past scenes?
Yeah, that was cool. My dad is from Yorkshire, so I think I was channeling a little bit of my dad in northern England there, which was fun to do. And it was a really cool opportunity to get to play three different characters in the context of a video game. It sort of meant that there was a really legitimately fun, challenging acting task in there. And I had a blast with those folks at Supermassive Games.
In The Score, you looked quite jacked, and you were talking about bulking up for Guardians of the Galaxy and the strain that put on you. Can you speak to that level of commitment? Because it’s not just walking on the set for these roles.
I’m really lucky in that ahead of all the physical preparation relative to Marvel, I had so much support from a team of people who were helping me out with the dietary side of things and the training and I’m very, very fortunate to have got a lot of support. So it’s not something that I did on my own or I would recommend anyone does on their own. It’s a lot easier when it is your job to literally just commit yourself to that. And you are also not having to pay for it all, to be completely frank, because it’s a very expensive and time-consuming ordeal if you want to try and do that. Or at least it is for me, just given my kind of genetics, but I was very lucky to get a ton of support. I am hesitant to talk about it in too much detail because I genuinely don’t know what I look like on screen because I haven’t seen it. So before I talk up any kind of preparation, I need to see if it worked.
It’s such a big deal joining the MCU. Were you into comics? Adam Warlock is so important, but he’s not the most mainstream comic character.
I didn’t actually know about Adam Warlock, if I’m being completely honest, but I was a huge fan of the Guardians franchise, and that for me was kind of the most exciting and the one that appealed to me the most within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So I am really delighted to be involved. And I love the character of Adam and me and [director] James [Gunn’s] sort of vision for him and his journey and really aligned perfectly. So I was grateful for that.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was such an interesting experiment. Are you keen to do more interactive art and like more off-the-wall type stuff like that in the future?
Yeah, I’d love to do another interactive project, provided all the other elements are there. That was such a great opportunity. I am huge Black Mirror fan, so to do the kind of first interactive project and have it be a Black Mirror show was a huge blessing. But it was super challenging shooting to accommodate all the different choices that an audience member might make and entertaining all the alternate realities. It was a bit of a head scramble every day. Like I can remember like coming home after each day and it had felt like I’d shot for three days. It was just so tough, but, again, very lucky to do it.
In Midsommar, your character’s skinned face gets worn by someone else. How surreal was it seeing your face recreated and used in such a manner?
Yeah, it was very odd and something I’d never thought I’d seen before. My mom absolutely hated watching that. And she thanked me for inviting her to a screening of that film. [Director] Ari [Aster] has such an incredibly creative mind and that was just one of those bizarre moments that exemplifies just how creative and wild his imagination can run. And it was it was pretty spooky to see.
