Warp Films cast local again with Everybody’s Talk­ing About Jamie

Back in 2005, 13-year-old Thomas Tur­goose was wan­der­ing around his home­town of Grims­by when he spot­ted a queue out­side a local club that sup­port­ed chil­dren exclud­ed from school. With exclu­sion hang­ing over his own head and time to kill, Tur­goose enquired as to the nature of the queue and, on dis­cov­er­ing it was a cast­ing call for a then unknown Warp Films pro­duc­tion, he agreed to par­tic­i­pate only if he was paid £5. That £5 mul­ti­plied sig­nif­i­cant­ly when Tur­goose land­ed the part of Shaun, the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Shane Mead­ows’ hit film This is Eng­land.

Some 10 years lat­er, Warp Films is hop­ing to repeat the trick with its lat­est project. This time in Sheffield with Everybody’s Talk­ing About Jamie, a film adap­ta­tion of the hit West End musi­cal of the same name about a 16-year-old boy who wants to attend his school prom in a dress. Aside from being home to Sean Bean and those danc­ing nud­ists, Sheffield is not often the first port of call for film­mak­ers, but the­atre direc­tor Jonathan But­terell drew atten­tion to the Steel City when he set the stage pro­duc­tion of Jamie there.

Head­ed up by cast­ing direc­tor Sha­heen Baig (Philip K Dick’s Elec­tric Dreams, Black Mir­ror, Peaky Blind­ers), Warp Films is head­ing out into the com­mu­ni­ty to find 30 young peo­ple to star as the stu­dents in Jamie’s class. ​“We need to rep­re­sent a real class from a com­pre­hen­sive school in Sheffield,” explains Warp CEO and pro­duc­er Mark Her­bert. ​“And in a real class, you are not going to find that all the kids go to stage school. We want to go out there and find a mix of kids, so we can reflect the diver­si­ty of a real classroom.”

For This is Eng­land, the cast­ing team popped up in all sorts of uncon­ven­tion­al loca­tions like amuse­ment arcades and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres. Her­bert refers to these tech­niques as ​“look­ing under every sin­gle rock,” and the hope is that the peo­ple of Sheffield will get involved in this process and share the news with their friends and neigh­bours. This approach also opens up the door to new tal­ent that might not have had the funds for stage school. ​“I believe there are lots of tal­ent­ed peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds – not just in cast­ing but in every ele­ment of film­mak­ing – that get over­looked. You’ve got to give every­one equal foot­ing and some­times cer­tain peo­ple just don’t get those cast­ing opportunities.”

The pro­duc­ers are scour­ing Sheffield and the sur­round­ing area for young peo­ple over the age of 16 that could slot into a class of year 11s. Does Her­bert have any insid­er tips on what they are look­ing for? ​“No. That’s the real­ly weird thing – it’s very hard to describe what you’re look­ing for on some­thing so diverse. We don’t want to put any­one off. If we try to describe what we’re look­ing for it might put some­one off who has ​‘got it’. What was great about Tom­mo [Tur­goose] was that he wouldn’t say any­thing he didn’t believe in. He had an hon­esty – a wide-eyed inno­cence – and a bit of steel in him that was so right for that part. It’s often a mix­ture of so many things that makes some­one special.”

Everybody’s Talk­ing About Jamie cast­ing call is open until 22 July and indi­vid­u­als can apply via jamiefilm​cast​ing​.take​-part​.co​.uk