Bel Pow­ley: ​‘It’s impor­tant to go for the roles you’re scared of’

From film and tele­vi­sion to the­atre, Bel Pow­ley is busy mak­ing her star pres­ence felt across the board. Since her impres­sive lead per­for­mance in 2015’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and with scene-steal­ing roles in both her lat­est film, White Boy Rick, and BBC’s Informer, the young actor has been steadi­ly build­ing a career on bold and chal­leng­ing char­ac­ters. We gave Pow­ley a call on the set of her upcom­ing Apple TV dra­ma series to talk about choos­ing chal­leng­ing roles, lov­ing the stage, and why Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry is so great.

LWLies How did you get involved with White Boy Rick?

Pow­ley: I actu­al­ly just audi­tioned for it like a nor­mal per­son. I got sent the script by my agent who said to take a look at Dawn’s char­ac­ter. I thought it was an incred­i­ble script, a great sto­ry, and I love Yann [Demange], but hon­est­ly I was so scared of the role of Dawn that I ini­tial­ly thought, ​‘Wow, this will be an amaz­ing role for some­one else but there’s no way I’m gonna be able to do that.’ It just seemed too big of a chal­lenge, but I went and met with Yann and I audi­tioned for him. We read some scenes togeth­er, and he told me some real­ly insight­ful things about Dawn that I hadn’t real­ly thought before when read­ing it – that she’s kind of the angel of the sto­ry. She sees what’s going on through­out, she has this kind of high­er abil­i­ty. So after that I thought, ​‘Okay, cool’, and he gave me the job.

Both Dawn and your char­ac­ter Min­nie from The Diary of a Teenage Girl share quite a tough blend of chaos and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Did you feel a con­nec­tion between these characters?

It’s fun­ny because I hadn’t thought of that before, I’d always thought in my head, ​‘This couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent from the char­ac­ters I play,’ but I guess you’re right. Dawn is young like Min­nie, but Min­nie is very self-aware, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the right way, but she’s in her own head, she thinks through what she’s doing, and she reflects on every thought. Dawn is such a mess, she’s so chaot­ic, and she kind of just lets things hap­pen to her. Most of her brain is filled up with what’s going on with her broth­er, she doesn’t have time to think about her­self. She has to be forced into that place to get clean, there’s no way she would have done that herself.

They’re also char­ac­ters that come from very clear peri­ods in his­to­ry: ​’70s San Fran­cis­co and ​’80s Detroit. Is your inter­est in these char­ac­ters relat­ed to their times and places?

I think that prob­a­bly sub­con­scious­ly it is, because it gives you such a breadth of mate­r­i­al to work with when you’re try­ing to cre­ate a char­ac­ter. With Diary and White Boy Rick, just typ­ing into Google ​‘70s San Fran­cis­co’ or ​‘80s Detroit’ throws up so many images of young girls like Dawn who are obvi­ous­ly on crack cocaine. Just see­ing those real peo­ple, and those videos and images, real­ly does help the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Being from Lon­don, it was great to shoot in the city for Informer as well.

And for White Boy Rick your direc­tor was a fel­low Londoner.

Oh my god it was amaz­ing! That was basi­cal­ly what we con­nect­ed with. It’s prob­a­bly why he gave me the job. We both grew up in West Lon­don, and live real­ly near each other.

As well as film and TV, you’ve done plen­ty of the­atre work. Do you see your­self on stage more and more in future?

Oh, 100 mil­lion per­cent yes. I start­ed with the­atre, I did four years of it before I did Diary, and I just can’t imag­ine life with­out it. That sounds like a real­ly big state­ment but I just can’t imag­ine my career with­out it, I couldn’t just do screen work. I think it’s part­ly because I didn’t train, I didn’t go to dra­ma school or any­thing, so a lot of what I’ve learnt about char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and rehearsal tech­nique all comes from doing plays and work­ing with the­atre direc­tors. I feel like it grounds me in a way that is hard to find on tele­vi­sion. I just did a show in New York, Ken­neth Lonergan’s ​‘Lob­by Hero’.

You worked with Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry as well on that as well as in White Boy Rick?

Yeah, he’s a fuck­ing leg­end. He’s such a cool guy. We first met on White Boy Rick and we were bare­ly in any scenes togeth­er, we only crossed over for one day which was Brian’s birth­day. I just remem­ber get­ting into the car after work and he was wear­ing all these flu­o­res­cent clothes and had glow sticks com­ing out of his ears, so we cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day like that and that was the last I saw him. Then nine months lat­er I found out I was doing this play on Broad­way with him.

Can you say any­thing about the new Apple TV series you’re work­ing on?

I haven’t been allowed to talk about it for like four months, it’s been so annoy­ing! I’m in the mid­dle of film­ing it. You’re speak­ing to me and it’s day three on set, and I’m still feel­ing quite ner­vous. I’ve nev­er done a big show before and it’s such a dif­fer­ent world, I’ve nev­er even worked in a stu­dio. We’re in a big Hol­ly­wood stu­dio and everyone’s rid­ing around on golf carts and shit. In terms of the tech­ni­cal­i­ties, it’s just tak­ing some get­ting used to, and because it’s about a morn­ing TV show, it’s a show with­in a show and there are dou­ble the cam­eras and crew. There’s a lot to take in, but every­one I’ve worked with so far is real­ly great and it’s real­ly good sto­ry. I can’t say what it’s about prop­er­ly, but it’s a sub­ject that hasn’t real­ly been touched on in tele­vi­sion yet.

Are there any big dream roles in mind?

Hon­est­ly, it just has to be good mate­r­i­al, and as a woman it’s much more dif­fi­cult to find dream roles. Times are slow­ly chang­ing but a lot of roles still are quite two dimen­sion­al, so for me it’s real­ly about dig­ging deep and find­ing some­thing or a per­son that you feel is com­plete­ly mul­ti­fac­eted, where there are a lot of lay­ers to explore. White Boy Rick real­ly taught me to take roles that chal­lenge me. When I read the script for Diary, for exam­ple, it wasn’t that I thought it would be easy but I relat­ed to the role and I was excit­ed to explore it, I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into it. With White Boy Rick, I was shak­ing my first day on set, it was so far from myself I thought, ​‘I’m gonna fuck this up’. I think that taught me to real­ly just go for the ones you’re scared of because when it pays off it’s such a great feeling.

White Boy Rick is released 7 Decem­ber. Read the LWLies review.