Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, and Daniel Ings discuss ‘The Gentlemen’
The actor found fame as the cocky finance bro in The White Lotus. Now, as he stars in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, he talks to Tim Lewis about being ‘irritatingly competitive’, giving up music for acting – and whether James Bond really is on the horizon…
When Theo James read the script for the second season of The White Lotus, the British actor wasn’t immediately sure what he could bring to the part of Cameron. The character was “another finance bro”: cocky, suave and superficial. “Interesting,” he recalls, “but we’ve seen it a hundred times.”
At the audition, though, the 39-year-old James was won over by Mike White, who writes and directs the hit HBO series, a comic psychodrama revolving around the employees and hyper-wealthy guests of the fictional White Lotus hotel resort. The first season was set on Maui. The second, with a mostly new cast, relocated to Sicily and was more explicitly carnal and lascivious. Cameron was part of a foursome, with his wife (played by Meghann Fahy) and another couple (Will Sharpe and Aubrey Plaza) whom Cameron appears to want to dominate physically and sexually.
James decided to have fun with Cameron. He told White that he would make him super-handsy: always touching and squeezing shoulders, asserting his alpha status. And in every scene, within reason, he would be eating or drinking, sending the message that his appetite was voracious. White loved the ideas and gave James the part. “Mike wanted to tread the line between lover and bully, between charmer and sociopath,” says James. “I kind of understood that character: his effervescence. Cameron was 40% me and 60% people I came across at university and afterwards. There’s something deliciously charming sometimes about those complete cunts. You hate to be around them, but also love to be a part of it.”
And the 40% that’s James? “I’ve been irritatingly competitive all my life, annoyingly,” he says. “Deeply, irrationally competitive – to the point where it’s detrimental. I’m getting a little better, but it was definitely part of my identity. And still is.”
James had a very solid career before The White Lotus. He was the freedom fighter Four, opposite Shailene Woodley, in the hugely popular Divergent trilogy, and an aristocratic vampire in a pair of Underworld movies with Kate Beckinsale. On TV, he starred in the ITV historical drama Sanditon, based on an unfinished Jane Austen manuscript, and in the 2022 sci-fi series The Time Traveler’s Wife, written by Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat. But his brilliantly creepy performance in The White Lotus has elevated James to another level of fame. “That was a gift,” he says. “It’s not cataclysmic fame, but it has been hugely helpful in terms of opening doors that were harder to open before.”
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If you’ve seen Theo James on the big screen over the last decade, you’ll remember him as the charming leading man in the Divergent series or the Underworld series. Many will also remember him entertaining us as Cameron, the hilariously over-privileged, deplorable guy in the second season of The White Lotus.
But what many don’t know is that the British actor can make you laugh; he flexed his comedic muscles in Guy Ritchie’s latest series, The Gentlemen. The actor says he shares a love for dry humour and sarcasm with his character, Eddie. “Comedy and being kind of silly is my favourite creative outlet,” he tells SHARP over a Zoom interview.
Now streaming on Netflix, The Gentlemen follows aristocratic Eddie (Theo James) as he inherits the family estate, only to discover that it is home to an enormous weed empire — and its proprietors aren’t going anywhere. The series is hilariously entertaining, without leaning too much into the comedic or dramatic side. James says he loved diving into themes of organized crime, rising through the ranks of power (and being destroyed by it) and the idea of a family in crime.
James, 39, comes across as reserved and guarded, which is probably why his dry humour often takes us by surprise. He likes being spontaneous with his lines too, and he says he’d like to do that more often. He made his acting debut in 2010 with You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. In his earlier days, James says he was affected by the prism of how others perceived him. But over time, his experience in the industry has taught him to “try and free myself of expectation through the eyes of others.”
We spoke with James about playing Eddie in The Gentlemen, working with Guy Ritchie, the next phase of his career, his own sense of style and what makes a gentleman.
Congratulations on your starring role in a Guy Ritchie series. I’ve been binging this — it’s so British, and it feels a mix of Downton Abbey and The Godfather, but with a more comedic edge.
It’s well put. Those were definitely touch points for us. First and foremost, as you said, it’s a comedy: it’s fun, it’s kind of a wild ride. Our creative touch points were smashing the world of high aristocracy and crumbling British Empire with the other side — the murky underworld of London’s criminality — and [blending] those two genres together. And then — not that we’d ever emulate The Godfather, being one of the best films of all time — but the linear story of someone coming back to their family, unexpectedly having to become the head of the family, and how their soul is poisoned by power.
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This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s “The Gentlemen.”
Despite having similar careers, Theo James and Kaya Scodelario had never met before being cast in “The Gentlemen,” a Netflix spin-off of Guy Ritchie’s 2019 crime comedy. Both have starred in young adult book adaptations, appeared in popular TV shows and toyed equally with big studio films and eclectic indies. So joining the series, created by Ritchie and co-written with Matthew Read, was another tandem step.
“I feel like he makes good choices,” Scodelario says of James. “It’s quite good to know on Day 1 that you already respect the person without having worked with them yet.”
On the show, James plays Eddie Halstead, a member of a British aristocratic family who becomes a duke when his father suddenly dies. He soon realizes their estate is home to a weed empire run by Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone) and his daughter Susie, played by Scodelario. Eddie finds himself descending deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld with Susie’s help, eventually discovering that he “has the heart of a killer,” as James says. It’s a wild ride served up with signature Ritchie flair.
“In Guy’s world, you have to straddle, very acutely, humor and comedy, but it can’t tip into the ridiculous because then all the stakes become completely lost,” James says. “He undercuts your sense of expectation as an audience continually, which I quite enjoy. Nothing is totally serious, and I think that’s crucial. It’s not ‘Succession.’”
In the eight episodes, which exist as a standalone story separate from the film and are now streaming, Eddie and Susie first collaborate, then backstab each other and eventually realize they are better as a team. Much of the series shifted and evolved on set during the lengthy production process, which took place in England.
“You have to be on your toes, and you have to be willing to oscillate with what Guy’s feeling on the day,” James says. “And that can be quite liberating.”
“As it progressed, we were able to enjoy it a bit more because we got used to the rhythm of how Guy works,” Scodelario adds. “But the beginning was quite anxiety-inducing, just because 101 for an actor is to turn up and learn your lines, and that goes out the window with him. It was an interesting experience.”
Here, James and Scodelario discuss how they developed their characters for the series, why Eddie and Susie never become romantic partners and whether there might be more episodes. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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The coterie of actors who have decorated the screens of Guy Ritchie’s projects is a club of extraordinary talent, and it’s just acquired a new member in Theo James. The 39-year-old Brit, coming off of his Emmy-nominated performance in the second season of The White Lotus, enters Ritchie’s oeuvre with The Gentlemen, a series set in the same world as the director’s 2019 film of the same name.
James plays Eddie Horniman, an upper-class British man who inherits a dukedom and estate when his father passes away, only to discover a secret: a sprawling marijuana operation housed on the grounds. As Eddie attempts to release his family from its ties to the criminal underworld, he leaves a trail of calamity and bloodshed, discovering along the way that he might be cut out for the seedy life he’s stepped into.
Here, James speaks to the process of creating Eddie and working with the master of the British crime genre.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
Had you seen the feature version of The Gentlemen before you were asked to be a part of the series?
Theo James: I had seen the movie before. I already kind of understood the world, and I’d been a fan of Guy’s since Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. When I heard the pitch, I liked the conceit of a guy who comes back to his family seat after being away for a long time in the army and has to dig his family out of this hole of criminality. I thought that was a really interesting throughline.
I like his work, the heightened tone of it, but it’s quite tricky because it should be violent, it should be dramatic, but it’s also funny. Guy talked about that a lot; it’s reality with seven percent twist and you can see that with the costumes and the lighting. It’s heightened by that slight percentage.
In the initial conversations with Ritchie, how did you guys talk about the character of Eddie?
TJ: Talking about Eddie, talking about the world, he very much wanted it to be a Breaking Bad story in some sense. It’s about a good man who is corrupted through the course of criminality. I also wanted to make sure that Eddie, as a character, had enough teeth, that he evolves over time. This [character], you believe that if he steps into the dark side, he might remain there and might be quite a dangerous person.
On top of that, we talked about class — it’s so endemic to British culture — and playing on that both literally and also in a comedic sense. Some of the themes of the movie recur in the show and that’s about these huge generational seats, dukedoms, that have passed down for hundreds of years. But they’re all broke and they’re all desperate for some form of income. How far will they go to keep the family seat, keep the lifestyle? Will they do anything for it?
It also reflects the dichotomy in British society. You have hyper-privilege that has been passed down multi-generationally and then you have this up-and-coming family, a more dynamic sense of British culture which is trying to comment that the posh side is a little bit staid and needs to be awoken.
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“The Gentlemen is fun and bombastic,” says the actor of his leading role in Guy Ritchie’s new series. “But the heart of it – the idea of indentured wealth, class and money handed down over generations – is very interesting indeed…”
In Sicily they have the mafia, in Sinola they have the cartels, but in Shropshire they have something truly sinister: the aristocracy. (Other home counties are available, of course.) That’s the bubbling premise, at least, of Guy Ritchie’s latest show, The Gentlemen, which sees Theo James star as a thirty-something posho who inherits the creaking family pile – only to discover that he’s unwittingly become something of a drugs kingpin in the process. Holes in the roof and hydroponics in the wine cellar.
The series is Ritchie at his tweed-and-weed best, stitching the underworld of his nineties pomp into the silkier charms of his Oxfordshire lifestyle. In the first 60 seconds of the trailer, alone, there are clay pigeons and cocaine, choppers and Cotswold stone, car chases and Cohibas, black-tie parties and nasty pieces of work – there’s even Ray Winstone in some exquisite tinted shades. All great fun and just what the doctor ordered. I could watch Vinnie Jones in a Barbour for hours. But, as soon as you get talking to Theo James on the subject, you begin to realise that that central conceit runs much deeper than the puns and pyrotechnics.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the British class system and how it informs every asset of our unconscious social-economic structure,” James says, as we chat over the phone on a recent afternoon in February. “Yes, The Gentlemen is fun and bombastic, but the heart of it – the idea of indentured wealth, class and money handed down over generations, is an interesting feature.” In one moment, early on in The Gentlemen, an American character describes how “the aristocracy are the original gangsters”. James says the line goes on to explain that “what they did is control the judiciary, control the land ownership, control every aspect of our society – and, then, set up a system where they can hand it down to their families for the rest of time.” The gentry’s ‘people like us’ is just the mafia’s cosa nostra – this thing of ours – with added gout. And, anyone who’s ever said ‘toilet’ when they meant ‘loo’ will know the codes are just as binding and brutal.
So, we’ve jumped right in at the deep end. But, I suspect that’s where James likes to be, both literally and figuratively. When he was growing up – the youngest of five children on an old farm near Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire – James wanted to be one of two things: either an oceanographer or a philosopher. In the end, acting won out, after an on-again-off-again flirtation with rock and roll. There is a sense of the inevitable, here, of the pre-ordained – especially when you watch James in something like The White Lotus, in which he brilliantly renders his Cameron as the sort of voracious, devastating, domineering finance bro we all hate to love and secretly hope to impress. He has the face of a leading man and the nuance of a character actor.
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