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Jackdaw Director Jamie Childs on Taking a Leap to Feature Films

Writer-director Jamie Childs (Doctor Who, The Sandman) talks to Bleeding Cool about his thriller in Jackdaw, Jackson-Cohen, Coleman & more.

Jamie Childs has come a long way since his start in the 2012 shorts The Bond and The Seasoning House. Since his start on television in 2016's Vera, the writer and director has mastered British TV, which translated to crossover international success, including runs on the BBC's Doctor Who, HBO's His Dark Materials, Netflix's The Sandman, and Disney+'s Willow. His latest is venturing into a new venue of feature films with Anton's Jackdaw, which made its premiere at Fantastic Fest. The film follows a former motocross champion and army veteran (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), now caring for his younger brother. Broke, he agrees to do an open water pick up of a mysterious illegal package in the North Sea. A resulting double cross and his brother's disappearance set him and his old bike on a violent nocturnal odyssey through England's northern rust belt. The writer and director spoke to Bleeding Cool about the inspiration behind the film, casting, reuniting with The Sandman star Jenna Coleman, and how working on Jackdaw compares to his TV work.

Jackdaw: Jamie Childs' An Ode to Northern England & Tony & Ridley Scott Films

Bleeding Cool: What is the inspiration for 'Jackdaw?'
Childs: I sat down and wrote it one day because I was like, "I need to get a film made," because I was doing a lot of like high-end television content for the streamers, and I was like, "I'd love to do a film. I want to do a film for ages." I've been fortunate to be working on TV, and I knew if I didn't sit down and write something and get it done myself, then people wouldn't necessarily be firing movie scripts at me. I sat down and wrote 'Jackdaw' and contacted a friend. He works for a finance company in the UK called Anton Corp. I knew they were looking for British genre kind of stuff. I sent it on a whim to see what they felt about it, and it was great. They were like, "All right, you're a producer. How quickly do you think it can get going?" Remember that it was last summer, and we finished the film and shot it in December.

Can you tell me how the cast came together?
Funny enough, with Ollie [Jackson-Cohen], we got a lot of suggestions of who should play that lead. I was away working in the U.S. when I was writing it, and I met Ollie. He'd never done anything like this film before, but it stuck out to me that there was something in him that I felt he could pull this character off well. I knew he had all the attributes everyone wanted from this character. He also brings a certain glamor to the character, which is a lot of the time in these kinds of British genre films. You get a more realistic, gritty kind of version of that character. I wanted it to feel a bit more heightened, a bit more genre and Hollywood. Ollie has all those qualities to it, and he's also a great actor, and he has a sensitive side to him in real life. That's what I was cautious about making sure this character had. It wasn't just about him being like an excellent action hero. It was about him being incredibly vulnerable.
He wasn't, and Ollie could bring all that to the table. I had to convince him to do it like he said, "I'm not the right guy for this." I was like, "No, you definitely got all the reasons why you think you're not a why you are the right guy."

How did Jenna get involved?
I was firing ideas at Jenna about who Bo could be. She was not including herself in the conversation. She's a great talent in the U.K. She knows the best actors out there that I don't know about. It was reeling off many names, and she said, "You'd be great for this part." It's quite different from what she usually does, and I felt like that was what would be fun about it. I know the qualities Jenna has and what she's capable of. She's normal, and she's got this really cool edge to her in real life. She's also funny and has this wry sense of humor, which she doesn't get used to in many things. I was like, I'll take it. Why don't you just come and play? What was terrific about Debbie Harry was my reference for that character. I was like, Jenna, you look so much like Debbie Harry, especially if you have blonde hair. I had to convince her to take that role.

Does it become its own challenge to do something original like this is also something that is more mainstream stuff like 'Doctor Who' or 'Sandman?'
Most of it is convincing everybody of what you're trying to do. You never do that. It's quite funny. I felt like I was clear about what I wanted 'Jackdaw' to be. It's like, only once the movie was finished and everybody who gave me money to support the film. I get "We get we're trying to. We try, and fortunately, we're pleased with the results." I suppose one of the biggest challenges in England is what it's like trying to convince people to make a genre film. Everyone sees a movie like this about a guy who returns from the Army and falls into your criminal world, something quite realistic and gritty. I love the Tony Scott action thrillers, and stuff from the mid-nineties always had this larger-than-life quality to them. It's always the American in these films. Why couldn't we do that in England and convince people that we have a world that doesn't quite exist? Everything's larger than life, including the characters, but convincing British people that you can do that over here is pretty challenging.

Was there a particular sequence that was more difficult than others?
It was probably the car chase with Silas (Joe Blakemore) and Jack (Jackson-Cohen) because we lacked time. It's one of those things where you have a stunt coordinator for four nights when [Ian van Temperley] got the script. We had less than a night [to film], so it was like," How do we do it in that amount of time?" It was more give or take. It wasn't like we were going to get more time from anywhere. It was challenging in the sense of, "How can we get this as a proper car chase, not the proper car chase with what he got? That was getting everyone to work smoothly together to come up with the plan and how we managed it in the time we had. It gave it a certain quality, which I like, so it was challenging on the night thinking about "How we would do that? It's impossible, but then we ended up having good stunt performers driving with each other without rehearsals or anything. They were so experienced. Remember, we had guys who liked work on 'Bond,' and we were fortunate to get them so they could do it without as much. The results of what we got that night were the most challenging technically.

Jackdaw also stars Rory McCann, Thomas Turgoose, and Joe Blakemore.

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