The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 23“ I think that’s just my response to a culture that has
this i nc reasing expectation that everything is going to
be given. If you don’t post about the way you make your
coff ee in the morning, or if you don’t let someone take
a picture when you walk out of your front door, is that
being private? I don’t know if it is. So I just don’t really
feed that.”
His own Instagram is strictly work-based, and there
is lit t le h i nt of a ny t h i ng beyond a fi lm set. “If you and
I were having a conversation, and having a shandy in
my house, and it wasn’t being recorded, then, of course,
other things would be said,” he says, echoing what
Swift told this paper in 2019. (“ If you and I were having
a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but
it’s just that it goes out into the world ,” she said, back
then.) Did they decide, from the beginning, to have
a party line, and not to talk about each other? “Erm.
It was just like, well, why? There are more interesting
things to talk about and I just think it feeds into a weird
part of the culture that I’m not really interested in being
a part of.”
One thing he will talk about is their musical
c ollaboration, which turned him into a Grammy winner.
I did want to ask about music, I say. “Go for it, and I will
sing for you,” he jokes, happier to be back on solid
ground. When Swift released Folklore, two of the songs,
Betty and Exile , credited a mysterious co-writer called
William Bowery. Fans speculated as to who it might
be, and Swift later revealed that it was a pseudonym
for Alwyn, who also co-wrote some of the songs on its
follow-up, Evermore. “That was a surreal bonus of
l ockdown,” he says, checking himself. “That’s
an understatement.”
W h at w a s it l i ke to work w it h you r ot he r h a l f, i n he r
line of business? “It wasn’t like, ‘It’s fi v e o ’c l o c k , i t ’s t i m e
to try and write a song together,’” he says. “It cameof This). “I can play piano pretty badly, but never with
the intent of, ‘Right, it’s time for my jazz-fusion album.’ ”
He grins. “Unfortunately.”
He’s joking, but if a jazz-fusion album does emerge
one day, it wouldn’t be such a curveball. He is about to
take some time off and has no immediate jobs lined up,
he says, which is fi ne by him, as last year was so busy.
His recent work indicates a Robert Pattinson -style swerve
into the arthouse. He had a small role in Joanna Hogg ’s
The Souvenir: Part II , and his next two fi lms will be Stars
at Noon , an adaptation of a Denis Johnson novel directed
by Claire Denis , and Catherine, Called Birdy , a medieval
comedy directed by Lena D unham. “Again, I think that
all comes from working with Ang Lee, and the luxury of
that at the beginning,” he says. “I would just much rather
do that for now and ‘build’, which sounds awful,” he
says, beginning to co llapse into a cringe, “and like, oh,
grow as an actor, which also sounds awful.” He looks
mortifi ed. “Do you know what I mean?”
I think I know what he means. He sounds like
someone who is satisfi ed with life as it is, and where
it’s about to take him. We fi nish our pints. Alwyn is
heading off t o m e e t s o m e o n e o n H a m p s t e a d H e a t h , a n d
we shake hands, politely, as we say goodbye. He heads
out into the street, eyes on the path just ahead •Conversations with Friends starts on BBC Three and
BBC iPlayer on 15 May.‘ ... THE GRAMMY
WAS OBVIOUSLY
THIS RIDICULOUS
BONUS’
‘THE SONGS CAME
FROM US MESSING
AROUND. IT WAS
LIKE BAKING
SOURDOUGH IN
LOCKDOWN ... ’
ELLIOTT WILCOX/THE GUARDIAN. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: PETER BEVAN. GROOMING: PETRA SELLGE AT THE WALL GROUP. LIGHTING: JARED PRICE.
PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: CHARLOTTE HARTLEY. CLOTHING: PAGES 18-19, PAULSMITH.COM; PAGE 21, BRIONI.COM; THIS PAGE, TODS.COM; CR
EAM JUMPER,SSDALEY.COM; NAV Y JOGGING PANTS, ISABEL MARANT, MATCHESFASHION.COM; TRAINERS, AXELARIGATO.COMabout from messing around on a piano, and singing
badly, then being overheard, and being, like, ‘Let’s see
what happens if we get to the end of it together.’ ” He
liked it because there were no expectations and no
pressure. “I mean fun is such a stupid word, but it was
a lot of fun. And it was never a work thing, or a ‘Let’s
try and do this because we’re going to put this out’ thing.
It was just like baking sourdough in lockdown.” But
not everyone’s sourdough resulted in a Grammy. “The
Grammy was obviously this ridiculous bonus.”
Did he have any musical ambitions before this? “I like
music, and I played a bit of guitar awfully in a school
band when I was 12.” They were called Anger
Management, and they covered Marilyn Manson’s
version of the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams (Are Made