The last time we saw Adam Groff, at the climax of the third season of the Netflix hit comedy Sex Education, he was taking part in a toy-dog agility competition with a ball of white fluff called Madam. So there is a pleasing symmetry that when I meet the actor who plays Adam, 26-year-old Connor Swindells, he’s being pulled behind a black-and-white mutt named Moose, whom he is also attempting to train. “I’ve had him about a week,” says Swindells. “He’s a collie from a high-kill [animal] shelter in Bosnia. We have absolutely no idea what kind of a life he lived before northwest London, but he seems pretty chilled.”
The plan had been to sit in a café with Swindells and talk about his fast-escalating career, including roles in the new TV drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and the live-action Barbie movie. But Moose has other – frankly, better – ideas, and we are heading down the road behind him, stopping for the occasional sniff, towards their local park. Why is he called Moose? “That was just the name they gave him at the shelter,” replies Swindells, who is wearing a ribbed T-shirt, jeans and Moscot shades that the autumnal sunshine just about justifies. “And I thought, it’s funny, so let’s keep it.”
Adam Groff’s path to dog training has been quite the dramatic arc in Sex Education. When we met him in the first season in 2019, the son of the head teacher at Moordale secondary school, where the series is set, he was an emotionally repressed thug. But, even from the outset, there were hints of greater depth. By the end of episode one, Adam had become the first client of the sex-therapy clinic started by fellow students Otis (Asa Butterfield) and Maeve (Emma Mackey). He had also dropped his duds and stood on a table in the school cafeteria – at home we got the view from behind.
“Thankfully on that show, all the intimate scenes, or at least 90% of the time, are funny,” reflects Swindells. “You’re not trying to be too earnest or take yourself too seriously. But I just assume no one’s ever going to see it. If I thought that 40 million people were going to watch my performance I’d be too crippled with fear.”
Swindells isn’t exaggerating: 40 million people – more than the population of Poland – tuned into the first season of Sex Education (and saw his bum and his sex face, and much more). But Adam was only starting on his redemption. In subsequent series, he starts a relationship with a boy he used to bully, Eric (future Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa), comes out to his mother and becomes one of the most appealing, sympathetic characters on the show.
Part of the reason Swindells – which is pronounced with the emphasis on the “dells” – excels in the role is that it’s a transformation he knows well. He didn’t always realise it, but he has been schooled in expectations of masculinity his whole life. He was born in Sussex to parents Ian and Phoebe, who was of Romany traveller heritage. Phoebe died of bowel cancer when he was seven and Swindells – who is the youngest of four brothers – moved with his father to live with his grandparents.
Strong male figures were everywhere, growing up. “My brothers are all big, burly, physical, hard-working men and I’m the runt of the litter,” says Swindells, who is at least 6ft himself. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’m not like that. How can I make myself like that?’ Then I ended up doing boxing at secondary school and, thankfully, I got to a point, when I was probably about 17, where I thought: ‘This isn’t me, I’m running from me here.’”
For Swindells, admitting that he was interested in acting felt almost profane, or at least not manly. He had done a production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at school and enjoyed it, but didn’t think much more about it. Then, at 19, he Googled “open auditions” and went to Brighton, where he was cast as Josef K, the main part, in a production of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.
“I’m quite an introverted, shy person, so it was an addictive feeling, one I think many actors get hooked on,” says Swindells. “But at the same time, I felt like I was not doing a proper job. I’m from a working-class household of people that have laid tarmac on roads or built fences for 30 years. Suddenly, the idea of getting up on stage and pretending to be someone else didn’t feel honourable.”
As Swindells talks about it, the sequence in Zoolander comes to mind where male model Derek goes back to work with his father and brothers in a coal mine. But in reality, no one in the Swindells family cared very much when he came out as an actor. Mostly, they like being invited to the premieres of his shows and films. Still, for him, the memories remain fresh and inform his performances in subtle ways.
“I know that, if this was all to go away, I would always have a place working with my brother building fences,” says Swindells. “During that storm, the crazy one – Eunice was it? – my fence blew down and my brother came up to London, and we were just digging holes in the garden for fence posts again. And I thought, ‘God, it’s important that I don’t forget this.’ As crazy as the industry can get, with these pockets of excitement, it’s easy to get lost in that. And it’s important to remember that you came from just digging holes in the earth.”
We find a bench, and Moose curls himself obediently around Swindells’s legs. Swindells is currently filming the fourth season of Sex Education, but he’s tight-lipped about what’s next for Adam. Mainly, he is trying to appreciate the limited time he has left on the show: he can’t stay in school for ever, after all. “I just feel blessed,” he says. “I love coming back each year and seeing everyone. Down you get, Moose, come on!” Moose gets off the bench and resumes his position. “So I’m pre-empting the sadness I’ll feel when it inevitably has to end at some point.”
Sex Education has been a springboard for many of the actors on the show. Earlier this year, Swindells shot Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and also Sex Ed’s Ncuti Gatwa (Eric) and Emma Mackey (Maeve). Is Gerwig is a fan of the show then? “Do you know what? I never asked her,” Swindells replies. “I mean, you would assume so. But it’s the first job I’ve ever got from just doing a tape. Then, three weeks later, I was doing it.”
Again, Swindells can’t say much about his role – or even the identity of his character – but he did particularly enjoy sharing scenes with Will Ferrell. “I’m just having to hold it together because he’s just looking at me,” he says. “It’s like he was built in a lab for comedy. He’s perfect. Everything about him is hilarious.”
What Swindells can talk freely about is the new BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes, created by Steven Knight, the screenwriter best known for Peaky Blinders. The highly entertaining six-part series tells the story of the serendipitous creation of the elite Special Air Services unit in 1941 in North Africa. Swindells plays David Stirling, an aristocratic Scottish officer who believed small teams of men could inflict more damage on the advancing German forces by attacking them, unexpectedly, from behind their own lines. Jack O’Connell and Alfie Allen are the other leads, as soldiers recruited by Stirling on the precarious mission.
When the idea of playing Stirling came up, Swindells wasn’t sure. He worried he wasn’t posh enough. “I probably put myself in a category, as a young working-class actor, of just thinking that roles like that: one, don’t come to me; and two, that maybe I don’t deserve them,” he says. “But I read the scripts and they were awesome, so I very much wanted it to happen, which was even more frustrating.”
Then Swindells started fretting about the pressure of being the lead. “There was just less space to hide,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate in my career up until this point that I can hide within a brilliant ensemble cast. And I can get away with that in SAS as well, but I’m more at the forefront than I have been.”
None of these insecurities are evident in SAS Rogue Heroes. In preparation, Swindells studied videos of louche acting hellraisers, such as Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole, and he embodies Stirling with a raffish spirit of British derring-do. “They were absolute mad, mad, mad bastards,” says Swindells of the founder members of the SAS. “Stirling is an incredibly self-serving, egotistical, entitled, selfish, fearful human being. But charming as all hell and brilliant at getting people to do something incredibly stupid. And just doing it all with a wink and a smile.”
The shoot was a challenge, even allowing for the fact they were “a bunch of poncey actors from northwest London.” They were supposed to be in Morocco – in the Sahara Desert! – for two months, but ended up overrunning by a month. It was the summer, so the temperature topped out at 49C and was often 47C. Most days, at around 2pm, there was a sandstorm that lasted four hours and was so intense they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces and could scarcely breathe.
“I’ve never been grumpier in my life,” recalls Swindells. “I hold my hands up and say it, I had such a shock, as did everyone. It just brings out the devil in you. But that filtered into what we were doing in front of the camera. There was this real sort of fuck-it-ness. Every time they said ‘Action!’ you just push the fuck-it button and go for it.
“Up until having done this performance, I would have considered myself quite a lazy actor, who finds it easy to slip into a comfortable pattern of working,” Swindells goes on. “It was an educational experience. Actually, I do enjoy that pressure of: ‘How are we going to get through this situation where I am seconds away from vomiting?’ And I really do have dysentery when I’m talking about it in the show.”
Moose eyes a squirrel, which is taking an inordinate amount of time contemplating an acorn on the path. “You’re tempted, aren’t you?” Swindells commentates. “I don’t think it’s worth it.” Suddenly, Moose explodes forward like a sprinter leaving the blocks and Swindells has to use both hands on the lead to restrain him.
Swindells is clearly soppy about pets: as well as Moose, he has two cats. “I’m a big homebody,” he says. “Almost too much so. I noticed with Covid that I found it a little bit too easy not to leave home. But having a dog has been really great for forcing me out at 7am to let him go for a pee and a poo, otherwise it’s going to be on the floor.”
He prefers not to say if he is co-parenting Moose and the cats, though he uses “we” enough to suggest he may have a partner at home. Previously, Swindells dated his Sex Education co-star Aimee Lou Wood, and the attention their relationship had seems to have unsettled him. “Once you invite people into your personal life, it’s harder to take it back,” he says. “So I’ve learned that if I enjoy my personal life so much, I should keep those things separate.”
In the park, it’s almost 6pm and a warden starts blowing a whistle, shrill bursts every few seconds. At first, we don’t know what he’s doing: “That was loud wasn’t it, Moose?” says Swindells. When it finally clicks that the park is being locked up for the night, we hustle towards the exit. In the pandemic, Swindells developed a mild obsession with the chef and adventurer Anthony Bourdain and he quotes him now: “‘Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park,’ he wrote in Kitchen Confidential. ‘Enjoy the ride.’”
Between Bourdain and David Stirling, Swindells is bringing a formidable energy to his work right now. “Let yourself have fun and let yourself fail,” he says, as Moose pulls him home. “Make a bit of a tit of yourself. Who cares? We’re all going to die. Just push the fuck-it button and have a go.”
SAS Rogue Heroes starts tonight at 9pm on BBC One
Styling by Bemi Shaw
