Nonso Anozie is meant to be in New Zealand right now, joshing with Robert Downey Jr while filming a big-budget Netflix comic book caper. “Instead I’m at home out in the sticks of Hertfordshire, where I’ve just been riding out lockdown by doing ab sculpting workouts and cooking,” laughs the actor, 41. “You can’t see the results yet, but under the fat there’s at least a one-pack.” No change of scene or lifting of physical distancing in the drama biz yet then, but at least Anozie has his own next act to look forward to.
Next week, Disney’s megabucks adaptation of the beloved children’s series Artemis Fowl hits the small screen in a big way, unleashing the titular 12-year-old criminal mastermind (Ferdia Shaw) on a world of Irish faeries (including an irritable Judi Dench at one end of the age spectrum and the ebullient Lara McDonnell at the other); tech genius centaurs (Nikesh Patel in a fetching wig); and at least one dwarf capable of hyperextending his lower jaw, chomping through dirt and firing the detritus through his underpants (a hirsute Josh Gad, clearly enjoying himself). Colin Farrell joins the thesps as Artemis Fowl I, a man who kicks off a rather good-natured (phew) war between us humans and the magical folk below.
In our own world of weary parents desperate for something to distract school-wary children, the film’s timing is like striking gold at the end of a particularly hyperactive, crayon-armed rainbow.
Anozie plays “Butler, Domovoi Butler, part of a long line of Butlers who have looked after and protected the Fowl family for centuries”, he says, which is another way of saying he’s a sort of ass-kicking James Bond recruited by the secret silver service. “He is this kind of impregnable force, but he’s someone who really connects with Artemis too, emotionally, because he goes through so much in the movie.” (Spoiler alert: Artemis’s dad is kidnapped by a mendacious faceless faerie with a ransom plan and an overattachment to an unflattering hoodie.)
It’s fun for all the family — and that’s an added bonus for Anozie. “I have a son, a little boy, but he doesn’t live with me,” he explains. “He’s at a very young toddler age where everything’s exciting, and it’s just amazing to have these kind of films that he’s going to be able watch and go, ‘There’s Daddy.’” (Anozie has been able to “make meals for him and take them over” and they’ve been “Skyping a lot” during lockdown). His son has quite the back catalogue to flick through: Anozie played a tough-talking sergeant in the space-boggling epic Ender’s Game, Hugh Jackman’s right-hand man in Neverland origins story Pan, and captain of the guards in Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 Disney live-action Cinderella. Artemis Fowl also boasts “perfectionist” Branagh as director. “It’s an amazing partnership,” Anozie says. A young Branagh noticed Anozie’s talents early when they played together in David Mamet’s Edmond at the National Theatre in 2003 (Branagh was Edmond, Anozie his cellmate).
A late bloomer “who had wanted to act from age eight or nine”, Camden-born Anozie found his way on stage aged 16, but a combination of work ethic and talent thrust him into the limelight at the Central School for Speech and Drama. There was a breakout role as the lead in King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and an Ian Charleston award for his performance in Cheek by Jowl’s touring production of Othello, before the National beckoned. Branagh, he recalls, singled out his ability to seamlessly shift into contrasting characters, inhabiting them like a second skin. “He took me aside [after the run] and said, ‘If there’s a part for you in anything I’ve created, it’s always yours,’ and he didn’t have to say that.
“And then to say that and follow through so many times, it’s just amazing.” Branagh’s very superstitious, he adds. “Whenever he sees a magpie he says, ‘Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife and kids?’ Without fail. Oh, and he always calls it the Scottish Play, he never calls it... calls it...” What? “...do you know what I’m talking about?” asks Anozie, flustered. We move on. But if I write Macbeth, will it bring bad luck to this interviewer?
At 6ft 6in, Anozie says he’s had his own slice of luck to have shirked typecasting and found support for his subtler talents. “I don’t just want to do the big guy, or the big dumb brute,” he says. “I could have made a career of that, but I don’t think it would have had longevity.”
Lockdown, spent alone, has given him time to cook, to read in the garden, and to ferry new lasagne recipes over to his mother, a fashion designer “who still makes her own dresses for special occasions like weddings”, for inspection (his father is a retired security manager). If he could be anywhere outside lockdown, he says he’s overdue a trip to Nigeria, from where his parents emigrated. “It’s the land of vibrancy, of spices, it’s the land of culture, and of deep, deep heritage”, he says. “There’s so much storytelling that’s untapped in Africa.” He cites Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and says he’d like to do the same through filmmaking. Right now though, there’s only Hertfordshire — and whatever mischief faeries are up to in the world below.
Artemis Fowl is released on Disney+ on June 12
