Actor, Writer, Director, and Producer Paul McNeilly- Talks About His Career & His Recent Projects

Edition Three- Week Three:

By: Jacob West / Photography by: Priscilla Olympio / Made with: Actress & Co-Director Priscilla Olympio

An established London-based actor with 70 TV and film appearances (many BAFTA nominated), Paul McNeilly has forged himself a unique and well-rounded career in a multitude of industry-related fields. His play, ‘Not Gods But Giants’, was England’s representative at The Traverse, Edinburgh, and he has directed and staged further plays to critical acclaim at such well-established London venues as The Southwark Playhouse, The Old Red Lion, and The White Bear. In 2016, Paul was nominated for Best Director in the Crime/Gangster Category at The Watergate Film Festival for the short film Johnny Leg Breaker. In 2018 he conceived and started Canned Aid, an artistic initiative whereby audiences brought food donations to performances rather than paying an entrance fee. All creatives and actors donated their time for free. On top of all of that, Paul is the founder of Mac Films, along with actor and director Kevin McNally (best known for his role as Gibbs in Pirates of the Caribbean). They have three short films, all scripted by Paul, which are currently doing very well on the film festival circuit. These include Lipstick, Will You Come And See Me Tomorrow? and another short called The Hatter, about an enigmatic stranger who seems to appear out of nowhere. The latter film was a winner at the London International Web and Short Film Festival. His latest short, The Lightworker is currently being circulated as a promo for a TV series. Honestly, being able to talk about everything that Paul has achieved/is currently achieving is truly difficult, and would take up far too much space. To read more about him, and maybe get involved in his acting group The Bubble and Squeak Collective, check out this website:
innereyeacting.co.uk/classes

Paul was, however, generous enough to sit down and chat with me about some of his recent work.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

“Well, I guess the thing of interest would be that I’m a British Tv actor, and on top of that a writer, filmmaker, and theatre-maker. I’ve been in the business for 35 years, and there’s been a lot of changes in that time. You need to change your perspective and your focus every 7 or 8 years, I think. It’s a generational thing. Every time a new generation comes in, there seems to be some fundamental change in the industry. You’ve got to keep on top of these things or else you just fall by the wayside. I’m talking about things like self-taping. I mean, I can remember when showreels were new, and there was pressure to get one, and we all thought “Oh my god, that’s not how we did it in the old days”, but we had to. The industry demanded it as soon as it was introduced. The agents wanted you to be sellable. So, yeah, self-tapes now, showreels then, and before that, the relatively simple thing of just meeting people face-to-face. A lot of us old-school actors do really miss those days. It’s how our approach was honed. I remember doing The 10th Kingdom, a big series for the US, and I went in and I spent about 15-20 minutes just chatting, and I wasn’t even asked to read. And, I got the gig, and obviously, it was just because they assumed you can act and just wanted to work out who they wanted to work with, really, just based on a short meeting. It’s very difficult to do that over Zoom or in a self-tape, so I kinda miss that in some ways. And, I think a lot of us older actors do miss it.”

Was it always the plan to transition from acting into writing, teaching, directing, and producing, or did that just happen naturally?

“About 18 months after leaving drama school, I realized acting was never going to be enough. It was never going to fulfill me properly. It was good, it was exciting, and I really enjoyed doing it but it wasn’t enough. I had too many ideas, and too much to say. So, I knew then that I was going to have to start writing. So, I did. I wrote and produced plays, and the step into screenwriting and filmmaking is relatively recent for me; it happened in the last four or so years. And it’s very satisfying actually. In fact, I don’t really see myself putting on many more plays, I’m really enjoying the filmmaking. It’s a real stretch, as I’ve had to teach myself how to write for film. And stretching yourself is always good. But I guess because it’s relatively new, I’m still finding it exciting. There’s also the fact that it exists after you’ve finished it. Theatre is great for memories and stuff. But when you’ve got the film, it’s there… And it’s staying there. But the bottom line is that I’ve enjoyed it. What’s nice about both film and theatre is the collaborative aspect. In fact, I think film is even more so. You rely on other people hugely, and I actually really like that. If I write and produce a film, what we see at the end is a real collective effort. You can’t own a film, like that. And I love that. When people watch my new film, The Lightworker, they’ll see a real coordinated team effort. It’s a really, really pleasant thing.

In the past year or so, you’ve produced the films The Lightworker, Lipstick, The Hatter, Will You Come and See Me Tomorrow? and another one called Jack. What can you tell us about those?

“Well, Jack is about the ghost of Jack the hat McVitie, who was murdered by the Kray Twins in 1967. The film is him basically interrupting a Zoom meeting (laughter). It was originally a one-man play. It’s three actors playing Jack, but all playing the same ghost, and it has three different endings. In one, he dies exactly how he died in life, and in one he dies in a different way, and in another, he doesn’t die at all. So we were just playing around with alternative endings. All of my films are weird, eerie, or other-worldly in some way. I’m really interested in how the irrational impacts day-to-day life. So, Lipstick, is, in a way about ghosts, but it’s actually about grief, and it’s about not being able to let people go, and the destruction that that can bring. I think stepping out of the rational is a brilliant way of actually
analyzing it, in a strange way. I find how people react in that waking dream state  extremely interesting. In that waking dream state. In The Hatter, the main character is approached by a stranger, but then it gets flipped. The Hatter is a moralistic tale about keeping away from whatever the dark side is to you. Will You Come and See Me Tomorrow? is another lockdown film we made during the lockdown, but this one was set in a psychiatric ward, so again, it’s exploring the space between sanity and ill-health. I hesitate to call it madness because I’m not sure it is. Some end up in psychiatric wards because they see too much. Mental Health, here in England, is massively underfunded in the NHS (National Health Service), which has led to a brutal approach to it, and it’s so misunderstood. How do we treat it? It’s so hit and missed and it really needs more funding. People are suffering more and more from it. So, we did a short film based around that, and again it was originally a play but I adapted it during the lockdown. I see Jack and Will You Come And See Me Tomorrow? as linked, because they were two lockdown films and I love them both, the actors did really well. I like actors when they’re good (laughs).

And The Lightworker?

“Well, it started on social media. Two people that I’m friends with on Facebook, who didn’t know each other and were from completely different areas of my life, I hadn’t seen either of them for a long time, both became self-declared “Lightworkers” within a couple of weeks of each other. And I found this intriguing and kind of funny, How could you just become a “Lightworker”, just self-declare and that’s it? And, to be honest, I wanted to take a less cynical look at it, but I also wanted to look at some of the problems that could happen if you self-declared something like that, and had to justify it on a regular basis. What would you do if there was a stampede of people who needed a self-proclaimed “Lightworker”? So, I thought, yeah, that’s the story. And that’s what happens in the film. Matty (McCabe) plays the Lightworker, and he plays it really well! He plays it real. It’s exactly what I wanted, he hasn’t taken a cynical view on it. He’s taken complete bias. So, it’s a great performance, a self-proclaimed “Lightworker” but genuinely convinced. And I don’t think it’s for us to laugh at it, but it does highlight how dangerous it can be, in a world where people are getting more mentally ill in greater numbers, and therefore can be attracted to people like this. And the self-proclaimed “Lightworker” doesn’t have the skills to deal with it. So, that was the idea, basically. We had a character called Pluto (played by Joe Staton) who took the whole concept of “Lightworking” so seriously, and we are convinced that if we manage to sell this as a series, Pluto is actually working for the Galactic Federation (in his mind…or maybe not) because there’s just no doubt about it when watching the performance. We’re really happy with the film. It’s different from what we expected, but not worse. Matty is very likable in the lead role and you kind of side with him. We cut nothing, we cut no one, and it’s come out at about 20 minutes long, which is long for a short film, but it’s working!”

All of your films seem to keep winning awards at the festivals. What’s the secret?

“I don’t know. I have no idea. But it’s very gratifying. I don’t know. I think it might be, because I’m self-taught as a writer, I kind of invent structure rather than fall back on received wisdom. And if you have a good editor, that can lead to something like that. But to be honest, I really don’t know. I’ve no idea. Probably, The Lightworker will be the one that fails utterly. But we already have some interest in it, and if nothing else we will get the feedback that we need as to what to do with it. We are getting a good reputation though, people are looking at us and wondering what we’re going to do next. We’ve had a lot of fun and it will be interesting to see what comes back, especially when there are expectations. The stakes become higher. And I like that. But we’ll see what happens.”

What’s next for you?

“I’m writing a film right now for Kevin (McNally) and me, which is a prelude to a science-fiction feature. I also have another short film, which is basically the arc of a relationship, from beginning to end, in four scenes. And then, there’s a folk-horror film, which I’m currently researching. That’s the one I’m looking forward to most. It’ll be low-budget, but we’ve invested in a nice Black Magic Camera, and it’s a good standard for a low budget. We’re going to film in Cornwall for two weeks. It has a folk-horror feel to it, but it’s basically a battle between environmentalists and a rail company that is destroying the countryside, which is the basic setup. In order to save the woodland, they invoke the pagan gods associated with the woods and have to pay a price. So, that’s all very exciting!”

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