“California Schemin’” Star and Director James McAvoy “Below” Star Charlie Heaton

"California Schemin'" Star and Director James McAvoy

"Below" Star Charlie Heaton
Air Date: Wednesday, October 14^th

Photo Credit: The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean

Download Photos Here and Here

MUST INCLUDE TUNE IN

VIDEOS:

James McAvoy on His New Movie "California Schemin'" Feeling Personal To Him

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/0UfzjRCznwfL

Drew: What was personal to you about this story?

James: The movie is called 'California Schemin' right? And it's about two kids who pretend to be American to make it, to get a record label deal down in London.

Drew: Because they're being themselves -

James: They're being themselves, they get laughed at for rapping with Scottish accents. It's not working, it's a true story. They go and perform really well in their own accents and they get laughed out of the room, and basically told, you're the rapping proclaimers, which by the way, I'm here for that movie, and they get told you can't rap if you're using a Scottish accent -

Drew: And like radio won't play them, management won't take them, they're really on the beat trying to break through and no one is taking them seriously.

James: No one's taking them seriously, and so they kind of, they're devastated, they're young kids and they really are talented, and so they go away and they take the note and they go, alright, you want the Beastie Boys, you want Eminem, we'll give you it, so they go and they start to pretend to be from America, from California. And the same record label ends up giving them a deal with the same tracks for 60,000, and they cut out, cut an album, they end up on TV on MTV and the whole deal is they're like, the whole deal is they're gonna release a single, get on MTV and they're gonna come clean and they're gonna expose the music industry.

Drew: That's right, they're gonna basically show everybody that they had to be frauds in order to make it.

James: And I thought to myself, there's something about that felt very true to me in my experience. I've had a nice career, my business is acting, I'm allowed to be other people, but, it felt true to me in some way and that there's parts of the world, and this is probably true of America as well, it's definitely true of Scotland and even parts of England and Wales where you only get certain people allowed on TV, you only get certain people making music, certain levels of the socio-economic ladder, and everybody else is kind of lucky to get one or two through every couple of years. And when you do get it through, it's usually gritty, depressing, depraved, about abuse, alcohol, domestic, sexual, whatever abuse. And I wanted to make a really fun, entertaining film about people who come from those parts of the world that usually don't find themselves represented in mainstream art and this was an opportunity to do it, for my first time directing, I really wanted to entertain, but this was an opportunity to do it with a true story that meant something to me as a Scottish person, and it still felt like it was actually a universal issue.

James on the Challenge of Acting & Directing at the Same Time

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/qjtCR2EnQ5dQ

Drew: What was it like to act as well as direct at the same time, because that is a juggling act and a hat trick that is not for the faint of heart.

James: Listen, when I'm, you probably know this, when I'm acting or when you're acting, the time that the guy says action and then they say cut, that's your time. As a director I can't do that, because right before my first AD says action and I'm supposed to be all relaxed and just like let the story flow out, I'm like, I've got people coming up to me with problems, there's people coming up to. The day I remember it more than anything else was locations department running up to me just before the date and going like, 'Listen, we need to change the location for tomorrow.' It was like, why is it because we can't fit the portable toilets in and if too many of the crew members decide to go at the same time, then we're really gonna be up the creek, do you know what I mean? Quite literally, and I'm like 'What the hell, action, let's go, oh God, right.'

Drew: Wait, is it true that like you wore an eye patch on the first day of filming?

James: Yeah, yeah, that's me. That was, I woke up with a thing called a chalazion. It's like a blockage of the tear ducts or something like that.

Drew: Do you think you know where that came from?

James: Crying too much?

Drew: I would say like literally that is stress.

James: Stress, yeah, it's the most stressful thing I've ever experienced directing a film.

Drew: That's what I'm talking about.

James: You must know this because you know Drew's directed a movie, right? And it's an amazing movie.

Drew: It's the most anxiety slash like pleasure I've ever felt all at the same time. It's like the agony and the ecstasy.

James: Are you gonna do more?

Drew: I would love to.

James on Painting His Nails to Keep From Biting Them

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/bYsMDPNpJmuh

Drew: Is it true that actually you do like have a little thing for nails, like you'll sometimes paint your nails actually.

James: I have painted my nails a few times. Look, they've, it's all started because I bite my nails and -

Drew: When did that start like as a kid?

James: Yeah, my mum did it and I copied her. But I, somebody gave me like nail strengthener or something like that after a manicure one time and it stopped me biting my nails -

Drew: Because it tasted so bad?

James: Yeah, yeah, no, because it was like I would go to like you know absentmindedly do that and then you just feel something different. It's hard, and you go like, 'No, no, no, no, I mustn't, I mustn't' cause the thing is you don't know you're doing it most of the time. And then the next day I thought, I'm gonna do that again, and they said, 'Well do you want me to paint your nails?' and I was like, 'Yeah.' I was like, why don't you paint them the color of my favorite football team, and then my kid will think it's really funny and hilarious. And so I got them painted green and white cause I'm a Celtic supporter and we're green and white. And I go home and I show my kid, it's like, hey hey hey, fun dad, I remember him just looking at me like I was the biggest dork. And I was just like, 'Oh, you're getting older' or I am just a dork.

Charlie on "Stranger Things" & Drew's "Firestarter" Photo Serving as Inspiration for Eleven

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/jaBWYQ2Pu4vG

Drew: I remember I was so excited. I got to do, I think it was Interview magazine, like I got to interview Millie Bobby Brown and I started the conversation by saying Gertie loves Eleven and -

Charlie: Do you know, so, when they pitched, I don't know if you know this. But obviously 'E.T.' so massive, but when they pitched the show, all the characters, they had like the adults, the teens, and then they had Eleven, and it was your picture from 'Firestarter' that they used for Eleven.

Drew: There was a, I should have said like Charlie McGee loves Eleven because it was a little more 'Firestarter' than 'E.T.' And I was enamored with the Duffer brothers. They really nailed what 70s, 80s, early 80s looked and felt like with the clothes and the cars and, it just, it was so well done

Charlie: So well done. I mean those guys are incredible, but it was, yeah, it's a love letter to that period of cinema, which is such an amazing period of cinema.

Charlie on Joe Keery Writing a Song For Him

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/lPGFluFBDX0w

Drew: Is it true that you actually wrote a song and it involves Joe, or you wrote -

Charlie: The other way around.

Drew: Joe wrote a song about you, Charlie's Garden. That's right.

Charlie: So that was last season. I have, we had sharing a house. I have my house in Atlanta I bought when we were shooting the last season, and Joe was living at the bottom of, in my friend Kevin's house at the bottom of my garden, but I had a piano, so he just popped over, he was doing, working on his album.

Drew: For Djo.

Charlie: For Djo, and he was like, 'Do you mind if I use your piano?' and I think, I went up with me, I went out on a hike and I came back and he was just like, 'Hey, I wrote this tune, do you wanna hear it?' And, it's beautiful. I mean it's a love letter to our, you know, our time in, you know, just hanging out and it's so cool to see that so many people respond to it.

Charlie on the Effect of Growing Up Around a Lot of Female Energy

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/QO9edXQAve0F

Drew: You also grew up with a lot of female energy around you.

Charlie: I did, well, yeah, I grew up with my mum and my two sisters in, in Yorkshire.

Drew: OK, what does that do to a young man?

Charlie: I think it's good for a boy to grow up around a lot of women. I think.

Drew: Why may I ask?

Charlie: I don't know, I just think there's a lot of good, good sensitivity there.

Drew: Do you feel like you understand women a little bit better?

Charlie: Oh, I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

Drew: I mean, because I don't totally understand men.

Charlie: I think women are more, a lot more empathetic, right? So I think I grew up a lot more empathetic because of that. Well, there's also a lot of like, you know, my sisters, we grew up late 90s and they were big, you know, my sisters loved singing and dancing, and I, that's, I was always dragged into that, you know, it was always my, my role to like, I don't know, they were always trying to dress me. So that's my sister Kayleigh and Levi, those Spice Girls, that was the Union Jack.

Drew: Were they into the Spice Girls?

Charlie: Massively into the Spice Girls dance routines. We lived on a little like council block and there was this green and we were always putting on like performances when we were little.

Charlie on Filming "Below" in Newfoundland

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/IAZhwHKysupm

Drew: I know that you filmed this though in a place that I've never been to and always fantasized to go to, which is Newfoundland.

Charlie: Newfoundland, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drew: What is Newfoundland like?

Charlie: Honestly, I'm not, it's incredible. It's such, I'd never heard of it.

Drew: It feels like a world onto its own.

Charlie: It's, it is, it's so isolated. I'd never heard of it. It's, Newfoundland is the first, it was, it's the most eastern point of the North American continent. It was the first place ever discovered. It was discovered by this Portuguese traveler and so, and they sent, when they found it, they sent over like a lot of Irish, a lot of English, and it's basically a fishing, you know, community town. But it's beautiful. I mean, have you seen, 'Come From Away' they made a play called 'Come From Away' about Newfoundland.

Drew: I haven't seen it.

Charlie: And it was basically, it was like, it was when 9/11 happened, it was about all the flights that got landed there, grounded in Canada, and it was about how the community takes all these people in, and they say that like you know, we all know Canadians are like the nicest people in the world. They say like the nice, that niceness was born in Newfoundland and really I've never like been into a community where you are so like they just wanna share their culture, they're so, they want to invite you in, like they wanna bring you around to the house for supper, you know, and they wanna share, they're storytellers, they wanna you know, they really, I just, I was really touched by that place.

Drew: I mean, it's beautiful, you see like the show, you feel like you are living there. It is such a beautiful example of what you would feel like when you were there because the setting and it's so authentic and the minute you start watching it, you're like, I am not where I've been before. This is not a set, this is not a movie, this is a place.

Drew Surprises Charlie's Friend Cameron

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/r3so92EKs4jC

Josh: Hey Charlie, it's me, your dad, Josh Harnett. I'm leaving you a question left behind.

If you were in a boat stranded at sea, who would be the one person that you would walk with you, aside from me, of course.

Charlie: OK, so, he's actually backstage. One of my best friends, Cameron, is sitting backstage, and, his dad was, he's into boating, so he knows how to boat, so he'd be able to get me out of there.

Drew: Well, a bestie who knows what they're doing. Is there anything better? Where's Cameron? Hi Cameron. Hello, Cameron, do you wanna come out? Can I just tell you what Cameron just said? He goes, 'OK, I have to go. I'm gonna die.' Oh, he's so sweet and adorable.

Charlie: I've just embarrassed him so much.

Drew: By the way, don't we live to do that to our friends? Like that is who you should be around the teasing and the silly and all the goodness and wherever, you know, they are is where home is, where your bestie.