Michael Vu
Anuvahood hit the big screen over the weekend and sees Michael Vu step in front of the camera for the very first time.
Not only does he take on the role of Lesoi in the movie he penned the script with the director Adam Deacon,
I caught up with Michael to talk about the movie, making his big screen debut and what lies ahead.
- Anuvahood has just been released here in the UK so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
The movie is a sort of spin off from the whole genre of Kidulthood and Adulthood, it’s not a spin off of the actual film more of the genre of the film; the whole hoodie film as a whole from Bullet Boy, Shank, Kidulthood and Adulthood and we have spun the whole genre on it’s head and made a comedy version of that whole genre.
The baseline of the story is the central character called Kay and he believes that he is a bad man and wants to be a gangster and sells drugs and have this street credibility.
And it boils down to his friends telling him that he can’t, and this frustrates him and makes him want to become this so called gangster.
And so he sets out on this journey to be this bad boy but it all goes horribly wrong.
- This is your first acting role, and you also penned the script, so how did your collaboration with Adam Deacon come about?
I have known Adam since we started secondary school together; me and Adam are now twenty eight so I have known him for sixteen years.
Me and him have been close friends and I have followed his whole acting career, every time he would come home and say ‘I got this acting’ job or ‘I didn’t get that acting job’, it just came to a certain part of his career where he felt that he was getting blocked and people weren’t letting him progress.
And I spoke him and told him that we had seen Noel Clarke go out and write Kidulthood and Adulthood and he is now on this big pedestal with everyone looking up to him - personally I felt that Adam could do the same and I said to him ‘look we could sit down and write something’ and we started to knuckle down and put pen to paper and that’s how Anuvahood was written.
- You took on the role of Lesoi in the movie so can you tell me a little bit about him?
His character is quite like a lot of things, not all kids, but there are kids in the inner state where he is a good boy, he’s got good parenting, his parents are quite strict but due to living in the estate he tends to just get caught up in things.
He starts hanging around with this character called Kenneth and being in this gang he gets pulled down into trouble but he doesn’t really want to get into that - but because of his friends he gets pulled into that.
- As I have mentioned you collaborated with Adam in the writing of the script so where did the idea for the movie come from?
Me and Adam had ideas of writing films years ago we used to talk about one day writing a film together - but back then it was just a pipedream.
Over the years if we meant an interesting character or did something funny then we would always say ‘that would be great in a movie’ or ‘we will put that in a movie’. So by the time we got to writing the movie we already had all these ideas in our head it was just a case of mapping it out.
- How did you find working with Adam? And how did you find him as a director?
Writing wise we would spend hours and hours trying to find the right syllable, the right wording and the right timing of the comedy to get it right - there would be nights when we would be up til six in the morning.
When we were done I would shake his hand and would say ‘I will speak you tomorrow’ but by the time I would get home I would ring him and say what if we did this? Or what if we did that? And he would be like ’yeah that’s brilliant idea lets talk more tomorrow’
But in about fifteen minutes later, when were in bed, he would ring me and say ’I have got another idea’.
Sure there are times that we collided but we are so close, he is like a brother to me, it would literally take five or ten minutes to ring each other back and say’ I have another idea’.
On the directing side for me, as a writer, it was easy was easy because the vision that he had I shared we always knew what we wanted from the get go, as writers, we knew we needed it like this, like that and like this.
So when he was directing I knew what he wanted and he knew what I wanted so we were always on the same page so if he ever said ‘ I want it like this’ I would totally understand.
And if he would say something I would sometimes say ‘Maybe we should have it like that’ or ‘remember when we writing it we spoke of it like that?’ And he would say ‘that’s true lets go back to that.‘ So it was easy - I had no problems with him.
- Anuvahood if your first acting role so how did you find stepping in front of the camera for the first time?
To be honest Adam and the other co-director Dan Tolan had to persuade me to do it because I had seen Adam go through this whole limelight thing and still being around our rough area - sometimes it can cause problems being this so called ghetto superstar and still being in our surroundings.
That’s something that I didn’t want to get into I wanted to be more the writer and be behind the scenes but when we went to cast for Lesoi we couldn’t find anyone - literally no on could step up to the plate.
Adam wasn’t happy with anyone, we had brought people in but it just didn’t feel right and I knew it didn’t fit. So when it came down to the last point of casting it was agreed upon that I would take on the role. Now I look back I was happy to do.
- Well you have touched on my next question really is acting something that you are now keen to pursue or is writing more your thing?
I do enjoy writing, I use to write music years ago, so I have always enjoyed the creative side of writing something down and putting it together - it’s something that I have a real passion for.
Acting was something, even when we were kids, Adam use to say ‘you should have done acting’ and ‘you should have followed me’ but I don’t think that I had the self belief and the confidence to do it. But now we had done this everyone has come back and spoke to me and said good things.
So yeah if the right acting job came along I would definitely consider continuing acting.
- The movie brings together a great cast so did you pen the script with any of the actors in mind? And can you talk a bit about the casting process?
When we were writing the film there was one specific character, Richie Campbell who plays Tyrone, that we did have in mind.
Adam and Richie did a film, I think it was back in 2005 or 2006, call Wilderness and Richie spoke to Adam about a character that he met on the street - and he reinacted the character in front of Adam and he loved it and told Richie never to give that character away because he was going to write a film and put that character in the film.
At the time Richie didn’t think much of it, obviously Adam came back and told me the story and I have heard Richie do accents, so when we came to write Anuvahood and the character of Tyrone it was sort of from the get go that Richie Campbell would bring that character to life - with the whole backstory.
Adam has so many friends in the acting game that he wanted to bring through and put in this film like Jaime Winstone, Ashley Walters, Femi Oyeniran, he met Jazzie Zonzolo on channel AKA whilst doing a sketch show, we have always loved Richard Blackwood, Adam is good friends with Richard so we were always involved in bringing Richard in.
Those people were always in our mind when we were writing the script and after, when it came to casting, we could bring up names and Linda Robson was at the top of the list, Miss Jocelyn, we brought in Lethal B, Mz Bratt - literally loads of people that Adam knew and wanted to get on board. And once they saw the script and what we were doing they were happy to.
- What was the buzz like on set - the movie looks like you had a lot of fun?
Yeah for me as an actor I got to relax more - all I had to do was learn my lines and make sure I delivered them correctly. During takes and set ups me and the boys would sit there and crack jokes and have a good laugh.
But for Adam, this is his first directing job, every time he has acted in a movie he has come back and told me ‘when I’m acting I just get to chill and banter with the rest of the cast’ but this time it was different because he was behind the camera.
He had to do so much and was running around like a headless chicken while the rest of the boys got to sit and laugh - which was nice to me. But for Adam I think it was a lot of hard work for him.
- Finally what’s next for you?
At the moment me and Adam are writing up a synopsis for… we have go two ideas for two films, well we have got a few ideas but two that we want to bring out next, and we are just working out which one we want to use.
So we are at the blueprint stages of our next film but it’s definitely something will come very soon.
Anuvahood is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Anuvahood hit the big screen over the weekend and sees Michael Vu step in front of the camera for the very first time.
Not only does he take on the role of Lesoi in the movie he penned the script with the director Adam Deacon,
I caught up with Michael to talk about the movie, making his big screen debut and what lies ahead.
- Anuvahood has just been released here in the UK so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
The movie is a sort of spin off from the whole genre of Kidulthood and Adulthood, it’s not a spin off of the actual film more of the genre of the film; the whole hoodie film as a whole from Bullet Boy, Shank, Kidulthood and Adulthood and we have spun the whole genre on it’s head and made a comedy version of that whole genre.
The baseline of the story is the central character called Kay and he believes that he is a bad man and wants to be a gangster and sells drugs and have this street credibility.
And it boils down to his friends telling him that he can’t, and this frustrates him and makes him want to become this so called gangster.
And so he sets out on this journey to be this bad boy but it all goes horribly wrong.
- This is your first acting role, and you also penned the script, so how did your collaboration with Adam Deacon come about?
I have known Adam since we started secondary school together; me and Adam are now twenty eight so I have known him for sixteen years.
Me and him have been close friends and I have followed his whole acting career, every time he would come home and say ‘I got this acting’ job or ‘I didn’t get that acting job’, it just came to a certain part of his career where he felt that he was getting blocked and people weren’t letting him progress.
And I spoke him and told him that we had seen Noel Clarke go out and write Kidulthood and Adulthood and he is now on this big pedestal with everyone looking up to him - personally I felt that Adam could do the same and I said to him ‘look we could sit down and write something’ and we started to knuckle down and put pen to paper and that’s how Anuvahood was written.
- You took on the role of Lesoi in the movie so can you tell me a little bit about him?
His character is quite like a lot of things, not all kids, but there are kids in the inner state where he is a good boy, he’s got good parenting, his parents are quite strict but due to living in the estate he tends to just get caught up in things.
He starts hanging around with this character called Kenneth and being in this gang he gets pulled down into trouble but he doesn’t really want to get into that - but because of his friends he gets pulled into that.
- As I have mentioned you collaborated with Adam in the writing of the script so where did the idea for the movie come from?
Me and Adam had ideas of writing films years ago we used to talk about one day writing a film together - but back then it was just a pipedream.
Over the years if we meant an interesting character or did something funny then we would always say ‘that would be great in a movie’ or ‘we will put that in a movie’. So by the time we got to writing the movie we already had all these ideas in our head it was just a case of mapping it out.
- How did you find working with Adam? And how did you find him as a director?
Writing wise we would spend hours and hours trying to find the right syllable, the right wording and the right timing of the comedy to get it right - there would be nights when we would be up til six in the morning.