Life on the inside has long been depicted in film and TV, often rendered as a more palatable version of reality for viewing pleasure, but first-time director Cal McMau is doing no such thing. Wasteman is the British filmmaker’s debut feature, and one which has rightfully just earned him a BAFTA nomination. Telling the story of Taylor and Dee – played by David Jonsson and Tom Blyth respectively – Wasteman dissects the pressure cooker environment of a UK prison, displaying acts of senseless violence, questioning modern-day masculinity and examining the hierarchical ecosystem one must find their place within.

Made in just eighteen days in Shepton Mallet Prison, Wasteman’s rawness comes from its dedication to keeping the depiction of incarceration as accurate as possible. Alongside the stellar cast of British acting talent, 50 per cent of the extras were ex-prisoners themselves, a true manifestation of one of the film’s most important questions: what can life look like after prison?

When we meet Taylor, he is on the cusp of being released, having served time for a crime he accidentally committed as a teenager and successfully kept a low profile throughout, until the arrival of Dee. His new cellmate is the antithesis of him entirely, a brash and intimidating character who wants to make a name for himself as the prison’s most feared drug dealer and isn’t afraid of who becomes collateral damage in his growing empire. In their polarising opposites, Blyth and Jonnsson find the perfect foil. Blyth is armed with misplaced aggression, bursting at the seams with repressed trauma and a fragile ego, while Jonsson’s timid demeanour is fractured by addiction and vulnerability. Their dynamic is electrifying, constantly shifting from allies to enemies through promises of freedom and status. As the stakes and pressure rise, the intensity of what’s on the line begins to come clear, through bursts of intense physical violence, mistaken accusations and questions of morality. When the credits roll, you don’t quite realise you have been holding your breath for 90 minutes straight.

Ella Joyce: This project has been floating around in the ether somewhere since 2017. How did the script first come into both of your lives?
David Jonsson: This was my first-ever film audition. I left drama school and only did theatre because that’s what I wanted to do and loved. This came through, and I thought it was just such a brilliant script. I really wanted it, so I geared up for an audition. I did the audition with the casting director, and I thought I nailed it, and then I heard nothing. I was like, “Oh, turns out films are quite hard.” [laughs] But little did I know that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my bad audition, the film had just fallen apart. It took some years, obviously, and in that time, I’ve been lucky enough to be doing some work, and the second that you gain a bit of agency, I think it’s our job to chase the things that we’re passionate about. So, I found and met Sophia Gibber, who’s our wonderful producer on this, and turns out that she found the script, loved it, met with Cal [McMau], and had it ready to try and build it. I came on board and I felt very privileged, because I got to be a producer on this as well. To build the character, to build the world and shape it out in a place that felt really current and relevant, and not trying to make this into an exotic movie that felt very Hollywood and whatnot, but make something that felt precise, was what I wanted to do.
Tom Blyth: I came on a lot later, although I had a meeting with Cal about a year before it actually all came together, and then it didn’t come together. Eventually, I moved on, but I never forgot about it, because I always thought the script and that role are one of a kind. They came back to me about a year later, when things finally started rolling again, and I had a meeting with Cal. I think he was on the fence as to whether he thought I could pull it off, which I’ve not talked about really at all, but David already knew me, because we’d been introduced through our agent. I think you advocated for me, didn’t you?
DJ: Of course I did.
TB: David went to bat and was like, “Trust me, he can do it. Just because he’s played a lot of Americans and been in Hunger Games or whatever, this is actually more in his wheelhouse than you think.” Which I knew, but it’s funny in this industry how people get an idea of what they think they want to put you in. Whereas I was like, “This is what I want to be doing, playing rough, raw characters.” 

EJ: The characters you both play really are that. What attracted you to them, and what was it like building their dynamic together on-screen? David, your character, is a lot more timid, and Tom, you come in like a bit of a whirlwind, to say the least. [all laugh]
DJ: One of the hard things about being a relatively OK actor is that people struggle to know where to put you. Tom says I advocated for him, but I didn’t. I just knew what was right. For me, it’s easy to tell that he is way beyond what he’s showing you; not every actor does that. Some actors play themselves, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Other actors venture to find character and bring it to them and bring themselves to it. That’s what Tom is, and that’s what I strive to be. With that said, I think when you find a script that feels socially relevant, socially special, but also something that you can bring yourself to bring and the character to you, you strive for that. Taylor [David’s Wasteman character] is just one of those characters to me. He strikes me as someone I’ve met before, someone I knew. Growing up in East London, I always felt like it was one step off incarceration, one step off addiction. It actually felt way closer to me than anything else I’ve done. Just knowing these people, or having an idea of them, makes you want to explore them. That’s what drew me to the character, for sure.
TB: I think we were lucky in that when you see them in the film, the characters are meeting each other for the first time when you meet them. So, there is a certain amount of allowing us to discover in the moment what the relationship is as we go. We didn’t film chronologically, but we tried to as much as possible, and I think my entrance was one of the first things we shot, wasn’t it? We got to have that first experience pretty early on, of Dee [Tom’s Wasteman character] coming in and completely changing the ecosystem of not only their cell, but also the prison around them. And he does, he purposefully comes in and wants to change the ecosystem and the air pressure so that he can control it and benefit from it. I remember coming in on the first day. David and I already knew each other; we had a few rehearsals, and I had to really allow myself to go there. I almost felt bad because he was so focused, and so dropped in, and I had to be bouncing off the walls and kind of untamed. We’re doing these polar opposite things, but with the same goal in mind. It was this constant balancing act of counterbalancing what the other person was doing. Cal didn’t want to rehearse; he had time set aside for rehearsals, and then at the last minute, he panicked that rehearsing might take away the rawness or the spontaneity. David and I are both trained in the theatre, so we advocated for a few days of rehearsal, because we thought we’ve both gotta really go there, it’s a crazy journey they go on in a short amount of time. We thought, you know what, the trust is everything. We spent a week just really building some trust and rehearsing the scenes, and I think it paid off tenfold because it meant that once we got to those crazy scenes, we just had each other’s backs.

EJ: We often see prison depicted in TV and film, but something about this felt incredibly raw. While shooting, you shot in a real prison with ex-prisoners. Can you walk me through that process? How did those factors enable you to tell the story?
DJ: It was absolutely our base. We joke about this, but I think we’re also being quite serious because there’s a version of this film that is made for at least ten times the budget of what we made this film on, which is like absolutely nothing. That version is almost an action pattern; it celebrates what they think this world is. That’s not what we did. We wanted to make a version of this world that was absolutely grounded in what it actually is. To do that, we worked with a charity that really gave us so much. It’s a charity called Switchback, whose whole ethos is bringing former prisoners back into society and helping them along in their journey. They completely got behind this project, so much so that Tom, Cal and I really, really benefited from all their experiences. They weren’t just our consultants; in a way, they were our cast mates, 50 percent of the people that you see on screen were former prisoners. They gave us everything down to the details of our cell and how it looks, why you wouldn’t have certain things in there, because for that person’s category of prisoner, they wouldn’t be able to have aerosols, for example. Things that were so detailed then meant that we’re building drama, action, thrill on top of that, but that wasn’t the base; the base was who these people actually were. 

EJ: You can’t talk about this film without touching on masculinity; it’s an ever-evolving conversation, but what elements of masculinity do you feel this story shines a light on?
TB: For me, I think masculinity is at the core of the whole film. Without it, you don’t have a film. I think their relationship takes two looks at masculinity, it’s one person who who has accidentally done harm and wants to repent for it and now wants to do no harm, and one person who has had harm done to him and believes “OK, in order to never get hurt again, I have to hurt other people, or at least hurt them before they hurt me.” Two men who are using their masculinity in different ways and who have different responsibilities. One as a young father, and one who has no responsibility. I think the whole film lifts the lid on how men deal with their trauma, or don’t deal with their trauma, and how that then comes through in the way they perform their masculinity. Dee is a great example of a man who, instead of dealing with his own shit, puts his shit on everybody else. I think we’re living in a time where, for a while, we were trying to correct that, and we seem to be going back to a time culturally, at least in England or America, where people are trying to normalise that again. It’s like, “Oh, don’t go to therapy, don’t deal with your shit, put it on other people instead,” and that’s applauded, and I don’t get it. Hopefully, films like ours are a cinematic way of studying that.

“The whole film lifts the lid on how men deal with their trauma, or don’t deal with their trauma.”

EJ: It’s also a study on the question of choice and justice and rehabilitation and what people can become beyond prison. That idea of choice and duplicity is then also placed onto the audience because, at times, I really didn’t know whose side I was on or who to believe.
TB: 100 percent. I think that’s what Cal did really well with both the script and the execution. Every time you think you know who one of these guys is, they surprise you, and that’s what people are like in real life. So many people are out there doing bad things and perpetuating bad notions, and then going home and being great family people. It is so complicated, hopefully a good film shows you that nobody’s one thing, we’re the sum of our actions, the actions we do again and again and again, right?
DJ: Ella, I’m so honoured to hear you say that, by the way. We don’t know what this film is yet; it only exists because we made it for an audience, but I think something we would love people to know is that we tried to ask what prison could mean beyond that. You know, if we did a survey with people and said you’re going to see a prison movie, what would you see? They’re going to say violence, action, toxic masculinity, and I don’t think they would have said choices. How people become the people that they are, how complex people are, I don’t think they expect to see that in a prison thriller, and I love that we’re able to do that with ours. I hope other people feel that. 

EJ: Not to spoil the ending, but David, when your character makes his final decision, I was like, “OK ballsy!” [all laugh]
DJ: That’s exactly the right reaction! [laughs]
TB: He’s so smart, using his own weakness, which is his addiction, to turn it against his oppressor. It’s so good.

EJ: It was a real shift in power dynamics. Aside from everything, it does feel like the ebbs and flows of power dynamics and what that means for the people involved in this ecosystem is at the centre of the story.
DJ: You’re right. I was talking with Alex Hassell, who brilliantly plays Paul in this film. Love him to pieces and respect him as an actor. But he was talking about Tom, because Tom gained weight for this, ya know, muscle… Obviously. [all laugh]
TB: Not much, to be fair.
DJ: By gaining weight, I don’t mean just fat.
TB: You’re setting me up for failure here. Everyone’s going to go and see it and go, “Did he?!” [all laugh]
DJ: Tom gained weight for it, and I lost weight for it. Alex was talking about physical transformation, and Alex brilliantly said about Tom being so physically imposing and Taylor literally not being at all. But the thing about life is, man, woman, whoever, you’re going to use what you have to save your skin and also save the people that you love. That’s what I really love about it, in real life, it doesn’t matter what these men are or what you are, you have to use what you will fight for survival in any way, shape or form you can use. I thought that was a brilliantly true thing about this film as well.
TB: It’s about what you do for family, right? Because Taylor alone doesn’t save himself. He just could have done it before now; he could have got off his addiction, he could have gone cold turkey, he could have dealt with the stuff that’s holding him down. And really, it’s not until his son comes back into his life that he has the foresight and bravery to see what needs to be done. Taylor doesn’t have the clarity of mind to turn it all around and do what needs to be done until his son’s life is on the line. You know that not only could Dee destroy you and your chances of getting out, but also your life, but also he knows where your son lives, and it’s like that, what will you do for family when push comes to shove?

“Every time you think you know who one of these guys is, they surprise you.”

EJ: That was really evident in the final scene when David, you were cutting the other prisoner’s hair, and he started talking about his son. You could see your whole demeanor shift as soon as you heard talk of a child and family on the outside. I thought of him as a villain throughout, and then I felt my opinion shift, too.
DJ: He was played by Corin Silva. You’re so right. Even just as a movie fan, when I watched that bit, everything you thought about him changed in that one moment. He says about his son, Gary Junior, and you’re like, “What?!” [laughs] I agree, I think that idea of family is a beautiful thing that this film touches upon.

EJ: I loved the way the film was shot, interspersing iPhone footage and those slow-mo montage scenes of you all in a cell while Gosh by Jamie xx is playing; those moments really amped up the pace tenfold. What was it like working with Cal as a director on his debut?
TB: I love that scene, and I love that song. He’s so smart, and it’s been such a pleasure watching him realise how good he is. He’s such a humble guy but so talented and articulate about his vision, and watching him realise that people are impressed by him has been a really magical thing. We knew it, but it takes a while sometimes for someone to see it in themselves. What a wonderful thing to watch him execute so perfectly his vision, and then for it to be paying off.
DJ: We’re lucky enough to have him as a mate now, and we talk a lot about our journey in film. Something that I haven’t come in contact with much, but I’m starting to now, is the honesty in filmmaking. How long it takes to make films, the journey of people being from one moment in this position, and one moment in that position, which means that their art making is completely different. I think about Cal, and I think about how brilliant he is now, and I think it would have been a different film entirely seven years ago if it had actually been made then. I couldn’t have done what I did, what I’ve done in this one – I wasn’t ready for it. I think about making this film, and I honestly couldn’t have imagined playing opposite anyone apart from Tom. We shot it in eighteen days; it was so tough, but I wouldn’t change it. You know what I mean? The alchemy of filmmaking sometimes just felt spot on.
TB: Something about Cal as well is that he loves to delve into these gritty worlds, but he does it with such humanity and empathy. The videos you mentioned were a catalyst for the story. He discovered these underground videos that people were making in prison, documenting their own lives and documenting crazy stuff. He compiled a bunch of videos, but also wouldn’t share the accounts because he wanted to protect them. Whether or not you think they should be doing that stuff inside, he was like, “I don’t want to be a tourist in that world. I want to make a film about it, but I don’t want to exoticise it or be involved in suppressing it in any way.” I just had mad respect for that, because I just thought, that’s an artist, through and through, who is fascinated by something, wants to shine a light on it, but doesn’t want to wade in and make it all Hollywood and endanger it in any way. I think that’s a credit to his humanity. 

Wasteman is out in cinemas now.