The Artful Dodger: Thomas Brodie-Sangster talks taking on a classic Dickens character
Boyish charm: Thomas Brodie-Sangster stars as Dickens’ ringleading pickpocket who gets sent to Australia. Photo / Supplied
Even with the dodgy definition of a globe-spanning Zoom connection, Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s 33-year-old face looks decidedly boyish. After a career of playing wide-eyed kids ever since he was Sam, Liam Neeson’s lovelorn stepson in Love Actually in 2003, he finally got to play grown-ups in shows such as The Queen’s Gambit and Pistol in the 2020s.
In Danny Boyle’s 2022 series about the Sex Pistols, Brodie-Sangster stole the show as punk mastermind Malcolm McLaren, who acted like a sort of situationist Fagin – of Dickens’ Oliver Twist – towards the damaged London street urchins in the band. Brodie-Sangster thought so, too. He tells the Listener he remembers writing “Fagin” in the margins of his script. As McLaren, he was finally playing somebody near his own age. It wouldn’t be his last semi-Dickensian character, either.
In his teens and early 20s, he had been in the dystopian YA trilogy The Maze Runner. He was in Game of Thrones for two seasons (as Jojen Reed), Wolf Hall for one, and a Star Wars movie … well, for a couple of seconds. Talking of franchises, had things gone his way at the 2000 audition, he would have been Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, too. He has said he was bitterly disappointed at the time but these days he’s more philosophical: “Ninety per cent of the time you don’t get the role, so you have to find a way of being okay with it.” And given his career and Rupert Grint’s more modest one since, you suspect he’s learnt to live with it.
Brodie-Sangster has carved out a place for himself somewhere between character actor and off-beat leading man. It’s been helped by that baby face – he played a young Paul McCartney in the early days of John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy – and a delivery that in any accent can make him sound like the smartest guy in the room.
But there’s a trace of boyhood in his new role. He’s the title character in The Artful Dodger, which takes the ringleader pickpocket of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and transports him to Australia. There, a few decades later, his manual dexterity has led to a career as a trainee surgeon in the days before anaesthetic, sterilisation or actual medical qualifications for those wielding the hacksaws.
The funny thing is, perhaps, that Brodie-Sangster, an actor who has played a fair few boys who talked like men, is playing Dodger/ Jack Dawkins as a grown-up. The Dodger of the book and past screen versions became a beloved character for being a juvenile delinquent who sounded many decades older. Was his casting perhaps so an audience could still see the boy in the bloke?
“Ha. I hadn’t thought of that at all. That’s probably a question for someone else but it’s interesting … maybe even if it’s a subconscious decision.”
In the settlement of “Port Victory”, Dawkins is joined by old mentor-in-crime Fagin, who has apparently survived being hanged (as he was in the book) and is played by a very lively David Thewlis.
Much of the eight-part series for Disney gets its spark from the pair’s double act. Fagin is up to his old tricks and is trying to drag the reformed Dawkins back into petty larceny. Meanwhile, he strikes up a relationship with Lady Belle Fox (Maia Mitchell), the governor’s daughter and an aspiring doctor. Also featuring in the show’s rogues gallery are Tim Minchin and Damon Herriman.
“I was a big fan of David Thewlis. We did a chemistry read together and it was just easy, and really fun … and when things are easy, it means they are good. I really enjoyed bouncing off David.”