Richie Campbell Interview For Adam Deacon’s Hilarious UK Urban Comedy ‘Anuvahood’

Adam Deacon’s directional debut ‘Anuvahood’ follows Kenneth aka Kay (Deacon), the local wasteman who with the bailiffs banging on the door, parents screaming in his ear, and finding no luck with the ladies, he needs to FIX UP, and fast. To make matters worse is Tyrone (Richie Campbell), the local badman who’s out to open up a world of hurt for Kenneth and his misfit crew. Check out what Richie Campbell had to say about the film below. ‘Anuvahood’ is out in cinemas this Friday – 18th of March.

How did you get involved with Anuvahood? I know you’ve been friends with Adam for a while now.

Richie Campbell: Yeah, initially it started when me and Adam done a film called ’Wilderness’ together,  we done that about five years ago, we look proper young (laughs). Basically we did that film, I remember we were up in our hotel room chilling and I was telling him the story about this guy who thought that I was messing around with his girl, so he stepped to me, he was this big guy, he looked mad and he had this squeaky voice, so I was telling Adam the story and he was wetting himself, he was literally crying with laughter. That was initially how it started, then every time we’d bump into each other we kept talking about it, he kept saying “I’m gonna write that, I’m gonna put it in the film,” I was like “cool, cool do what you’re doing,” at the time I didn’t really think anything of it.

What people don’t understand is a lot us young actors kind of know each other, we used to hang around a lot. Basically he said he was writing it and he has this character in mind that he thought I should play. Then it happened quicker than we all expected. I was away, I was in a theatre production at the time, and that project clashed, but what thankfully what happened was Adam said he really wanted me to play the part, Revolver, the distributor’s were a bit iffy at first because they had only seen my drama-based stuff, no comedy. So I came down to Revolver, read the script and I had seen a film called ‘Bronson’ with Tom Hardy, and I just liked the way he played his part, I took bits from that, I took some stereotype’s, like the guys who hit the gym just for summer (laughs), just different pieces.

Even your pitball walk (laughs).

Richie Campbell: (Laughs) Yeah, the whole stance, it’s a spoof so we can get away with a lot of stuff, but underneath it there’s a lot of truth in it, there are them guys who get wedge for summer, there are them guys who sneak around without their baby Mum knowing. It’s playing on stereotype’s, every stereotype possible and putting it into this guy, seeing what we could get away with. There was a lot more actually that we had to strip back because it got a bit silly.

There’s certain parts in the film that are absolutely hilarious, how did you stay in character? That must have been tough, especially the Tomato Ketchup part.

Richie Campbell: That’s gonna haunt me (laughs). You know what happened, me and Adam were talking about it, there’s a scene in ‘Don’t Be A Menace To Society’ where he does all that stuff, we just thought wouldn’t it be funny if we did it with Ketchup (laughs). My mind…I didn’t know what happened, because you’re in that place where we had done about two weeks filming already, I was set with the Tyrone character, I was like yeah let’s go in and do it. Then when it came to that scene I didn’t feel no way about doing it, I think there’s a shot that will be on the DVD extras where as soon as they say cut, I became Richie again, my face was so funny, I started spitting out the Ketchup, it was not nice. I made sure Aisleyne washed her foot before (laughs). It wasn’t too bad, it sounds odd to say that, but I was so involved with what we were doing, but as soon as they said cut something went in my head ‘ping’ and I thought what the hell am I doing! I don’t do that in my day to day at all.

Because it’s a comedy and you’re around friends was it hard to keep switched on?

Richie Campbell: Not really you know, because everyone was up against time – we only had four weeks to shoot, which is not along time, I done everything myself in ten or eleven days, because I was doing another thing at the same time. But the again it was hard because we had to get everything spot on as soon as possible. We did have jokes, there was a lot of times where we had a lot of jokes.

A lot of my stuff was scripted, but we still improvised around it, so when I would come out with some random stuff you would see some of the guys literally bussing up, but it was hard because I knew if I started laughing that whole shot is gone. There were moments like that but because we knew what we all needed in the time we had that banter but still got everyone done.

What was it like working with Adam as a director? Seeing as you’ve had that friendly relationship with him before.

Richie Campbell: Yeah it was mad, I already had it in my head that cool, Adam’s the director, so I have to respect that, and work with him, that was cool because we had that great relationship anyway, we both went to Anna Scher which is improvisational based.

In my hearts of hearts before we started I thought that it would be hard, because it is a lot for one person to take on board, to be the actor, the writer, your starring in it, your directing it, so after your shots you have to watch the monitor and come back, it’s quite time consuming as well, so I remember saying to him in the beginning make sure you’ve got someone else to help you because it’s gonna be a bit of a mad one (laughs). But as soon as we started to shoot, honestly I’m VERY passionate about acting, but when I saw what Adam was doing, and the way he was so passionate about it I knew there would be no problem what so ever. It fed into me, he was great. There were moments when we started calling him Diva Deacon because he’d be like to us “don’t mess up the shot yeah, don’t mess up the shot,” or “lemme hear that line again, say it again,” so we were cool and did it, then when it came to his shot he’d be mid-flow then go “cut, cut,” (laughs) so what would happen was half the shots would be on him, so we just laughed and called him Diva Deacon.

It was cool though, I proper rate him, I’ve got A LOT of respect for him, I’ve always had a lot of respect for him as a friend first and foremost, but now as a director as well, because he had the vision, no one could have really directed it as good as him to be honest, it had to be him.

After this have you guys got other stuff you’re working on together?

Richie Campbell: Yeah definitely, I’ve got quite a few thing coming up but the main thing for me is once we’ve finished doing this is me and Adam, and quite a few of the other guys are discussing doing other films,  not necessarily in this genre as well. All kinds of things, taking it different places, sci-fi’s (laughs) something random.

Would you ever direct a film?

Richie Campbell: Yeah, I didn’t want to initially but I’m quite into dialogue based stuff, and acting stripped bare,  so for me I’d like to direct my own film which is real gritty and people based, character based.