Do you go to lots of music festivals?
As much as I can. I went to Latitude a few weeks ago and you get things there that you don’t get at other festivals, like raving in the woods until 7 in the morning with amazing lighting and weird dub step sounds. I had a great time.

Did you enjoy filming You Instead at T In The Park?
Yeah, amazing! There was an amazing party atmosphere, although we were in a different mindset to the other people that were there as we were running around trying to make a 90 minute film. We had 20 minutes to shoot a scene and then you had to move on so we rehearsed every day for three weeks before shooting and then in the evenings went to a studio with Eugene Kelly from The Vascelines who wrote some of the music for [on-screen band Treadway’s character fronted] The Make. Except for the song, “You Instead” which I wrote.

Wow! Had they named the film before you wrote that?
No, it was meant to be called “In The Park” and then they changed the title to that song, which is mental.

In your role, your band plays to a large crowd towards the end of the film – how was that orchestrated? Did you have to stop the festival and make everyone aware and do a quick set?
No, it’s all clever editing. You would need about five hours to set all that up, logistically it would be impossible to do in a half hour set. But also the audience have paid to come and watch bands they want to see and I think morally it would have been slightly questionable had we gone ‘yeah, we’re going to play now and we’re a fake band in a film.’ So we played Thursday night before the festival began and there was the field and a few people down at the front to create the audience so I could walk down to them. But, in my mind there was a fuck load of people.

How was it to work with director David Mackenzie?
I think he is an incredibly brave film maker and has such a creative mind – especially if you look at his other films. He’s not afraid to take risks. And this was definitely a risk. He said to me the first time I met him, “look, I don’t know if this is possible. If you want to come on this journey, well find out.” The fact a film that is watchable has come out of it is quite an achievement. I’d love to work with him again.

You are cuffed to Natalia Tena for most of the film – how was she to work with?
I’d never met her before and she is a force of nature. We bonded on the fact we were about to take on a huge monumental task and I remember we all went out in Glasgow for dinner before we went out to film and realised this isn’t a film you can over-run, you can’t drop a few scenes, you’ve got 18 scenes to do each day. So we got berocca inside us and went out. She’s in a band herself, so she’s a musician and we played around with that and we played music and stuff together and we got on really well.

You’ve done the big Hollywood thing, having been in Clash Of The Titans last year [for which he played the part of mad cult leader Prokopion], which must have had a massive budget and then You Instead must be really small. What’s the main difference?
Catering. Literally a days catering on Clash Of The Titans could have paid for this film. It was crazy. But, bizarrely, I thought I would struggle with Clash Of The Titans because everything else I’ve done has been more independent and lower budget so I thought staring at a tennis ball at the end of a stick in front of green screen would not be for me but I really got into that. And I loved working with the director, Louis Leterrier, and he would let me come in and say “Louis, I’ve re-written this part of this speech in the script” and he’d be like “yeah, cool.” I thought he would have to go and check with 12 producers over the change of a comma, but he would let me gabble on and so I really enjoyed that.

What attracts you to every project?
Every job I want a different colour for my pallet. If it’s something close to me I find it harder. That’s why my first job with my brother [twin, Harry in 2005’s Brothers Of The Head] was amazing as a conjoined twin because it’s a physical thing. Learning to play music for this was great and that’s what I really enjoy – becoming someone else. Doing “Attack The Block” recently where I play a posh stoner, my mum was like “you’re playing yourself!” And I was like, “We’re not posh. We are not a rich family.”

Having now played a rock star and revealing to us that you have a talent with music, do you feel you are at a crossroads where you could go down either route?
I think I want to do it all really! Even in the next six months I plan to record an EP and play some gigs but I’m not trying to take over the music industry. If someone who is really famous as an actor tries to put a single out it can be weird. But I’m not that and I think it can be very separate so if I make songs up and play them in a pub in Camden, people won’t really know. I’ve been lucky I can do it in a film.

You Instead is in cinemas tomorrow.

Main photograph: Andrea Vecchiato
Interview: Seamus Duff

The post Luke Treadaway: Music Lover appeared first on Wonderland.

Plucked from their first year of drama school to star in a haunting mockumentary about conjoined punk-rockers, Luke and Harry Treadaway became overnight indie stars. Any young actor would kill for such a launchpad, and the twins, now 24, got stuck into Brothers Of The Head with relish, spending the entire shoot sewn together in a wetsuit and even sharing a bed.

“Since then, though, we’ve been off doing our own things,” chirps Harry, the younger by twenty minutes, at London’s Holborn Studios. Harry has boosted his film CV with the likes of Joy Division biopic Control and Tim Robbins-starrer City Of Ember. Luke, meanwhile, has made a name for himself as one of the Bright Young Things of British theatre, with star turns in the National Theatre’s War Horse and Philip Ridley’s Piranha at the Soho.

Spend five minutes in their company and it’s clear that Harry, eerily reminiscent of a cocky young Malcolm McDowell, is the more confident of the two. He’s also more restless, eternally making roll-ups or fiddling with his new iPhone. By contrast, Luke seems softer-edged, sweeter, perhaps – and happy to let his brother take the lead.

Four years since their startling debut, the Treadaways are coming together for their second joint professional outing, this time on stage. Mark Shopping and Fucking Ravenhill’s two-hander Over There is part of the Royal Court’s new season Off The Wall, marking twenty years since the Berlin Wall was smashed into tiny, tourist-pocket-sized chunks. Luke and Harry play Franz and Karl, identical twins separated as infants when their mother escapes to the West, taking one son with her and leaving the other behind. “It’s a great idea, I can’t wait to get stuck in,” Harry grins.

But while Ravenhill’s piece probes at the nature of twinhood and the brothers have consented to being interviewed together, their genetic relationship turns out to be a topic neither Luke nor Harry seem keen to discuss…

Wonderland: I see you’ve succumbed to the lure of the iPhone, Harry.

HARRY: I just got it a couple of weeks ago.

LUKE: I’ve hardly spoken to him since. I’m very jealous.

HARRY: I’ve realised that it’s like the temptation of man – it’s like taking a bite of the apple in the Garden of Eden. It’s as close to an identity card as we can have because it’s saying exactly what I’m doing on the internet, what music I’m listening to, and in the Book of Revelations there’s a bit that says when there’s a chip in the eye of man, mankind will fall. This is a chip – a computer chip – and it’s got the apple with a bite mark.

LUKE: It’s weird how you were saying that you can type in where you want to go and it will direct you there.

HARRY: Yeah, it makes you lazy. If you lose a signal, it’s like, ‘What the hell do I do now?’

Wonderland: Are you looking forward to the Royal Court play?

HARRY: Yeah, we haven’t done a play together since college. /I/ haven’t done a play since coming out of college. You’ll have to teach me the ropes.

LUKE: I’ll show you how it’s done. It’s funny how it can go from us having not worked together for three years to suddenly something cropping up on the Wednesday and by Friday we’re doing it together… although we know that we won’t do many things together in our lives. We’re not going to make a habit of it. But I’m deeply excited about this.

HARRY: It’s like a complete extension into the adult world of playing in your living room with your brother.

LUKE: Which is what you do anyway on any job with other, non-genetically similar people.

Wonderland: Who’s playing which role?

HARRY: We might just decide before we go on every night. Alternate.

LUKE: It would keep it fresh.

HARRY: We haven’t decided yet. I’ve been saying to people that we’re doing it and people go, ‘Did Mark write it for you?’ And what’s weird is that he didn’t at all. It says on the first page that it’s up to every production whether they do it with real twins or not.

Wonderland: Did you avoid working together again after Brothers Of The Head?

LUKE: Yes, there were some things which were proffered but we just felt…

HARRY: …It would have been stupid if we’d gone and done another brother thing straight after drama school.

LUKE: But we haven’t consciously tried to do anything ever. There’s no weird planning. We’ve just gone up for things and either got them or not.

HARRY: We go up for the same stuff sometimes. Sometimes one gets them, sometimes the other one gets them, sometimes neither of us get them. But we never both get them – that’s impossible. So there’s no conscious plan.

Wonderland: Is it awkward when you know you’re going up for the same role?

HARRY: Don’t think about it. Because you have mates who are going up for the same stuff as well. If you start thinking about who else is going up for something, your head is in the wrong place. Whether it’s your twin brother or not.

LUKE: It’s quite funny though when you’re the next one in as you walk out the door. Sometimes they’ll say something: ‘Coming back in for a second go?’

HARRY: Then you have to laugh, as if it’s funny and you’ve never heard it before.

Wonderland: How did you find drama school?

HARRY: It’s good training for theatre but you have to forget a lot of what you learnt to do any film. It’s hard to take on all this shit about identity and the psychologies of other characters when you’re still 18. You’re going, ‘What the fuck, I don’t even know what the Tube does yet.’ I found that quite hard. But I’m getting happier the more time that I’m away from it.

LUKE: I don’t regret having gone through it but I’m glad I’m not going through it now.

Wonderland: What was it like growing up as twins in a tiny village in Devon?

HARRY: I have nothing to compare it to, not having grown up anywhere else as a twin…

LUKE: It was very good for me, I enjoyed it.

HARRY: I loved the countryside. I can’t imagine not having had that. People are happy who grew up in cities and that’s cool but for me I need occasionally to go and walk by the sea or be in the countryside. It keeps me happy; it keeps me sane, I think.

Wonderland: Did your parents encourage you to be individuals?

LUKE: As with any siblings, I think. We were never dressed in the same way.

Wonderland: Some twins are…

HARRY: Some sisters are.

LUKE: I think that’s akin to child abuse, when parents dress their kids identically…

HARRY: They do it because they think it’s cute… and child abuse is never cute.

LUKE: No, but I just think it’s so sad because you think, ‘They’re obviously going to have a harder time than other siblings having an identity anyway. Why the /fuck/ would you want to put them in matching jumpers?’

Wonderland: How close are you now?

LUKE: I’d challenge anyone to spend 98 percent of their life with someone, pretty much in proximity…

HARRY: Well, up to 18.

LUKE: Up to 18… The first few years of our life we probably weren’t apart for more than a day. That’s a lot of days to spend with someone so you’re either going to feel pretty close, or hate or kill that person. It’s hard for there to be a middle ground in that and luckily we haven’t murdered each other and we don’t hate each other so I guess that’s a sign of being close.

HARRY: But the last two and a half years, we’ve seen each other maybe half a year because we’ve both been working so much.

LUKE: Like now, you’ve just come back to London –

HARRY: I’ve been in Nottingham doing a film.

LUKE: And it’s quite nice. It’s kind of like, ‘Yeah, this is fun.’ We’re living together at the moment. We went to the theatre last night together for the first time in years.

Wonderland: In what ways are you different?

LUKE: [sighs] I’m trying to think of the equivalent question if we weren’t twins, which would be, ‘How do you think you’re different from everyone else in the world?’ Which I guess would be highly impossible to answer. I can’t even think of anything specific at all, only inasmuch as we’re as different as…

HARRY: …any brothers are different.

LUKE: Yeah. [gets a text message alert]

Wonderland: You used to have a band – do you still play music together?

HARRY: We just play with mates. We had a great jam the other night with our mate. One of us was on the guitar, one was on the violin and one was on the xylophone. What a blend. We just get drunk and play with musical instruments that we’ve procured throughout the world.

LUKE: My friend just texted me saying, ‘I’m gonna give you a hot, oil-filled body massage tonight.’

HARRY: [unimpressed] That’s bizarre…

LUKE: That’s bizarre, isn’t it. Sorry.

Wonderland: How do you look back on Brothers Of The Head now?

HARRY: It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. But since then, there’s been a lot of stuff so… we could talk about that if you want.
Wonderland: Not keen to talk about Brothers?

HARRY: Think about it: it was our first audition, we went in there with no idea about anything. We went in there smoking and drinking Stella, not in a self-conscious, isn’t-this-clever way, just thinking, ‘They’re punks so they smoke and drink Stella.’ There was such a naïve quality about it. And it was an amazing psychological experiment being strapped to someone – we didn’t want to fake any physicality or work with some choreographer. Why give up the opportunity to actually see what it would be like? For me it’s going to make my career far more interesting if I don’t try and fake it each time. I got into birdwatching for a film I’ve just done called Pelican Blood, in the same way that I learned to take drugs for Control. It’s more interesting if you actually do it.

LUKE: I’d say exactly the same.

Wonderland: Did you learn anything about each other that you didn’t already know?

LUKE: I gained only more respect and more love for you through doing that.

HARRY: Jesus. Right, okay.

LUKE: No. Fuck it. Nothing.

HARRY: Right. Not really.

Wonderland: So, Luke, you starred in your second film, Dogging: A Love Story, recently…

LUKE: Not recently. It seems a while ago. It seemed to be delayed and delayed and I hear now that it’s being released. So, yeah, we’ll see… I’m still yet to see it so I can’t really give it a good mention apart from, ‘Newcastle is very cold in December.’ That’s really all I have to offer on that one.

Wonderland: Doesn’t seem like it’s going to factor in your all-time great experiences…

LUKE: Uh, no… I did kind of enjoy it. Sometimes.

HARRY: [sharply] Leave it there, Luke, just leave it there.

LUKE: Yeah, I know, I’ve left it there.

Wonderland: What are the differences for you between doing film and theatre?

HARRY: Film’s like making an album and theatre’s like doing a live gig. I can’t wait to do a live gig.

LUKE: Are you going to be my roadie?

HARRY: I’m not going to be your roadie, mate, I’m going to be the frontman. And the Royal Court – what an amazing theatre. It’s done so much amazing work over the last fifty years: Never Look Back In Anger…

LUKE: Look Back In Anger.

HARRY: Look Back In Anger, yeah.

LUKE: Never Look Back In Anger – never less than a companion piece.

HARRY: [sarcastically] Thank you. I’m glad you’re here mate.

Wonderland: Do you ever envy the other’s career?

HARRY: I want all of it. In abundance. I’d be unhappy if it was one or the other. Wouldn’t you?

LUKE: Yeah, man. I’ve only just dipped my toe in what this game is, and there’s just plenty more to come of both hopefully.

Wonderland: Together and apart…

LUKE: Working together every five years would be enough. That would be a few things in our lifetime.

Leaving the studio and walking to the Tube, the Treadaways are visibly more relaxed and bantery. As Harry mock-swoons over a buxom fake-blonde taking a fag break from her own photo shoot, Luke admonishes him: “Get real. Going out with someone like that in real life must be an absolute nightmare. It would be like going out with a doll.” “No, the thing is, Luke,” Harry retorts, “it’s no worse than if your girlfriend was an actress or a dancer.”

Harry’s off to finish his Christmas shopping before flying to St. Lucia for two weeks. Luke’s on his way to audition for the big-budget remake of 70s campfest Clash Of The Titans. Little brother gives him some advice: “Be passionate – don’t do that arched-eyebrow thing. Just go for it…” The bristly reactions have vanished, although when I tell them I’m heading straight off to interview Rupert Friend – who happens to be Keira Knightley’s boyfriend but, I’ve been told, doesn’t take kindly to questions about their relationship – Harry play-slaps me on the shoulder: “See? We could have said we didn’t want to talk about being twins.”

“There’s nothing I have less to say about in the world than being a twin,” chimes in Luke. “In a few years time, I think we’re just going to stop talking about it…”

Photographer: Ben Rayner
Fashion: Lauren Blane
Words: Matt Mueller

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #17, Feb/Mar 2009

The post Treadaway Twins appeared first on Wonderland.