March 2020 on the set of Boiling Point – director Philip Barantini’s lauded single-shot drama about a fateful night in a busy restaurant – and the crew have just filmed their fourth take. After a week of rehearsals, the plan was to capture the 92-minute scene eight times and pick the best one, but the last four goes would never happen. The first Covid lockdown struck and all filming, all work in the cinema industry and all life as we knew it, paused.
“It felt kind of special in a way,” remembers British actor Malachi Kirby, who played one of the film's litany of troubled chefs, Tony. “I felt like we were one of the last people to do a film. Didn't know when we'd be able to do one again. This might be the last one we do, maybe ever.”
Fast forward three years and Kirby is in Paris, getting ready to attend Paul Smith’s Autumn/Winter ’23 show. The world didn’t end (as you hopefully know) and Boiling Point received huge critical acclaim. Kirby has had his own share of plaudits, too, winning a best supporting actor BAFTA in 2021 for his role in Mangrove, an instalment of Steve McQueen's Small Axe anthology. He plays Charlie and Spider (brothers) in Amazon’s upcoming adaptation of the Neil Gaiman book, Anansi Boys, and has just wrapped on comedy Wicked Little Letters, where he stars alongside Olivia Coleman, Timothy Spall and Jessie Buckley. For a man once worried he might never act again, things have gone pretty well.
Born in Battersea, south London, Kirby is part of a clutch of British actors imposing themselves on the international scene. His first major role came in 2011 in Vivienne Franzmann’s debut play Mogadishu at the Lyric in Hammersmith, which garnered him a nomination for Outstanding Newcomer at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards that year. But his breakthrough came five years later as Kunta Kinte in the remake of ground-breaking 1977 TV series Roots. There were then leading roles in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, Sky’s Curfew and Italian series Devils. But the first major milestone came with Mangrove. Or did it?
“I just don’t know" he says, over the phone early one morning last week, reluctant to acknowledge the BAFTA-ness of the role being as important as people might think. “There are things that happen in my career that I can feel shifting something in terms of the trajectory, or response to me as an artist.” The experience made him grow as an actor, he explains, a change encouraged through the work with Steve McQueen. But the award didn't change anything fundamental.
“I made a very conscious decision when I started acting and became aware of the award schemes, that I didn't want that to be a defining thing about me,” he says. “I want to do great work and always appreciate when it’s received well, but I never want that to be the reason.”
In Wicked Little Letters, Kirby is surrounded by actors that have likely wrestled with the same conundrum. And he soaked it up. “There’s always going to be a great respect for those that came before and are still going, and I’m always struck by the humility of the people I see as really successful, great artists. They always seem to be the humblest, as well.”
The film, a comedy by writer Johnny Sweet and director Thea Sharrock, is based on a true story of provincial intrigue, featuring anonymous, potty-mouthed dispatches, the framing of a local housewife and the subsequent capitulation of a sleepy Twenties community. Kirby has done comedy before, but nothing like this. “This one is quite different… the story itself is really absurd, it’s hard to believe it’s based on a true story. But it is. It was so much fun to work on, and working with the cast was a masterclass in acting.”
When we speak, Kirby is in the gym twice a day preparing for his next role, which he cannot discuss under pain of death (but we can assume it involves muscles). So the visit to Paris Fashion Week offers both the opportunity to forego a day or two at the weights, and to dabble in the world of clothes – something that doesn’t necessarily come easy. “I’m a bit of a fish out of water when it comes to fashion," he says. "I’m really quite new to it and it’s definitely not something that I’ve followed. But it's kind of surprised me how interested I am in it.”
Kirby says his style has evolved with his career, and each time he considers the aesthetic choices of a character, it forces him to reckon with his own dress sense, too. I suggest Paul Smith is the perfect brand for someone that knows they want to be stylish, but don’t necessarily want to dabble in the cut and thrust of conceptual fashion. As we say in the biz, it’s very ‘wearable’.
“That idea of something being ‘wearable’ is quite strange,” he jokes, “but there are sometimes clothes I see, and I think, ‘do people actually wear this? Like, in real life?’ But at Paul Smith there is the balance of being larger than the average – something you could wear for an event – but also something you could wear in the everyday as well. Just a bit heightened.”
Comfort, says Kirby, is key, which is perhaps why he opts for simple black rollneck under a single-breasted lilac suit, an indigo trench coat and Chelsea boots (guided, expertly, by stylist Olga Timofejeva). The jacket is elongated to the thigh, while the boots have a pleasing Sixties sleekness, and it’s exactly as the actor describes: almost everyday, but heightened. (And very wearable.)
