Unpleasantness abounds in The Riot Club, a gruesome feast of deplorability and a vicious, unbridled portrait of privilege. Goldfish are swallowed, whisky is swigged from condoms, bodily fluids are smeared on furniture. One of the more memorable acts of depravity involves an initiation process in which blindfolded newbie Alistair Ryle, played by Sam Claflin, has to quaff some wine and guess the vintage. The catch is that the wine has been spiked with an extinguished cigarette, bogies, phlegm, piss and maggots; Ryle tackles it with vigour. This, though, is the light stuff: university japes, boys being boys. What happens next – both the developing degeneracy, and the political metaphor it stands for – is much, much darker.
Directed by An Education’s Lone Scherfig and adapted by Laura Wade from her play Posh, The Riot Club is substantially inspired by Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club, the exclusive dining society whose tailcoated men behaving badly enjoy debauched bacchanalia at the expense of plebs. The film focuses on the annual club dinner, which involves members booking an unsuspecting restaurant, getting wrecked, trashing the place, then paying for the damage without remorse. Bullingdon’s membership between 1987 and 1992 boasted David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne, in an era so apparently awful that even a former member, David Dimbleby, has denounced the “disgusting, disgraceful things” they did.
The now notorious photos of Cameron, Johnson and Osborne in all their preening Bullingdon glory came to light as Wade began working on Posh. Labour were in government, but the new breed of “posh Tory” was on the rise. Although she didn’t want to write about specific people (it’s not “a big stitch-up” she told the Guardian in 2010), she viewed Bullingdon’s destructive college high jinks as a metaphor for what people think they can get away with when they have money or power. Indeed, some might say that the students who once wrecked restaurants are now the people wrecking the country, and with a general election on the way and Johnson going for gold via a safe seat in Uxbridge, the release of the film is meaty food for thought.
“Although they are still at university, the boys we are watching are the kind of people who will go on to hold positions of power in various different establishments,” says Wade of her characters. “They are the people who may find themselves high up in government, or banking, or in law. I suppose the question is: how much of who you are when you are that age remains when you are older, or is it just young people getting something out of their system?”
This idea is personified by Claflin’s depiction of Ryle, the story’s burgeoning sociopath, who becomes increasingly unhinged as the film progresses. Claflin specifically asked to audition for the character as it was so far removed from the actor’s own experience and morality. “I’m not from that world, not even close,” he says. He describes a research tour around Eton, in which he met students and teachers to get a sense of the milieu. “It was something I could never fathom,” he continues. “I’d never been able to put my finger on how these kids turn out like this or what they go through. But what was really important to me was to portray Alistair as someone we can relate to. Sitting down with Laura and Lone and the cast, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about how evil Alistair is, and I wanted to show where that dark side comes from. For me, it was about seeing him as a broken-down nobody, then being given a platform. When people are egging you on, you go one step further. Once he gets that power, he starts relishing that side of his personality.”
Claflin is an earthy, unassuming sort; even acting hasn’t given him airs and graces. Born in 1986 to an accountant and a classroom assistant, he grew up in Norwich and worked as a paperboy and in Sainsbury’s before getting into drama school. To fund his three years at LAMDA (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), he swept the building’s floors. Still, he found a way of processing the elitist snobbery at work in The Riot Club.
“This class, these type of boys have never known any different,” he explains. “It’s understandable that they are the way they are because they’ve been given everything in life, and if they have a problem they use money to get out of it. At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have people with no money who have never known any different, so they’ve had to learn to survive by other means.”
The British class system may not be as rigid as it once was but Claflin confirms that in certain situations, one is still encouraged to know one’s place. “Only the other day I had one of those Pretty Woman moments when I was dressed casually, walked into a very high-end shop, and had people looking down their noses at me with a ‘You don’t belong in here’ glare,” he says. “Sometimes I find myself buying things for the sake of buying things because I know for a fact that if I try that jumper on and I don’t like it and walk out they’d go, ‘He couldn’t afford it, he looked at the price tag.’ I feel I’m constantly trying to prove to myself that it’s not all about class, it’s not all about the way people dress or talk, or it’s not all about money.”
Nonetheless, Claflin’s career ascent has been swift. His first job, straight out of LAMDA, was on the 2010 miniseries The Pillars Of The Earth, and he was then cast in a supporting role in Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. After that he played the prince in Snow White And The Huntsman, and then, boom: the first Hunger Games sequel, in which he played Finnick Odair, a dashing, half-naked former victor who allies with Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. There are similarities between The Riot Club and The Hunger Games: just as the former can be viewed as a damning indictment of those running the country, the latter makes a good fist of showing kids how power can corrupt, leading to abuse of the masses.
Claflin appreciates how the franchise has made politics accessible to its audience, but he is “not in any way overly political” and those themes are not what attracted him. Surely, though, their politics must give him more to chew on than if the films were mere action fantasy? “Yeah, it gives a real depth to every character,” he agrees, and talks of Finnick’s distressing fortunes in the third Hunger Games instalment, Mockingjay: Part 1, which is out in November. “My character especially has been so damaged by the political system and by power that he’s a broken man. The power of the president basically ruined Finnick.”
Politics aside, The Hunger Games has canonised Claflin in the hearts of its devoted fan army, despite their initial concerns. When his casting was announced, there was dissension: he wasn’t hot enough, they said. Some, bizarrely, even said he was too fat. These days, though, he gets 9,000 retweets for a photo of himself in bed with insomnia. What’s the past year been like, suddenly becoming the apple of hormonal teenage eyes?
“What’s great,” he says, “is that each character I’ve played has looked very different, so I’m not walking around with blond hair and my abs out like I am in Hunger Games.” He gets recognised only occasionally: “I kind of live incognito, in a great way.” Indeed, he arrives at our Soho interview looking effortlessly anonymous, rucksack on his back. “I’ve definitely experienced the other end of the spectrum through friends and peers and colleagues who can’t go anywhere, can’t leave the hotel, can’t walk to the bakery, can’t do anything that a normal person would, and it’s really quite a shame,” he adds. “I’m very lucky and thankful that I’m sort of left alone, or not noticed.”
With three films out in as many months, he should make the most of that anonymity: between The Riot Club and Mockingjay, October sees him courting Lily Collins in romcom Love, Rosie, by which point those high-end shops will be falling over themselves to get him in their jumpers.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see what the Finnick fans make of Claflin’s utter reprehensibility as The Riot Club’s Alistair Ryle. It’s a wretched character, and a truly hateful performance. The Bullingdon boys will probably love it.
The Riot Club is out on Friday
