‘Clayface’ Breakout Star Tom Rhys Harries on Surviving a Multi-Day Screen Test

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When Tom Rhys Harries was screen testing for the lead role in Clayface, he had one very clear directive to his team: He did not want to know who else was in the running. At the time, there were four other actors in consideration to play the titular antihero of the DC Universe body horror thriller. “I actually cut off my agent and said, ‘Do not tell me who else it is,’” says Harries. “I just needed to be in the zone, without thinking about who they’re considering.”

The actor spent the next week preparing and then spent three grueling hours testing for Warner Bros. and director James Watkins (Speak No Evil, Black Mirror). When he emerged, exhausted but feeling good about his performance, he asked his team to reveal the names of his competition. “I was curious, and by then it would no longer affect me negatively because I was done.” The next day, he got a call that the studio actually wanted him to come in and test for a second time. “I had to put my blinders on,” he laughs.

At that point, Harries had a solid decade of work under his belt, but had not yet broken out in a massive way. Now 36, the actor grew up in Cardiff, Wales, to schoolteacher parents and trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama before moving to London to pursue a full time career. “I really don’t know if I could do anything else,” he says of his laser focus on his career, though he is quick to point out the advice he got early on. “An older actor said to me, an actor doesn’t have a career, they have a succession of jobs — if they’re lucky.” Harries started working in the theater, making his West End debut in Jez Butterworth’s Mojo in 2014 before nabbing roles in projects like The Gentleman and Doctor Who.

“It’s interesting, because the jobs that have given me visibility or reach aren’t necessarily what gives you the most creative growth,” he says, noting his role in Jamie Lloyd’s 2017 The Pitchfork Disney. “I really gave myself over to it, and I shifted into a zone as far as where I thought my ceiling was.”

When Harries was going through the audition process for Clayface — which started the old-fashioned way, with a text from his agents about the search and then a meeting with the casting director — he knew that he was coming into it as a potentially big risk for the studio. “All the other [actors] had a proof of concept for leading a studio film, doing a press run,” he says. “And there are so many moments where an unknown quality could falter. I could deliver a great performance, but they haven’t got a great reference point as to what I’d be like with the crew, the rest of the cast, and in the press.” He found out he got the part just a few days after that second screen test, and once he made it to the Manchester set he realized that despite the potential pressure of being number one on the call sheet for a massive production, a larger movie actually just meant a larger support circle.

“I was just texting with a friend of mine who is leading a TV series for the first time, and we were talking about how it’s sort of counterintuitive, but it’s actually easier when you have so many people around you,” says Harries. “That’s why I’m grateful for the film being received well, because you realize how many people have invested their time and work into this thing. Even before I step foot on set, I’ve had countless sessions with my dialect coach, countless sessions with my trainer, and years of conversations and emails and texts with my agents chasing things that never materialized.”

Clayface has been a success so far, pulling in positive reviews and topping the box office during opening weekend (and despite the allure of Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything). It’s poised to be a major turning point in Harries’ career, but he’s trying not to get too caught in the weeds of A Big Break. “I haven’t got any grand aspirations of how I’m going to do this now, because fundamentally nothing is going to change — it might open a few more doors in terms of who I’m able to talk to, but otherwise I just want to be involved with projects from creators who I back fundamentally.” Instead, he’s focusing on the emotional connections that Clayface has wrought — like hearing from his old high school teachers.

He’s kept in touch with one in particular, who came up to London to see his first play and recently FaceTimed Harries along with a group of his other former teachers after they’d all gone to see a showing of Clayface. “It was really cute, especially because when I was in school, I think it was very much a case of, ‘if this kid doesn’t find something to focus on, he’s fucked,'” he laughs. “If this teacher wasn’t there, I would not be having this conversation with you right now.”