A British actor tries on a new challenge for size
Preparation for his new film, Femme, about a drag queen recovering from a brutal assault, took the actor Nathan Stewart-Jarrett in two directions. On one hand, he was researching how people experience trauma after a violent attack — how do victims leave the house? What sounds might trigger them? — and on the other, he had to practise walking in heels, on a treadmill. And not low, starter heels, the actor, 37, points out: “I almost broke my neck.”
That multifarious approach speaks to Femme’s elusive tone. The British film, written and directed by Sam Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, is a horrorthriller about a closeted drug dealer, Preston (George MacKay), who beats up Stewart-Jarrett’s Jules while he is in character as Aphrodite. It quickly becomes stranger and more slippery: during a semi-successful healing process, Jules runs into Preston in a sauna and the two begin a hesitant love affair. “I wanted to add an air of confusion,” Stewart-Jarrett says. “What does one feel when this person — who beat you up, stripped you — is then being nice to you? Or does something funny? There’s a mix of feelings there.”
Born in south London, Stewart-Jarrett studied at the Brit School and later trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He became a familiar face — at least to teenagers — as a regular on E4’s superhero TV hit Misfits. In 2017, he starred with Andrew Garfield in the National Theatre’s production of Angels in America, and made his Broadway debut when that show transferred to New York, whe
