Easter Special
Is this the role that makes Levi Brown a household name?
For Levi Brown, the process of landing the part that could make him the next Cillian Murphy — that is, the lead role in a historical, Birmingham-set BBC drama by Steven Knight — was a “mad rollercoaster”.
When he received the audition script for This Town, the 28-year-old was in Scotland, filming the ITV crime thriller Payback. “Normally when you get a script, you’re looking at [what would be] all your bits,” says the actor who plays wordsmith, musician and all-round soulful dude Dante Williams. “But I read the whole thing from an objective perspective. [And] it struck me how Steven had created this whole world. His writing is so rich, you just fall into it.”
Brown auditioned in London and was called in again the following week. Cue a full day of chemistry reads with fellow actors Ben Rose and Eve Austin. “Then three weeks after that, I got the role. It was very quick.”
To help bring Dante to life, Brown had local knowledge on his side: he’s from Dudley in the West Midlands.
“Filming around Birmingham we’d go past places and I’d be like: ‘Oh, that’s where that girl broke up with me!’”
He also worked closely with songwriter and poet Kae Tempest (who uses they/them pronouns) and together they wrote the lyrics to the songs Dante’s band perform in the series, while the music comes from south London-based music producer Dan Carey.
“It was a real collaboration. We spent the whole day with them at Dan’s studio, and they gave us insight into the way they see Dante’s mind. It was a bit of a cheat, really — I had two minds working on this one character.”
Growing up the son of a carer mum and counsellor d
