It’s early on a very wet March morning, the setting an empty independent cinema just off Leicester Square in London’s West End. The Hollywood News is here with filmmaker Richard John Taylor who, with some of his cast and crew, is putting together the final shots for his new film The Krays: Dead Man Walking. The film boasts an impressive British cast, including Rita Simons, Josh Myers, Guy Henry, Marc Pickering, Nathanjohn Carter, Janine Nerissa, Triana Terry, Christopher Ellison, Leslie Grantham, and many others.
The plot of the piece isn’t just another rehash of the same old ‘Krays’ story, as Taylor tells us over a coffee in the bar area of the cinema, just prior to filming. “It’s the Krays, but a gritty, more realistic version,” Taylor says. “It’s not their traditional life story you’ve seen twice before with Tom Hardy [in Legend] and the Kemps [in the 1990 biopic The Krays].”
Related: The Krays: Dead Man Walking gets a debut poster
The performances from Tom Hardy and Martin and Gary Kemp in those two movies are a lot to live up to. So, who has Taylor and co. got lined up to play the twins in the new film?
“Marc Pickering [plays Reggie], who has been in Boardwalk Empire, and Nathanjohn Carter plays Ron,” Taylor says. “When we were going through all the Spotlight submissions, he just stood out. All the people we knew who knew The Krays said that [Carter] was the closest to an on-screen Ronnie Kray they’ve ever seen. I don’t know if that’s a compliment to him or not.”
‘Dead Man Walking’ focusses upon a very specific time in Ronnie and Reggie Kray’s life. “It’s set over ten days in December 1966 when they broke Frank Mitchell out of prison and put him in a safe house,” Taylor continues. “They’re trying to get him a release date secured, while at the same time sticking two fingers up to the law.”
“They underestimated how crazy he was and ended up having him killed on Christmas Eve.”
It’s on Christmas Eve – albeit in freezing March – where we find ourselves today, the darkened auditorium of the main screen in London’s legendary Prince Charles Cinema the setting for a daytime meeting between Reggie (Pickering) and his now estranged wife Frances (Triana Terry).
“Today is a scene that got cut on the [main shoot] as we were running out of time,” Taylor says of his filming plans this morning. “At this time in Reggie Krays’ history, Frances has left him. He’s trying to woo her back, so he’s hired a cinema where they had one of their first dates for the day, but it doesn’t go to plan. Reg leaves and she bursts into tears before Nick [Nicholas Ball (above), playing Harry Webster in the film] comes in. You think he’s this cuddly old man and he gives her a shoulder to cry on. At the end of the film, when they decide that Frank Mitchell needs to die, they make the call and it’s Nick [who does it]. Things have been preordained, and this wasn’t a random encounter.”
The Prince Charles obviously isn’t the only setting the production has taken in. The film has shot in many locations all over London, including the Kray brothers’ famous stomping ground in the East End.
“Most of the safe house stuff was in an awful place in Bethnal Green. It has been used as a kind of drug den or a squat in everything from the likes of Gangster No. 1, Harry Brown, 44 Inch Chest. It’s this rotten just-about-survived-the-war house. We had a day in Highgate Wood which was the coldest set I’ve ever been on. By the end of the day, we all had ice water in our shoes.”
The Krays: Dead Man Walking is just one project among many at Hereford Films, who are producing the movie. “We’ve got five [films] to make this year, and we’ve already done two. We’re in post-production on Aura. We are doing two horror films in May, including one up in Scotland,” Taylor says.
Hereford also has a third film in the ‘We Still’ crime series, following We Still Kill The Old Way, released back in 2014, and last year’s popular We Still Steal The Old Way. We Still Kill The Old Way is listed as being in pre-production.
But it doesn’t end there – If things go to plan, The Krays: Dead Man Walking may not be a stand-alone effort either. Taylor adds before returning to his actors: “There’s talk of doing more of these in the same way [producer Jonathan Sothcott] has done his ‘We Still’ films, but again, isolated stories.”
Audiences will be able to catch The Krays: Dead Man Walking when it is released in late 2018.
