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Piping hot from the high of The Inbetweeners 2 UK premiere, Glass was fortunately able to be the first to hear the inside story from UK actor Emily Berrington, one of the cast in the new comedy film from the highly popular Channel 4 franchise, which made discovering Berrington’s take on her most high-profile role to date all the more intriguing.
Pursuing a thespian life certainly takes a lot of ambition and courage, but as Emily ascends the celluloid ladder, following performances in 24: Live Another Day and the grand-scale costume drama The White Queen, what shines through is her unwavering enthusiasm that will surely sustain her and will help her rise to the top.
I’d be most interested for you to give us your synopsis of the The Inbetweeners 2 for anyone who isn’t familiar with the show?
I’d love to; it just so happens that this is actually the first interview I have done since the film has come out and I’m really excited to talk about it properly because we all had to promise to keep it a big secret. So, in a continuation of the original TV series and the first film that followed, it focuses on your four archetypal British school “lads”, Simon, Will, Jay and Neil, suffering through every last one of those awkward moments that we all did really.
Moments wonderfully depicted by the show’s writers Iain (Morris) and Damon (Beesley), who drew on personal experience to create characters that you really met at school and think because of that it really resonates with everyone. In the new film, the plot hinges on the lads having left school, with a couple of the boys heading off to university and the others going on gap years, which gets the ball rolling when they all end up uniting for the gap year of a lifetime.
How does it feel to become attached to such a national institution in a starring role?
Unbelievable! When I heard they were making a new film I was excited about it just as a fan, so to then end up being a part of it has been mind-blowing. It’s intimidating in some ways, because you know they are going to make some good and there is a certain degree of pressure, because you don’t want to be the weakest link.
The new movie took you all the way down under. Have you ever been to Australia before? How was the experience for you?
I’ve never been to Australia before, so every part of it was utterly amazing, fulfilling everything that I expected. Within two hours of getting off the plane I was up close and personal with kangaroos, cradling koalas and covering all of the similar Land of Oz bases. Getting to travel as part of my job is a brilliant thing, I am actually in the process of filming in Bucharest at the moment, not as we speak, but I’ll be returning later this week. Often these are places that you never think you will visit, so when work takes you there it’s a real privilege.
What can you tell us about where the new movie takes you character wise?
My character, Katie, is a girl that Will knew from primary school and they end up bumping into her in Australia, on her gap year as well. She’s immersing herself in the full nitty-gritty backpacking experience, finding herself spiritually, playing guitars, all of the classic gap year malarkey, while trying to get the boys involved too.
Did you slip into the world of Simon, Will, Jay and Neil easily?
It was very easy to feel part of it. They have years of in-jokes between themselves, Ian and Damon, but they never left me hanging, the banter on set is relentless and made making the film a real event.
Could you tell us a little bit more about the team behind the Inbetweeners phenomenon? How did the directors make their vision a reality?
It was reassuring to know that Iain and Damon, the writers of the original Channel 4 series, were the directors because they know exactly what they want, despite all of the boys poking fun at them the moment they put on their director’s hats! We all knew they would do a good job though.
You have already caused a lot of the excitement that surrounds the new movie, what do you think you contribute to the franchise?
Girls and the Inbetweeners’ relationships to them have always been such a part of franchise; in such a way that how they relate to girls makes it what it is. From there on, it’s really funny from a girl’s perspective, you remember how awkward and weird you felt as a teenage girl, but then you watch four guys falling over themselves around a girl and you think, oh god, maybe they thought I was actually a goddess. I really enjoyed being a part of that and my character is a reflection of that, doing everything at 100 miles per hour, so much so that I started to get ill during the latter part of the filming.
What is a woman’s place in the Inbetweeners sphere of testosterone-gone-wild adolescence?
Perhaps in some ways it teaches girls that whatever you are going through, maybe boys are going through it much worse off. As teenagers, they mature a bit more slowly and that’s got to be hard, I remember being a foot taller than boys which must have been a little bit emasculating to say the least. Plus, Ian and Damon have written genuinely funny female characters, not ‘plus ones’ and not caricatures, which is key.
What have you done that has lead up to your first starring role in a major feature film and where would you like it to lead you subsequently?
Doing a comedy film was an eye-opener, but following it immediately with the filming of 24: Live Another Day allowed me hone my skills in different areas such as action or drama even more by doing completely different things. Getting stuck into the research for new roles, studying how people once behaved and analysing the politics of the time for historical vehicles has given me one wish, to keep doing things that are as diverse as I have done so far.
If ever there was such time, do you feel like you are currently on the cusp of something big and potentially life changing?
You never know where things are going to go, naturally I am so happy to be a part of a film that’s been met with such immediate success, but you can never ever guess what is going to happen next. My boyfriend and I have a rule where we don’t celebrate too much, so we don’t have to commiserate too much either, meaning if you get the job you might treat yourself to a drink, but if you don’t get the next big job, you don’t have to cry yourself to sleep.
The next movie you will be taking on, The Last Showing, will see you trying out the horror genre? Could you tell us a little bit more about this and how you feel about it too?
Indeed, it’s set to come out next month, and I am ever so excited to see the response. The most memorable part of dipping my toe into the horror genre was certainly the filming process, which went ahead for just over one month last summer, from midnight to midday in a cinema in the north of England in the middle of a giant shopping estate. It became quite the surreal experience by the end, but a phenomenal one nonetheless, working with Finn Jones and the original Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund! The great thing about horror is you can really go for it, it’s rare for anyone to tell you ‘that is too much’, so it’s really liberating to shoot in that way.
Tracing it back to your beginnings what was it that made you want to go into acting and how has this had an effect on your drive?
In many ways, I went into acting quite late in comparison to a lot of people. I’ve always been dramatic and loved doing it at school, but when university came calling I decided to pursue geography and politics. It always felt like more of a hobby, and I just didn’t have any idea how anyone “became” an actor, I couldn’t get my mind around it really. Firstly, my initial reservations where based around the business of it all and my worries that this would impair the creative undertaking that I really loved, but I soon discovered that learning how to go about becoming an actor was the most exciting and drawing aspect of such a tremendous quest.
by Liam Feltham
Photographs by Justin Van Vliet
The Inbetweeners 2 is on general release in the UK.