If you’d ran into Phil Dunster round this time final yr, it’s possible he would have been studying one of many classics of Russian literature. Tolstoy, most likely.
“I say ‘read’,” Dunster confesses, “it was all audiobook…” If this cultural eating regimen comes as a slight shock for a person finest recognized for taking part in the swaggering, cocksure footballer Jamie Tartt in AppleTV’s Ted Lasso, the supporting anecdote quickly units you proper.
Dunster had been solid as a professor of Russian research within the new HBO comedy Rooster. Being a diligent and keen younger actor on his first important job in Los Angeles, he threw himself into analysis. “I read Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Death of Ivan Ilyich… Because I was like, ‘OK, this is going to be great. I’m going to get into it,’” Dunster explains. Yet when he made it to group preparations, the showrunner, Bill Lawrence, had some information. “Before I said anything, he goes, ‘Yeah, so your part, obviously it’s Russian studies as in foreign relations…’ And I said, ‘What, um, not literature and history?’ And he says, ‘Oh no, no, no, no. Current affairs.’” Dunster laughs. All that Tolstoy, for nothing.
Dunster is recounting this as we perch on a pair of bar stools within the nook of a photographic studio in north London. The 33-year-old actually ought to be canine drained: for the previous few hours in our photoshoot, he’s exhibited the boundless power and dedication earlier than a digital camera that administrators (and audiences) have come to love him for. On prime of that, it’s deep midwinter, frigid and seemingly everlasting nightfall exterior, and residential should be calling, as Dunster lives solely a brief drive away. Still, right here he’s in his personal darkish knitted polo, white denims and Birkenstock clogs, one way or the other filled with the thrill of spring. “Days like today are really playful, they’re good,” he says, really which means it. “Anything that anyone does, if they have a twinkle in their eye or a tongue in their cheek, I think that’s where good work happens. As soon as people start to take things too seriously, creativity is cauterised slightly…”
