You’d know Matthew Lewis as Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter and from his much celebrated “glow up” (AKA puberty).
The Leeds lad stars in a new film with the Kiwi comedian Rose Matafeo, made by the producers of Hunt for the Wilderpeople and The Breaker Upperers. Baby Done is about a young couple finding out they’re having a baby and realising how truly unprepared they are. For Rose’s character, it sparks a strong desire to do all the wild things she hoped to do before she settled down, like traveling threesomes, and partying. For Matt’s character, it’s the opposite.
Calling in from Orlando, Florida, where he lives with his wife, Matt explains that there were a lot of reasons he wanted to do this film. “Rose [Matafeo] and Taika [Waititi] were both attached and with that kind of calibre of people, I knew it was going to be a good script,” Matt tells triple j.
“I read it and immediately just fell in love with the story. I'm 31 years old and so a lot of it resonates with me.”
“My older siblings have all got kids, my parents are constantly sort of like, ‘When are you guys gonna…?’ So I’m acutely aware of all that kind of stuff and the characters just felt so real and so warm. I just felt like I knew what to do with it.”
So if his parents were already nudging him towards the whole baby thing, how did they react to Matt making a film about having a baby? “You know, I've no idea what they're going to make of that when they see this movie,” he says. “Don’t even know if I’ve told them what it’s about. I think I was like, ‘I’m just making this romcom in New Zealand, don’t worry about it’.”
“When my parents see it, god, they might be like, ‘You’d be a good dad!’ Probably going to be more ammunition for them to throw my way.”
“I’ve already got two dogs and they’re a nightmare. I can’t have kids as well.”
The film itself is actually loosely based on the life of the husband and wife team who wrote and directed the movie. But just how much of the story happened IRL? “Curtis is a lot more like Tim than he would care to admit,” says Matt.
The threesome? The pregnancy fetish stuff? “I'm not at liberty to talk about the creative process and conversations that went on in confidence I’m afraid.”
Production of Baby Done mainly happened in NZ, which Matt says was a part of what drew him to the role. “I wish I could put my finger on exactly what it is about the place but I just absolutely love it. Obviously the country is beautiful, we know that, but the people are...actually a bit like Australians, you know, really sport mad. I'm really into my sports as well.”
Since he’s been living in the US, he’s missed being in a place where cricket and football are given the proper respect. “It’s nice to go to the Commonwealth where I feel like I'm accepted a little bit more.”
“As soon as I arrived first thing I said to the director Curtis [Vowell] and one of our producers Carthew [Neal] that my only request, my only rider is that I get to go to a Rugby League game at some point.”
Matt grew up in Leeds and so, of course, is ride or die for Leed United and remembers the former team mascot fondly. “We used to have an elephant when I was really young.”
A literal elephant or a man in an elephant suit? “Yeah, not an actual elephant. It’s not Victorian England [laughs]. It’s not just chained up on the touch line. No, it was a man in an elephant suit. I was very young when I saw that, I don't really know what the connection is. I might have even dreamt it. Since then, we've got Lucas Kop Cat. (Kop is the North stand and Lucas Radebe is one of our greatest players of all time, so named after him).”
Is it a cat that's a cop? “No, again it's just a man in a suit [laughs].”
You can catch Matthew Lewis in Baby Done, or his Leeds United podcast, Doing A Leeds, or you can probably also catch him at pretty much any sporting event by the sounds of it.