Shazad Latif on Lily James, Toronto ‘What’s Love Acquired to Do With It’

Should you’ve seen the British satire “Toast of London,” likelihood is that voiceover engineer Clem Fandango’s identify nonetheless rings in your ears. Now Shazad Latif, the person behind Fandango, Ash Tyler on “Star Trek: Discovery” and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde on “Penny Dreadful,” has nabbed his first romantic lead in  “What’s Love Acquired to Do With It?” 

The Shekhar Kapur-helmed acquisition title, which has a Gala world premiere Sept. 10 in Toronto, “has barely extra depth than a traditional rom-com as a result of it tackles organized marriage,” Latif mentioned. Lily James performs his character’s childhood good friend, and issues ensue when she decides to make a documentary in regards to the nuptials.

“Lily is one in all my closest buddies,” Latif mentioned. “She’s like a sister to me.” They met when she did a play together with his previous roommate, and co-starred within the 2021 BBC miniseries “The Pursuit of Love.” “I learn [“What’s Love”] some time again, then it disappeared, then it immediately began racing in direction of being made as a result of Lily needed to be concerned. I preserve telling Lily I owe her my complete profession now, ’trigger she’s completed a film with me,” he laughed.  

It is a pivotal second for Latif, who’ll quickly be seen as Captain Nemo in “Nautilus,” the Disney+ sequence that tells the origin story of the hero from “20,000 Leagues Below the Sea.” He’s about two-thirds by way of the 11-month shoot in Australia. “Day by day there’s a brand new set being constructed that’s one thing you by no means anticipated,” he mentioned. “It’s a wild, wild job.”

Latif’s Pakistani immigrant father modified movie reels within the cinema, and his English/Scottish mom’s obsession with movie rubbed off on him. “I bear in mind shoving on the tights in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ after I was eight,” the London native recalled. “I knew it was a manner out of my circumstances. My mom was a single mother or father and we have been very, very poor. It gave me a drive, and since I didn’t actually produce other choices, it meant that I couldn’t fail.” 

Latif received into the Bristol Previous Vic Theatre Faculty a couple of yr earlier than help for low-income college students dried up. He left a yr early when he received a task within the BBC One spy drama “Spooks” in 2009. “I believed that was gonna be it, however then I stored having to attempt to break by way of.” In 2015, he had his first big-screen roles in “The Man Who Knew Infinity” and “The Second Greatest Unique Marigold Resort,” then a bigger half within the little-seen 2018 ISIS drama “Profile.” 

After experiencing these ups and downs, “I need to create my very own work,” he mentioned. “I’m engaged on 4 or 5 writing tasks. A few autobiographical, intense household dramas, after which there’s absurdist comedy in different issues I’m writing with buddies — one film, one 10-part sequence. It solely took me 15 years to start out,” he laughed. “But it surely’s occurring now.”