In the new Prime Video series Steal, Saltburn and Gran Turismo star Archie Madekwe plays a corporate finance guy who goes through a massive meltdown after a heist takes place at his office. It’s one of the more relatable roles he’s ever played.
He told Zavvi: “I would absolutely fold under the pressure. And if I was asked to take part in a heist, I’d just panic to the point that I’d be a puddle on the floor – I'd be useless because I’d be stuck in my own head.”
Alongside Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, who plays his colleague Zara, the first episode is entirely focused on the hold-up at their investment firm, with both roped into co-operating with the gang undertaking the heist directly. From there, expect twists and turns that we won’t dive into – it’s a challenge to keep this spoiler free, but we will! - but it’s no secret to say that the fallout takes a major toll on his character Luke.
After playing cockier, more confident guys in his recent breakout roles, Madekwe was particularly excited by the chance to play somebody who was the exact opposite.
“It’s exciting to play someone who feels like they’re a bit on the back foot. For me, the confident characters are the more challenging to me, or at least scarier; Luke is someone who I imagine will be far more relatable to people, as he’s someone already feeling stuck by his circumstances before the heist, trapped in a life he’s disappointed by with no way out.
“That will feel incredibly relatable to a lot of people and really taps into the way a lot of us are feeling right now. How that fits into a wider idea of people doing anything to better their circumstances at any cost felt exciting to me – and that’s the end of that sentence because there’s no spoilers!”
There are few flashbacks in the series, but Madekwe invested a lot of time digging into the psychology of his character, to understand the personal low point he’s at when we’re introduced to him in a seemingly flashy corporate job.
“He’s someone who wants more than he has, and we always spoke about him being the kind of guy who spends far more than his means allowed. I imagine he’s in a crippling amount of debt due to maxing out credit cards, as he’s the type of guy who needs to get new gadgets and flashy suits to fit in with people who are better off than him, while he desperately tries to manifest that life for himself.
“When we meet him, he’s at a breaking point from being on the outside looking in, feeling left behind to the point he’s willing to do anything to change his circumstances. In this social media age, we have more proximity to how others appear to be living their lives and wanting that for ourselves, but the cost-of-living crisis makes that unfeasible – he's at a low because he can’t attain that.”
Is there any part of that Madekwe himself could personally relate to?
“I guess due to the fact he’s from London made it easier to understand him, and his relationship to the circumstances happening around him. I think he responds in the way I would to everything; there’s a lot of panic, and I’m a bit of a panicker in that way too.
“And his friendship with Sophie’s character is very real too, as we bumped into each other on holiday literally a week before shooting started. It was the beginning of a very real friendship, which led to some nice chemistry onscreen, even as they’re going through tough times.”
After the heist, an investigation is led by DCI Rhys, played by The Queen’s Gambit star Jacob Fortune-Lloyd. He may be investigating a major theft, but he’s similarly compromised by the thought of money, as his character is in tens of thousands of pounds of debt to underground gambling rings.
This gambling addiction is a crucial part of the character, and as Fortune-Lloyd explained to Zavvi, that drive to earn a better lifestyle is the main thing which bonds him to the two protagonists.
He said: “They never directly speak about it, but he’s coming to investigate in an office where people have been held up to take the money of those earning maybe 20 times more than them, even though they’ve been working just as hard. You bring the police in, and they'll feel like they’re earning a powerfully low salary when seeing everybody around them in that office, even though they’re hard working public servants – there's an interesting unity with the office staff, when seeing people making millions in bonuses but not necessarily doing harder work than they are.”
To understand the psychology of his character, the actor did something he’d never done before: he visited a casino.
“I met up with a poker pro, who took me to the Hippodrome for research, and I actually won £300! It was fun, but I also realised it wasn’t for me, which was a relief to realise I wasn’t quite like this character.
“Rhys is a guy with a real poker face and a ruthless cold streak to him, which I do think warms up as the show goes along. Poker is the main metaphor to how the characters relate to money; everyone has a poker face and a ton of secrets about what they really want.
“There’s certainly a darker side to Rhys though, and he’s morally compromised in a way that makes it very rich, but the interesting thing is that he sees himself as a hero. I think he goes into this with an arrogance that he’s not trapped in a dead-end lifestyle like the other characters, that he’s above it because he’s working outside the system, but he goes through a humbling experience realising he’s part of it and just as desperate to escape as everybody else.”
Unlike his co-star Madekwe, Fortune-Lloyd is more optimistic about his chances in a high-pressure situation like a heist.
“I’m an actor, not a detective, and you have to have a slightly sociopathic streak in you to do some of the things Rhys can do under pressure. But I do have a survival instinct, and if I could be in a completely consequence free, maybe digital version of this, I would be interested to see what I’d do.
“Whenever I play paintball, I go beast mode and take over the team. Could I do that in a heist?”
Steal premieres on Amazon Prime Video on Wednesday, 21st January.
