“I think every actor wants to play a character that they can really relate to,” Jay Ricago says. “Because if you get it, you get the gold.”
Thankfully for the burgeoning British actor, things like this happened to him almost in quick succession, with the two roles providing him with “a playground to find the truth about what these characters are.” And Lycurgo struck gold that he had.
In the Netflix drama “Steve,” which premiered in Toronto, he tackles the raw emotional complexity of Shai, a cheerful but troubled young man who gets lost in his last chance at a correctional school.
Lycurgo’s first major film role immediately caught people’s attention. He won the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor, but was disappointed when he was not recognized in the BAFTA Rising Star category.
Not that he needed it. Eight months later, after a brief trip to the criminal world in the Immortal Man spin-off Peaky Blinders, he’s back with something very “Steve”-ish in Clio Bernard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. The film follows a group of close friends who grew up on a working-class housing estate in Birmingham and now struggle to survive into adulthood while battling demons both new and old. Ricargo plays Ollie, the “comic relief” who helps unite the group (which also includes Joe Cole, Anthony Boyle, Laura Petticrew, and Darryl McCormack), but who also struggles with drug addiction.
“I love these characters. I love their stories. They’re so real,” he says. “Shai and Olly, they both live in this world and it doesn’t feel artificial.”
“I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” also saw Lucurgo enter the Cannes Film Festival for the first time and bow in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar. We were actually talking from the backyard of the Carlton Hotel a full week before the premiere. He was flown in as a special guest of Louis Vuitton (he was prepared accordingly). This relationship was born from the back of “Steve”. “They were like, ‘Who is this depressed kid? Let’s let him carry the bag!'” Ricurgo jokes.
Even without the new designer gear, it’s been quite the year for the 28-year-old.
Born in the London town of Croydon, Ricurugo had an early role model in his father, the footballer David Johnson, who himself went on to work in the same type of educational institution as the one depicted in Steve after he retired from playing. “So there was always ambition in my family, and my dad told me I could go and do what I wanted to do.”
Sadly, this ambition wasn’t enough to get Riccurgo to enroll at the Brit School at the age of 15 (“I thought acting was about tears rolling down your cheeks”), but, driven by his “earthy energy”, he later won a place on a three-year course at the ArtsEd School of Drama.
“I don’t think people really believed that I wanted to do it because I was just kidding around at first,” he says. “But in my sophomore and junior years, I started really taking it seriously. And I said, “I think I can do it.” Drama school really taught me discipline, and I really did. And from then on, I just started working.”
Jay Ricargo (left) “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning”
chris harris
Like most Britons, Riccurgo made her debut on the BBC daytime drama Doctors, earning £800 (about $1,070) for the privilege. “And I thought, I’ve made it, I’ve made money!” he says.
He then had small roles in TV and movies, including Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Matt Reeve’s The Batman, before landing a regular slot on HBO’s Teen Titans, about young Gotham superheroes. “So by the time I was 23, 24, I felt like I was on the right track,” he says. But, as he states, he “always wanted to do a role like ‘Steve’ or ‘I Can See the Buildings.'”
When “Steve” arrived, Licurgo remembers thinking, “Nobody understands this. I was really motivated, especially since my dad worked at a school like that.” Coincidentally, the news that he had won the role came the day after he learned he had missed out on Ari Aster’s Eddington (playing a young police officer assigned to Michael Ward).
There’s a Cillian Murphy throughline that connects Lycurgo’s recent and accelerated trajectory.
Murphy produced “Steve” after being given an early copy of Max Porter’s book by the author, and was cast to play the school’s weary head. On set, Murphy told the young star that he was doing a Peaky Blinders movie, The Immortal, and a few months after production wrapped, the audition was successful and Ricurugo donned the show’s iconic flat cap in the big-screen spin-off. And in “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning,” Murphy is friends with Enda Walsh, who adapted the novel by Kieran Goddard.
It’s unclear how directly involved Murphy was, but Licurgo said having Murphy in his corner is “a powerful thing, especially when you see it through his eyes.” He now considers Murphy a “mentor” and messages him regularly.
Having made his name known with “Steve,” highlighted his studio skills with “Peaky Blinders,” and won Cannes honors with “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning,” Lycurgo, who recently signed with CAA, is enjoying his days in the sun.
“I feel like I worked from age 21 to 25. It was great and I was grateful to be on set and working, but I was just an actor. I had no life experience,” he says. “So we finished ‘Steve’ and then we did ‘Peaky’ and ‘I See Buildings’ and then we just didn’t get anything after that. And we just kept being picky. So the last 10 months have been really about loving ourselves and it’s been really great.”
But there’s more to come, and Lycurgo says his upcoming projects will take him into the genre world. And of course, he’ll be happy to be a part of whatever Murphy creates next.
“I’m really happy,” he says. “That’s the truth. I feel like I’m in a very good place and I’m very confident in the work that I’m doing. And the last 10 months have been the happiest for me.”
