Keiynan Lonsdale was at home in Sydney during the following phone interview, and while this chat was conducted before I had the chance to actually see Insurgent (the first sequel to last year’s Divergent), he was happy to discuss the film in general terms, and explain exactly how he managed to nab such a prominent role in such a huge movie so easily. Or was it?
You have actually seen the film now, Keiynan?
Yes, I’ve seen it twice now. Lionsgate, the distributor, put on a small screening a few weeks ago that I went to with my team, and it was cool and strange to see it for the first time. But it was awesome too, and then there was a screening in Sydney that my friends and family got to go to.
So how did you manage that great leap? You’ve gone from Aussie movies like Razzle Dazzle and TV like All Saints and Dance Academy to this American blockbuster with such ease! You’ve got to admit that it’s pretty damn impressive, so how did you do it?
Magic!… No, I just wanted to go overseas and I wanted to audition for things – I wanted to give it a go – and some people were like, you know, ‘It’s too risky!’, and, ‘You’re never going to stand out!’, and, ‘There’s no point in going over!’, but I just thought that there was no point in not trying. And so I went over and I didn’t get anything for the first year, and then the second year I went over and I didn’t get anything, and so I came back to Australia and I was putting auditions down on video. And one of them was for Insurgent, and then a month after that they wanted me to Skype with the director [Robert Schwentke], and that was it. I just think that it was about persistence and constantly trying to improve.
As Divergent and Insurgent were made so close together can you tell us at what point you actually started working on the production? Was Divergent maybe still being completed when you were starting on Insurgent?
I got cast two weeks before I actually started filming Insurgent, and I think that it had already started filming before I was properly cast. It was all very last minute and it was really coming down to the wire. I found it a little odd, but I heard that they just wanted to get the character right and to find the person who suited him best, and it all seemed to work out.
Could you tell us about Uriah without giving too much away?
He’s a part of the ‘Dauntless’ faction, and they’re warriors that protect the city. He’s in the same group as Tris [Shailene Woodley’s character] but he’s also ‘Divergent’, so he has traces of all the factions, and he develops a friendship with Tris because they share that bond. He’s a bit cheeky and he has a kind of positive energy that seems out of place in such a chaotic world, and he adds light to the story.
And who did you get to work with? Obviously Shailene, but what about Kate Winslet and Miles Teller, or the Australian actors Jai Courtney and Naomi Watts?
I was in scenes with most of the main cast except Octavia Spencer. I had one scene with Kate, which was great, but most of my scenes were with Shailene, which was cool too, and Naomi was awesome as well, and really lovely. She introduced herself to all of us, and I was in a few scenes with her over a couple of weeks, and Jai I only worked with in the last week or two but we hung out a bit and he gave me some advice about making the transition from Sydney to LA… And it was physically demanding but I do always try to keep up my fitness, and as an actor I think that’s important as you just never know. With some of the fighting sequences we got to work with the stunt guys and do some training, but mostly it was up to us to maintain our fitness… And I mostly didn’t get to work with all the greenscreen, not like Shailene, so I got to work with the actors who were really there and on real sets.
And is there anything you can tell us about the final installment in this series, Allegiant, which is to be split into two parts? Or should we not talk about it just in case, ahem, it might give away Uriah’s fate?
[laughs] Well, Uriah is in the third book… I believe that I’m going to be in Allegiant, but I don’t know for sure, and I don’t know anything about Part 2, as anything could happen or change.
And what else have you been up to?
The day I finished on Insurgent I went to Boston and worked on a film called The Finest Hours, and I did that one with Chris Pine and Casey Affleck, which was really cool and really surreal, and I wasn’t expecting it but I went along with it, and it was challenging and I learnt a lot. We wrapped in December, and I took a month off and I went back to Australia for Christmas and chilled out with my family and friends. And now I’ve made the official move to LA and I’m doing auditions… I want to diversify and play all sorts of characters and with all sorts of people, and just do as many different films as I can. I do love doing the action movie stuff like this but I don’t want to make it my brand, you know?
I Wake Up Screening 