By Reuben Lazarus and Gill Pringle
One of this generation’s most exciting actresses, Bel Powley broke out in 2015 with roles in A Royal Night Out and especially The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Since then, the striking British actress has taken on unexpected roles, none more tricky than real-life character, Dawn Wershe in White Boy Rick. “I read it and thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing, but it’s not for me’ I didn’t mean that I didn’t like it, I was like, ‘this would be such a challenge to me, I don’t know if I’d be able to fulfil this’.”
You can now judge for yourself, with White Boy Rick finally released to home entertainment. Based on the true story of Detroit teenager Rick Wershe Jr. (newcomer Richie Merritt), who became an informant for the FBI in the ‘80s, and ultimately arrested for drug-trafficking and sentenced to life in prison. The infamously downtrodden Detroit of the ‘80s saw a boom in the drug crack cocaine, and with Rick’s dad, Richard Snr. (Matthew McConaughey) involved in gun trade, it wasn’t too much of a stretch for Rick to assume a life of crime. Bel Powley plays Rick’s sister Dawn, herself dating a much older druglord.
“I’m very used to playing roles that I feel an affinity with and that I can relate to, and with Dawn, if I’m being honest, I didn’t relate to her on the page. And also playing a drug addict, I think is a really hard thing to get right. Basically, I just got the fear. But often, if you have the fear, it’s all the more reason to go for something. Sometimes you shy away from the things that you haven’t done before because you’re scared of failure. But then if you take those risks, and then look at us now, it was an amazing experience, and thank God I did it.”
Fellow Brit, Director Yann Damange, who had been impressed with Powley after he saw her own The Diary of a Teenage Girl, was the one to finally convince her to take the role, running lines and showing her what the character was really about. “He thinks that Dawn is really the only person in the film who has clarity. Even though she’s clouded by drug addiction, she sees both her dad and Rick, for what they are, and she sees what’s unfolding in front of her. Plus, she has unconditional love for her brother. She was kind of a mother figure to him, in some sense. And then Yann gave me the job and then obviously I did it, and I’m so happy I did it, and I accepted the challenge.”
To get into her character, Powley undertook research by speaking with the incarcerated Rick, but also exploring the setting and time period. “Detroit was the most impoverished city in America at that time. There was no industry there, there were no jobs, and crack cocaine got introduced into the city, and that became people’s job. Rick’s selling drugs and his dad’s selling guns, and Dawn being addicted to drugs, is almost a kind of microcosm of how the city was working.”
Guns were another tricky aspect of the role for the actress. “I mean, The War on Drugs, the people of Detroit – this underbelly of society, respond by getting their guns and going, ‘Okay, it’s war’.
“Even though you’re shooting blanks, it’s still an explosion, so it still has the kick back,” the 27 year old actress continues about working with guns. “Their dad is a gun dealer. They would’ve grown up around guns lying around the house the whole time, so they would be very well-versed in how to use a gun. It’s scary… And I’m small, it kicks back a lot. But it was kind of fun.”
As was working with Matthew McConaughey. “He’s a really generous actor. He isn’t scared of improvisation or going off-book, he really does what he feels in the moment. And that was good because it pushed me to do more of that. I usually shy away from that kind of thing, but he just does what he feels in the moment, and then if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, that’s fine. He’s a very brave actor. He challenged me and pushed me into realms that I hadn’t worked in before.”
White Boy Rick is available on Digital, DVD and Blu-ray now.
