“Do you remember The Land Before Time?” Charles Melton asks me inquisitively, sitting in a London hotel room drinking tea.
“Of course,” I say, interested to find out where he’s going with this. “It’s really sad.”
“Yes! But it goes deep, right?” The film – about a group of plucky young dinosaurs on a prehistoric voyage – was one of his childhood favourites. “My dad took me to see it when I was about four years old, and I was walking up and down the aisles, looking at the faces of everyone watching this movie. My dad claims that that’s when he realised that I was so interested in this bridge between people seeing something on a screen and being able to feel connected. I wanted to be a part of it somehow.”
His dad, it transpires, has great instincts. Fast forward 28 years and Charles is one of 2023’s biggest breakout stars. After cutting his teeth on the CW’s increasingly outrageous teen drama Riverdale, he booked a few supporting roles in the likes of Bad Boys for Life and Rian Johnson’s detective comedy Poker Face. Then a script made its way to him, from a first-time screenwriter, to be directed by American arthouse legend Todd Haynes.
That was May December, the psychodrama which sent tongues wagging when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. Even then, critics were placing Charles in the Best Supporting Actor race; an Oscar hopeful. It’s a dizzying ascension for someone whose previous nominations were almost exclusively at the Teen Choice Awards (Choice Summer Movie Actor for The Sun Is Also a Star) and MTV Movie + TV Awards (Best Kiss for Riverdale in 2019). But the hype is warranted, and it’s working: critics circles and awards bodies have already given him their Best Supporting Performance trophies.
In the film, Charles plays Joe Atherton Yoo, a radiographer and butterfly enthusiast who, when he was 13, met and ended up in a relationship with his 36-year-old pet shop colleague Gracie, played by Julianne Moore. The twist? 23 years and a jail term for Gracie have passed and the pair are still together. Just as they’re preparing to send their youngest children off to college, an actress, Elizabeth Berry, played by Natalie Portman, arrives to study Gracie before playing her in an upcoming film. With upheaval in the air, Joe begins to confront uncomfortable truths about his past and question the narrative that his wife has been feeding to him about their relationship since he was a child.
“I think it would be an actor’s dream for every script they get sent to feel this immediate connection to the character and the story,” Charles says of the film. “I don’t think it’s like that most of the time, but when I got Samy [Burch]’s script, I felt that.” Charles was determined to book the gig. He cut short a prior work commitment and told his family he needed to miss an upcoming reunion (they were super supportive) to prepare. In the end, it took him six hours to record his self-tape, starting over until he was satisfied he’d done the best he possibly could. Of course, he got it: “Maybe this is kind of a heady thing to say, but [from that point on] it was up to me to paint in the colours of [Samy’s] map.”
Charles worked with his two acting coaches and his therapist to nail the repressed melancholy of Joe – a shy, tense-jawed and gentle man who has always existed in the shadow of his manipulative wife. “Joe [is] preverbal,” he says of his character. “It’s hard for him to communicate. He’s been conditioned and influenced by society telling him at such a young age what he was, who he was supposed to be.” And then there was, of course, Todd, the director of films like Carol and I’m Not There. “Todd helped guide me throughout that whole process, which was incredible,” he says. “He was someone I’d always dreamed of working with. I rewatched everything he’d made before we shot. Velvet Goldmine twice, Safe, Poison. He’s a genius.” Acting is an often mysterious art form credited mostly to the individual performer, or perhaps at most a particularly attentive director, but Charles maintains: “I believe it takes a village.”
He approaches acting with the same discipline he used when playing football in high school and college. This is, he prefaces, his one sports metaphor: “It’s not so much what you do in the season as what you do in the off-season.” He shot May December in just 23 days in Georgia last year. The time leading up to it was what mattered the most. During that prep time, he was watching films like In the Mood for Love (especially Tony Leung’s performance) and Brokeback Mountain (to see how Heath Ledger captured his closeted cowboy character’s “personal conflict”), as well as speaking with Todd and those aforementioned coaches, all to make sense of his character. “I was learning how certain emotions live in the body. I can get so in my own head, going against my body’s natural instinct, because of all these structured ideas that almost restrain the performance.” He lets out a laugh, punctuating his deep thoughts with self-deprecation. “I probably need to chill out.”
Playing a father of three grown children who has gone through multiple unprocessed traumas, Charles is grateful he had the support and wisdom of Todd, Julianne and Natalie to lean on. “I do have certain exercises that can separate the character from myself, and as I’m discovering how I like to work, I’m finding my technicality means I have the freedom to just let go. I don’t need to suffer.” So no method acting then? “The idea of causing suffering and pain to others around you, in order to tell your story for the character…” He pauses and holds up his mug. “That is not my cup of chamomile tea.”
The intense subject matter – paired with a quick, intense shooting schedule with no rehearsal time – meant Charles had to set boundaries with himself. “Because when you’re telling a character’s story you’re sort of like a vessel,” he says, “and some of those things live in the body.” To destress, he’d do talk therapy, acupuncture, and watch Abbot Elementary with his sister. “Oh, and I’d paint,” he adds. “It was just like splatters, but I would do like five in a row every day.” He reckons he’s kept 40 of them from the shoot.
When I suggest the world might like to see the Charles Melton May December paintings, he’s adamant (“Oh God, no!”) that they’re not worth looking at, but there’s some science behind his approach. I did art therapy when I was a teenager, I say. “I didn’t think of it as [therapy] at the time,” he says, and hums thoughtfully. “But I guess anything can be therapy, right? Talk therapy. Walk therapy. American football therapy.”
Earlier this year, as the buzz for his role in May December was starting to grow, Charles said goodbye to the lovable football jock Reggie Mantle, the character he’d played on Riverdale for the past seven years. Charles spent many months of the year shooting in Toronto, before the show ended in August 2023. “Obviously it frees up more time for projects like May December, but I learned so much being there. I formed relationships that I will have until the end of my days. It really helped me refine this work ethic. Riverdale truly was my Juilliard – I was learning and growing and playing and taking risks. I was allowed to do that. We just had our final season, so you know, it’s…” Charles trails off and shoots me a rueful smile. He looks pensive. “It’s bittersweet. But I’m so happy it brought joy to so many people.”
This crossroads, departing teen show stardom and stepping into the world of auteurs and Oscars is, he says, “another step…I don’t know in the right direction, but it’s definitely the direction”. He just wants to be on set again, preferably with Todd at some point – but he won’t mention who else he’s keen to work with: “I don’t want to jinx anything, but the list is long. So long.”
In the meantime, Charles has been catching up with the performances of those Oscar-hyped peers: He loved Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall, and her break-out Toni Erdmann is in his laptop library, still waiting to be watched. “I’ve also been watching a ton of Korean cinema recently,” he says. “A lot of Korean acting legends” – Parasite’s Song Kang-ho, for example – “can say so much without ever saying a word. I find that so inspiring.” He’d like to act in a Korean film in future (“I’ve got to fine-tune my Korean speaking abilities first”) and wants to get behind the camera eventually too. “I just love acting so much right now, but I’m going to do a little short film that I wrote a couple of years ago when I get some time off,” he says. “A little love story to my sister.”
But Charles Melton’s journey with May December is far from over. The film is yet to be released in some countries; the Oscar buzz means it will be on everyone’s lips until well into 2024. He will be spending a little more time with Todd, Julianne and Natalie.
As to what comes next? “I have no idea…” he says. “I never really know what I’m doing.” Charles grins. He seems excited. “But I know I want to do this until I give everything I got.”
‘May December’ is streaming now on Sky Cinema in the UK and Netflix in the USA.
Credits
Photography Francesc Planes