In Hard Truths, the actor Tuwaine Barrett barely says a word. The sore and beautifully-handled drama from director Mike Leigh bears witness to a woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in London’s suburbs in the throes of a mental breakdown; Barrett plays her son Moses, a recluse who bears the brunt of it. For the South Londoner, who’s been a jobbing actor since he graduated, it’s a fascinating shift into the spotlight: memorable for being measured; for what he doesn’t do, rather than what he does.
Barrett, 29, was raised on Doddington Estate in Battersea, his apartment block backing on to luxury mansions he’d pretend to friends that he lived in. “There was a lot of badness happening in my area,” he says. When youth clubs shut in his area, he struggled to find ways to entertain himself. After misbehaving, he was temporarily expelled from school. It was a turning point: “I remember thinking, My mum’s not gonna carry me in her belly for nine months for me to just throw it away,” he says. He liked to make people laugh, and though he doesn’t feel this way anymore, “I liked the idea of being anyone but myself,” he says. “I found that in acting: being able to play characters in Shakespeare who have the money and have the women.”
Brit School brought that out of him. There, he also met his best friend, the actor Tom Holland. The pair were in the same year, Barrett being one of the oldest and Holland one of the youngest, and have remained friends for 13 years. They met just after Holland booked his break-out film The Impossible. ”He was never there and he still managed to get top marks!” Barret says, laughing. “I was like, ‘This is fucking ridiculous! He’s been here for six months, I’ve been here for two years – and we’ve got the same mark!’”
He wasn’t really into movies much when he got there. In fact, his screen habits growing up consisted of watching Shark Tale, Finding Nemo and, when he got a little older, the reality TV parody Real Husbands of Hollywood, starring Kevin Hart. “That was where my love of wanting to be on camera came from.”
“I might be fucked, because I’m an overthinker. That’s not acceptable on a Mike Leigh film”
A stint at Mountview, a drama school famed for its musical theatre credentials, challenged Barrett’s movie and TV aspirations. A teacher called Cath Baxter was “a blessing” he says. “She knocked me down a peg,” he says, and he found confidence in reading Actor and the Target, a book by screen director Declan Donnellan that honed in on the specifics of the craft. When he got his first on-screen gig in the TV series Relic, he remembers double-checking with the director if he was doing a good job after every take.
A part as a police officer in Spider-Man: Far From Home was supposed to be his big screen break. “I’m in the trailer, but I got cut from the film,” he says with a shrug. He got the heads up from director Jon Watts, “so I didn’t [learn about that when] I sat down in the cinema, you know? That’s the perks of being [Tom Holland’s] homie.” He hopes his next superhero venture sees him play a villain, like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
Instead, it’s Hard Truths that has given him the space to prove his worth as a compelling screen presence. His journey with the film was a lengthy one. Barrett met Leigh twice in early 2020, the pair discussing Barrett’s life and upbringing at length. When COVID hit, the project went cold. It wasn’t until January 2023 that he got the call: the film was back on, Leigh remembered him and wanted him to play the part. At first Barrett was “terrified, because I didn’t know about his [usual] approach.” Leigh’s technique, part of the method behind the brilliance of films like Secrets & Lies and Naked, usually involves a number of ground rules to retain a sense of naturalism to the characters. Often, his actors are forbidden from discussing their characters when they are not acting as them and, as was the case on Hard Truths too, are responsible for the forming of the ‘script’, based on lengthy rehearsal time shaped by improv. When Barrett arrived on set, there were no scripts – only scenarios that actors were asked to play within. Before shooting, Barrett remembers thinking “I might be fucked, because I’m an overthinker, and that’s not acceptable on a Mike Leigh film.”
During filming, though, he remembers Leigh approaching him. “‘I’ve never worked with anyone like you before’,” Leigh said. Barrett’s still working out if that was a compliment.
Hard Truths is out in the UK on 31 January 2025
Credits
Writer: Douglas Greenwood
Photography: Jackson Bowley