Alfie Williams is plastered on the side of the double-decker bus that drives around his town. The 28 Years Later star is reminded of it constantly. Even now, as he lounges in the plush suites of London’s Corinthia hotel—on a chaise longue, dressed in Celine—the 14-year-old is getting photos from his friends back home in a little town outside Newcastle, England. “You know what? I’m getting sick of the pictures of me on the bus!” he says, jokingly. Every second text he gets seems to read: Alfie, you’re on the 58.
The fame’s not got to his head quite yet. In fact, Williams is still adjusting to the reality that, by Friday, hundreds of thousands of people will have seen his face. Just a few weeks ago, he was back home, going to school, watching TV, doing normal teenage things. But this week, he’s been sandwiched between Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, two bona fide stars many assumed would lead Danny Boyle’s hotly anticipated return to zombieland. Instead, Williams is front and center.
Gory, giddy, and crammed with the expectedly gruesome kills, 28 Years Later is, at its heart, still a zombie movie. But with Williams as the lead—following in the footsteps of Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) and Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later)—it also plays as a coming-of-age tale set against an apocalyptic backdrop.
Part of the movie’s effectiveness is in how unexpected so much of it feels. To avoid spoilers, a brief overview: It’s 28 years after a virus has wiped out much of Britain, turning those it touches into the infected. On a small island off England’s northern coastline, a quarantined, virus-free community has formed. Survival means knowing how to fight. A young lad named Spike (Williams) and his dad Jamie (Taylor-Johson) cross a causeway to the zombie-ravaged mainland, so Jamie can teach Spike how to kill the infected.
As the son of an actor—Alfie Dobson (tall, looks like Bautista)—Williams knew he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. “I kind of wanted to be like him,” he says, “I liked playing pretend, like [being] a secret agent or surviving a zombie apocalypse—I’m not kidding!” He always thought “this would be cool to do in real life.”
Williams tried out drama classes but quit after a month, because it was a bit too musical theater for his liking. Instead, he asked around, took some meetings, and signed with an agent. When the sides for his 28 Years Later audition landed in his inbox, he had no idea about the project. After making it through the first round, he found out more about the film, and the magnitude of his potential role in it. “I hadn’t seen 28 Days Later previously, but I’d heard of it, and knew it was a big film,” he says. “The more auditions I did, the more nervous I got.” He assumed he’d have proven himself by that point. And he had. After four weeks of callbacks, Williams landed the part.
For eight weeks last summer, he was sprinting across the hills and through the forest of the north of England with seven-feet-tall undead men chasing after him. One day he’d be sharing emotional scenes with Comer and the legendary Ralph Fiennes (“Mr. Fiennes,” he calls him); the next, getting dragged across causeways by Taylor-Johnson, water sloshing in his shoes. It was a dream, but there was still schoolwork to do. “I’d be drenched, and then [the crew] were like, ‘Right, come on, let’s get some maths done!” he says. “That sucked, because I couldn’t spend any [down]time with the other actors!”
“My favorite thing from 2011? My brain was as smooth as a bone back then”
ALFIE WILLIAMS
Williams isn’t totally sure what’s next. His dream collaborators list is long: James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Andrew Garfield, Brian Cranston, and more. He loves Westerns, like the 1988 movie Young Guns, and insists that “from a young age, I learned everything just from watching Family Guy,” so wants to try his hand at comedy too.
“That’s probably not good for me,” he says, in his Geordie twang, of his obsession with the late-night cartoon. But in fact, it’s gifted him a killer sense of humor. When I ask some silly questions, he offers stand-up responses off the cuff:
What’s your favorite thing from 2011, the year you were born?
My brain was as smooth as a bone back then. We might have to skip this one.
What smell reminds you of the place you grew up?
That’s a weird question. Smoke, maybe?
What are you scared of?
Slugs are gross, but I’m fine with snails, weirdly.
Life in London seems fun right now—this fancy hotel, the big premiere the day after we speak—and he wants to keep acting. “I kind of have to,” he says, “I don’t want to take it for granted. A lot of kids would’ve killed for this”.
Still, there’s something itching within him to escape the busyness. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend months running around beautiful, barren vistas, chased by zombies: You start craving a little peace. “I just want to live in a cabin somewhere one day,” William says with a resolute grin, “in the pines, as far away from the city as possible.”
28 Years Later is in theaters from 19 June.