An Interview with SoulBoy's Martin Compston

He might be known for his gritty roles in films like Sweet Sixteen and Red Road but Martin Compston proves he can turn his hand to more light-hearted fare, and pull some dance moves on the way, in his latest film SoulBoy. The coming of age story is set in 1974, a time when Northern Soul fans across the UK made a weekly pilgrimage to the legendary Wigan Casino. The Skinny caught up with Scotland’s rising star to chat about the making of the film, learning to dance and what he thinks the Soul fans will make of the film.

The film’s great fun to watch, was it just as much fun to shoot?

Up and down. We were really up against it time wise, for the budget we had it was fairly ambitious. At some points there were six or seven hundred extras in a day and when you’re on a low budget it’s hard to control that. We did have a lot of fun. The dancing and stuff, I mean it’s really hard – I’ve got no dance background so to get that going was a stressful couple of weeks at first but once I got over my self-consciousness I really enjoyed it. It’s great once you have a bit of confidence because the music’s incredible, the music makes the film.

Did you know much about the Northern Soul scene before you started?

I didn’t, I’d heard bits of it. It was amazing to me – they’re so protective of it and so proud of it. I don’t know how they’re going to take to [the film]. They’ll love the music, obviously but they’re really protective over their scene and rightly so – they don’t court publicity at all. The reaction we’ve had so far has been great. A lot of the dancers in it are all original Wigan old boys and they had a great time. We stayed as true as possible where we could but you always have to have some artistic license otherwise it wouldn’t work.

Did you speak to any of the original Northern Soul fans from the time?

Yeah I lived with a guy called Keb Darge. He was one of the original Wigan boys, he’s a top Northern DJ and was one of the best dancers back in the day. He taught me how to dance. I was up at 8am dancing in his front room while he sat on his chair with a bamboo stick barking orders at me. That was an interesting couple of weeks but he became one of my best friends.

On set we had a lot of the old-timers and they were very passionate about it. They just love dancing. I’ve been on a lot of sets where if you’re an extra and there’s hours and hours of hanging about you just get bored and want to go, but they couldn’t get enough of it. They just kept going and going. One day we were a wee bit behind and we had to shoot an 18 hour day and at the end of it they were saying, ‘Can you just leave the music on?’ so they could have a dance – it was incredible.

How much practice did you have to do to get up to scratch with the dancing?

It was about a month. I got quite good at it in the sense that if you were doing a basketball movie or a swimming movie you wouldn’t become a professional swimmer or a professional basketball player in a month, you just get up to filming standard. So I made my peace with that. The funny thing is that the stuff which looks good, the filps and the drops are easier with just a bit of fitness. It’s the natural rhythm in between breaks [that’s difficult], it honestly looks like they’re skating but that takes years and years of going every week to a Northern do to develop your own sort of style.

What was it like working with the rest of the cast?

Craig Parkinson, who’s my nemesis in the film became one of my best friends and Felicity [Jones] is one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with, she’ll go really far. We just had a really good time. It’s always comforting when you know you’re working with actors who are good because essentially you’re trying to hold something together and you really need to be on your game.

Did you have a favourite scene to shoot?

There was one that didn’t make the film which I thought was incredible. It was an underwater scene because there was a big thing with Wigan after all-nighters, once they were finished they’d all go swimming in the morning and we shot this amazing underwater scene but it didn’t quite fit into the film.

So are you now a big Northern Soul fan?

I love it. We were a couple of weeks before filming and the dancing was getting a bit stressful for me. So we’d take a break and I’d go away and listen to my iPod and I’m a big indie kid so I’d go away and listen to some Kasabian or something. And one day I went on my break and we’d been listening to Northern Soul and on my break I was listening to Northern and that’s when it hit me – I really love this music. So from then I thought, right I’m into this and kicked it up a gear. The music is proper toe-tapping, it will carry the film itself.