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Basing a '28 Years Later' character on Jimmy Savile was 'masterful,' the actor who plays Samson the Alpha said
Basing a '28 Years Later' character on Jimmy Savile was 'masterful,' the actor who plays Samson the Alpha said

Business Insider

time03-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Business Insider

Basing a '28 Years Later' character on Jimmy Savile was 'masterful,' the actor who plays Samson the Alpha said

Fans of " 28 Years Later" were divided by the ending that introduces Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), a cult leader who bears more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Savile, the BBC presenter outed as a prolific sexual abuser after his death in 2011. In an interview with Business Insider in June, the film's respective director and producer, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, confirmed that the character is based on Savile. Chi Lewis-Parry, who plays Samson, a new, super-strong type of the infected called an Alpha, told BI that he thinks introducing Crystal was a bold decision but said "you have to test the boundaries." Boyle has always challenged audiences with his films, including "28 Days Later" and "Trainspotting," a dark comedy about people in Glasgow addicted to heroin. In the world of "28 Years Later," the Rage Virus would have broken out before Savile's crimes could be unearthed. It seems likely the sequel, " The Bone Temple," will explore this further. Jack O'Connell as Sir Jimmy Crystal and his cult in 28 YEARS LATER behind the scenes set photo #28YearsLater — Culture Base (@Culture3ase) June 21, 2025 Lewis-Parry said: "It's hard to come up with something original" in the horror genre. "Introducing that character is a different type of horror. It's taking real horror and sticking it in a fantasy horror scenario. I think that's masterful because you're not just relying on the jump scares and the stereotypical gore. "You are kind of teasing the psyche of an audience with a real-life horror that has been discovered," he added. "For me, it's almost scarier because that really happened. Whatever you attach to that character is the fear element. I think it's brilliant, personally." Boyle and Garland told BI how Crystal's scenes in "28 Years Later" set up the sequel. Garland said the bizarre cult leader taps into bigger themes of a "misremembered past" and "how selective memory is." O'Connell will no doubt have a larger presence in the second film as Crystal, while Lewis-Parry will reprise his role as Samson. BI previously reported how Lewis-Parry said he scared Boyle into casting him in the role during his audition. Lewis-Parry teased that fans "might fall in love with Samson," but didn't reveal any plot points, adding: "it's magical when you watch something and know nothing about any surprises."

'28 Years Later' actor Chi Lewis-Parry said he scared Danny Boyle into casting him as Samson the Alpha
'28 Years Later' actor Chi Lewis-Parry said he scared Danny Boyle into casting him as Samson the Alpha

Business Insider

time01-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Business Insider

'28 Years Later' actor Chi Lewis-Parry said he scared Danny Boyle into casting him as Samson the Alpha

When director Danny Boyle told the actor Chi Lewis-Parry "terrify me" during his audition for " 28 Years Later," he probably didn't expect the 6-foot-8-inch former MMA fighter to sprint at him from across a large room. But this unique approach helped Lewis-Parry land the role of Samson, a terrifying new type of the infected called an Alpha, in the horror sequel that hit cinemas in June. Samson appears in several spine-tingling sequences in the film to showcase how the Rage Virus has evolved since the original outbreak depicted in 2002's "28 Days Later." Lewis-Parry told Business Insider that when he auditioned for an "untitled Danny Boyle project," he didn't know it was for "28 Years Later." Recalling his thought-process after Boyle said to terrify him, Lewis-Parry said he walked to the opposite end of vast room lined with pillars to appear intimidating. "I just stood there for a while with my back to him, I didn't let him see me, just kind of stood there until I decided. I felt it was time to just take a little peek at what's over my shoulder. Then, when the timing was right, I just sprinted at him as fast as I could. Just ran at him and stopped right there and just breathed him in," he said. "It was elements of everything that I've ever been inspired by from creatures in the horror genre. And I just stood over him, and every time he tried to move, I would nudge him into place. It was just 'Stay there. You're not going anywhere.' "He just let out this massive smile. And that for me was indicative of: 'I think you got this,'" Lewis-Parry added. Lewis-Parry's unique presence can be felt throughout the film, including the scene in a gloomy tunnel where Samson kills a NATO soldier by pulling his head off his body with the spine still attached. "I like to honor the things that have inspired me. I was the Predator in that moment!" he said, referring to the creature in 1987 sci-fi movie. "So holding the head up and showing it with the spine dangling, but then also the muzzle flash reminded me of the train scene in ' Predator 2 ' when Bill Paxton gets it. "I gave everything I put into that energetically. I didn't have anything else in the tank, that was all of me, that was my loudest scream, my fiercest intent." Lewis-Parry was hugely inspired by 1980s and '90s horror movies, and he name-checked fan-favorite directors including John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Clive Barker. But Lewis-Parry said he worked with Boyle to make the character about more than violence, particularly in a scene where a soldier shoots dead an infected pregnant woman. This angers Samson, and suggests he as the capacity for emotions. "I suggested, what if he sees the infected body and he's disgusted by it? He can't believe it, 'You did this to us.' There's a division. There's human intelligence, or human barbarism, to infected intelligence, and it's this moment of: 'Why?'" Asked about his role in the sequel, Lewis-Parry was careful not to spoil " 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple," but teased: "I can just say that people might fall in love with Samson." Judging by the way he went viral following the film's release, audiences already have.

A nude scene in '28 Years Later' has people talking. What to know about the 6-foot-8 actor who plays the super-strong zombie, Samson.
A nude scene in '28 Years Later' has people talking. What to know about the 6-foot-8 actor who plays the super-strong zombie, Samson.

Business Insider

time24-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Business Insider

A nude scene in '28 Years Later' has people talking. What to know about the 6-foot-8 actor who plays the super-strong zombie, Samson.

Danny Boyle's "28 Years Later" shows how the Rage Virus has evolved since 2002's "28 Days Later." The actor Chi Lewis-Parry plays an Alpha: a super-strong zombie. The British star is 6-feet-8-inches tall and was an MMA fighter before becoming an actor. " 28 Years Later" has got horror fans talking about its controversial ending, the fact it was shot using iPhones — and the moment a hulking zombie charges naked at the young main character, Spike, and his mother. The character, Samson, is an Alpha, meaning he was infected with a mutated version of the Rage Virus that made him super-strong. Chi Lewis-Parry, the British actor who plays Samson, has since revealed that he wasn't nude filming the scene because Alfie Williams, who plays Spike, was 13 at the time. "Yeah, they were prosthetics. There's a law that states, I think, because he's a child, you're allowed to have nudity but it has to be fake nudity. It was to protect him," Lewis-Parry told Variety in an interview published on Sunday. "And, as well, I'm really friendly and am always hugging people. I wouldn't have been doing that if I was fully in the nip!" Chi Lewis-Parry, a former MMA fighter, was also in 'Gladiator II' Before he became an actor, Lewis-Parry, who stands at 6-foot-8-inches, was an MMA fighter with nine wins under his belt between 2012 and 2020, according to ESPN. However, the 41-year-old told Variety that he's wanted to be an actor since seeing the poster for "Big Trouble in Little China" in 1986. He quit fighting shortly after the COVID lockdowns in 2021 to make acting his full-time career. He started out in the 2022 "Pistol" TV series as the Sex Pistols' bodyguard during their 1978 US tour. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, he had minor roles in TV shows including "Pennyworth" and " Slow Horses." His first major film role came in 2024 when he played Phoebus in " Gladiator II" alongside Paul Mescal. His character was killed by a rhino in the coliseum. "I had a confrontational scene with Paul that sets up his demise, but that got cut. So he became just the cocky guy who's got lots of energy," he told Variety. Teasing his next role, which is in "The Running Man" alongside Glen Powell, Lewis-Parry said: "I'm one of the runners and he's a very specific runner. I don't know how much more I'm allowed to say." Lewis-Parry might return in '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' Since Samson survives in "28 Years Later," it's likely that Lewis-Parry will return for the sequel, titled " The Bone Temple." He teased his involvement when speaking to Metro ahead of the film's release. "What can I tease? There's a part two," he said, before adding: "It's different, it's amazing." "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" was shot back-to-back with the first film and will be released in theaters in 2026.

'I'm the 6ft 8in Alpha in 28 Years Later that's haunting your dreams'
'I'm the 6ft 8in Alpha in 28 Years Later that's haunting your dreams'

Metro

time20-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Metro

'I'm the 6ft 8in Alpha in 28 Years Later that's haunting your dreams'

'Terrify me.' That was the instruction given to Chi Lewis-Parry by director Danny Boyle in his 28 Years Later audition. 'I didn't really understand what that meant. Like, how do you want me to go about this?' Lewis-Parry laughs. 'But I'm guessing I terrified him good enough!' The actor and MMA fighter didn't know the movie he was reading for initially, it was just 'Untitled Danny Boyle project'. But as he says of the name attached: 'It didn't matter what it was. I could have played a bin bag, and I'd have been happy.' * Spoilers ahead for 28 Years Later!* Lewis-Parry gets rather more than that as he portrays the 'king of the Alphas', Samson, in 28 Years Later – the most feared, and genuinely nightmare-inducing, of the newly evolved strain of the Infected. Over 20 years since Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland introduced their take on the zombie horror flick to the world with 28 Days Later in 2002, they're back with their hotly anticipated follow up, which was released in cinemas on Thursday. It's not a sequel, but – like the less well-received 28 Weeks Later in 2007, which Boyle and Garland only executive-produced – it's set in the same post-apocalyptic world, ravaged by the blood-born Rage Virus that turned humans into the flesh-eating Infected. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video But, after 28 years and with mainland Britain now under quarantine, new variants have emerged, and the most fearsome of all is the massive Beserker or Alpha. Not only are they bigger, stronger and meaner, but they display intelligence – and also the truly hideous habit of 'despining' their victims. Another variant is the Slow Low, a blubbery and bald creature that crawls on the ground slurping up worms. 'I saw it as you became what you are in your society,' Lewis-Parry tells Metro of the Infected's evolution. 'So if you are an alpha in your everyday life, then you are an Alpha as the infected. The traits and characteristics of the Infected didn't necessarily change from when they were human, but they are fuelled by rage, so control is lost.' We see one Alpha chase father and son Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams) down the causeway to their human haven on Holy Island after an educational hunting trip. But Samson, who is so named by the iodine-stained and eccentric Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), gets a little more character development. After we see him take out a patrol of NATO soldiers – ripping one man's skull and spine out and then using it to beat another to death – he announces his arrival in an abandoned train carriage in similar fashion after Isla (Jodie Comer) helps a pregnant Infected give birth. Samson is shown to be more in control of his Rage than normal, aware of his surroundings and clocking the Infected after seeing her feet, leading to an interaction that informed the rest of that claustrophobic encounter between him, Spike and Isla. 'I remember when we shot that, it wasn't on the page. That was something we came up with. Danny just said, 'I want to include something here that shows he is conscious, what do you think?'' 'That's his creative genius is he lets you talk about things because we all inspire each other. There's no ego involved – and he literally just made it up on the day, based off our conversation.' Spike and Isla are then stunned to see Dr Kelson sedate Samson rather than kill him – something which would take as many as 12 precious arrows anyway in a society without guns. Suddenly, he's not just a scary killing machine – especially as Kelson reveals he has spent 13 years tending to the dead among both humans and the Infected alike, building his towering 'memento mori' of their skulls and bones. 'A lot of people would be put off by a person like Dr Kelson, and Jamie even says that he's gone mad, but he's a complicated man, in a very dire situation, and he's also very lonely,' suggests Lewis-Parry, who also played Phoebus in Gladiator II. And as to their characters' unexpected 'sweet relationship', he adds: 'I think in Samson he sees something that is probably more attractive than the humanity that's left, because this is something that's just operating off instincts, not hatred or a dislike for people, it is just existing. I think there's a nice sort of innocence to it.' That's one way of describing the huge naked zombie with wild hair and a long beard, red eyes and a thirst for blood – oh, and near-unstoppable strength. And yes, because everyone will be wondering – the Infected wear prosthetic genitals for both modesty and also legal reasons, due to working with the then 12-year-old Williams (or as Lewis-Parry confirms of the behind-the-scenes processes for the appearance of nudity: 'I never at any point thought I was going to be walking around in the nip'.) But it's not just how Lewis-Parry looks – being 6 ft 8in barefoot helps with the intimidation – but how he moves as an Alpha too that gives him such impact on screen. There's a very neat story behind the first person he explored Samson's physicality with, actor and the film's movement coach, Toby Sedgwick. Sedgwick actually played the Infected priest who Cillian Murphy's confused courier Jim interacts with in 2002's 28 Days Later, when he's trying to work out why he's woken up from a coma to find London abandoned. It was also him who invented the iconic stilted but petrifyingly fast run of the Infected. But Lewis-Parry knew he needed to do something different as he saw his Alpha having 'more control over the state that the infection puts him in, so that actually makes him more dangerous'. 'I felt like it looked like he was trying too hard, and I didn't want him to be trying anything – everything he did was just incidental. So I started to look at legendary movement, people like Andy Serkis, who is, in my opinion, the greatest all time. I looked at how he moved.' Although he couldn't directly copy Serkis due to – in his words – 'how vastly different our sizes are', he knew it was all about intention. 'What was his intention when he was moving, when he was crawling, when he was standing or when he was breathing?' shares Lewis-Parry, who was also inspired by creatures in 1980s and 90s horror movies like Predator and the Wolf Man. '[Samson's] very predatory, but he's not hiding the fact that he's coming after you. He's not trying to sneak up on you or conceal his presence. He's just like, I'm running through this wall, and if you're on the other side of it… The motive I gave him was that nothing will stop me.' And it appears that nothing has yet, as – although Lewis-Parry is very careful about giving anything away regarding next year's sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple , which was shot back to back – Samson is still alive and kicking as a zombie can get at the end of this year's film. More Trending 'What can I tease? There's a part two,' he smiles before hesitating as he picks his next words carefully. 'It's different, it's amazing.' And that's all I'm getting. 28 Years Later is in cinemas now. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will be released on January 16, 2026. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Netflix fans devour 'unrelenting' horror movie as sequel hits cinemas MORE: The 'best horror film of 2025' has arrived on Amazon Prime's Shudder MORE: Jurassic World Rebirth embraces hardcore horror: 'I waited for the studio to say no'

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