Dylan Llewellyn: “Before ‘Derry Girls’ was a really tough period for me”

Dylan Llewellyn says he’s “just going with the flow” at the moment, but the flow is definitely moving in his favour. Comedy fans who adored his breakout performance in Derry Girls – come on, who didn’t love the “wee English fella”? – can now catch him in another brilliant British sitcom, Big Boys. Series two launched on Channel 4 on Sunday (January 14) and feels like the perfect winter warmer: it’s a show with a huge heart and an equally massive appetite for chaos.

Whereas Llewellyn’s Derry Girls character James sometimes felt like an outlier – he was neither a girl nor from Derry originally – his Big Boys role is firmly front and centre. He plays Jack, a character based on the show’s writer-creator Jack Rooke, who is dealing with grief while getting to grips with being gay and muddling through uni life. Episode one of the new series features flat-hunting, an Alison Hammond reference and a (prosthetic) penis popping through a glory hole: classic Big Boys.

“In series one Jack was still coming out of his shell and dealing with the loss of his father of course, so there were a lot of things holding him back from who he wanted to be,” Llewellyn says when we meet for coffee in Soho. The Aussie bar-restaurant that he’s picked is trendy but relaxed, and the maître d’ tells NME that Llewellyn is a regular.

“But now he’s come out [as gay],” Llewellyn continues, referring to the emotional climax of series one, “we get to see more of the real Jack: his sassy side and his comfortability with his friends.” Series two is more of an ensemble piece than series one: Jack’s confident pal Corinne (Izuka Hoyle) and gay guiding light Yemi (Olisa Odele) both feature prominently, as does his fun-loving cousin Shannon (Harriet Webb).

At the same time, Big Boys‘ heartwarming core is still Jack’s friendship with Danny (Jon Pointing), his straight best mate who is more vulnerable than he lets on. “With tough subjects like grief and mental health and sexuality, you don’t know how the other person is going to react,” Llewellyn says. “But in Big Boys, [Jack and Danny] open up to each other and they’re accepted, and that’s beautiful to see. To be part of something that shows up toxic masculinity and shows guys it’s OK to talk about things and not be ashamed is really special.”

Series two also lets Llewellyn show off his slapstick skills – that glory hole scene will really make you gasp – and flex his dramatic muscles. “He’s just very good at the light and shade and making you really care about the character,” Rooke tells NME.

“I think I had two, maybe three auditions that whole year”

When Big Boys was being developed, Rooke says “loads of actors” auditioned to play Jack, but Llewellyn was the “only one I felt a personal affinity with” – pretty vital given that the character is based on him. “Dylan is so naturally sweet and inquisitive,” Rooke adds. “And there’s a vulnerability that he brings to the role that reminds me of a lot of young people at that age.” Rooke is right: though Llewellyn is 31, he doesn’t struggle to convince as someone a decade younger.

Throughout our hour-long conversation, Llewellyn is every bit as charming and easygoing as you’d expect. When NME moans about the grim London weather, he asks kindly: “What’s your favourite time of year, Nick?” He speaks a little more carefully about Big Boys‘ sensitive themes. “I’ve gone through loss myself,” he says, “so I can definitely identify with that.” But he is candid about the way series one built a loyal audience without quite going supernova.

“People’s response to series one meant too much – we even had famous people saying they loved it,” Llewellyn says. Comedy legend Kathy Burke tweeted that she had binge-watched the whole “beautiful thing” in one night. “But I think it deserves more recognition because it’s such a good show and everyone’s so talented in it,” Llewellyn continues. “I personally think it’s [of] a similar standard to Derry Girls and Derry Girls was a big hit. But we’ll see. I mean, series two, here we come!”

Llewellyn is also completely frank about the way Derry Girls changed his life when it debuted in 2018. “It just really pulled me back into the acting world,” he says. Llewellyn landed Big Boys between series one and two, then won a plum role in Pistol, Danny Boyle’s 2022 miniseries about the Sex Pistols. He played Wally Nightingale, the thwarted guitarist who was dumped from the band before they made it big. “He actually lived the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, but without the money and fame,” Llewellyn says glumly.
He brightens when he describes the “unreal” experience of working with Boyle, an “amazing director” who “treats everyone exactly the same”. Llewellyn even got guitar lessons from Underworld, the Welsh band who’ve been Boyle collaborators since their techno hit ‘Born Slippy .NUXX’ was used in 1996’s Trainspotting. “Me and the guys who played the Pistols did a whole band camp thing, and we also had coaching to move like the real band members,” he says. Has he kept the rock star swagger? “Definitely, I know how to move like a punk!”

Just a few years earlier, working with an Oscar-winning director would have seemed like a pipe dream for Llewellyn. When he got the call to say he’d been cast in Derry Girls, Lisa McGee’s wonderfully evocative coming-of-age sitcom set in ’90s Northern Ireland, he was washing dishes in a coffee shop in his Surrey hometown. He still lives there today, but is planning a move to South London “to be closer to everything”.

“I think I had two, maybe three auditions that whole year,” Llewelyn recalls. “It was a really tough period for me so I put everything into that self-tape [for Derry Girls]. And when I got in the room with them,” he says, fast-forwarding to his in-person audition, “I could see out of the corner of my eye that the producers were laughing and really enjoying what I was doing.” Even if he hadn’t landed the part, Llewellyn says he left the audition knowing he’d “done alright” – a huge confidence booster after his fallow patch.

“The response to ‘Big Boys’ meant so much”

Llewellyn’s dish-washing period must have been especially tough to take because his acting career got off to such a flying start. In 2011, when he was just 18, he landed a role in Channel 4’s teatime soap Hollyoaks and stayed for around 18 months. Llewellyn says he enjoyed playing Martin ‘Jono’ Johnson, a character he described as “cheeky” and “a bit naive”, but always wanted to be known as “more than the Hollyoaks kid”.

Sadly, aside from a 2015 stint in the West End musical War Horse, steady acting work proved elusive after he left the show. A couple of near misses really stung – one so much that he says he’d “rather not talk about it today”. The other close call came when he did “three or four auditions” for Skins, the iconic teen drama series that had already helped to launch the careers of Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult and Jack O’Connell.

“I got down to the chemistry read, which is normally the final round,” Llewellyn recalls. He can’t quite remember which character he was earmarked for, but it sounds as though it was probably Matty, the enigmatic bad boy played by Sebastian de Souza. “I want to say his name was Matt or something, but I do know that at the time I really wanted the part,” Llewellyn says. “And it really just felt like I had hit the post.”

As a teenager, Llewellyn dreamed of being a photographer; the acting bug didn’t so much bite as slowly burrow beneath his skin. He admits he chose GCSE Drama as “a doss subject” but then “ended up finding it really fun”. When his school drama group won a competition at London’s National Theatre, 16-year-old Llewellyn was scouted by a talent agency and appeared in TV’s The Bill and short films before Hollyoaks came knocking.

Llewellyn doesn’t just look back at secondary school fondly because it led him to acting. He also credits it with restoring his confidence after he was “a little bit bullied” at primary school for falling behind with his studies. “Everyone was so far ahead of me with their homework so I just felt really dumb all the time,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to go to school because my dyslexia made it such a challenge, but I didn’t even know [at the time] that it was dyslexia.”

After being diagnosed with dyslexia, he was moved to More House, a specialist school for boys with learning and language-based difficulties. “The classes were small, the teachers were so patient and caring and, like, I felt like a proper student,” he says with a smile.

Nearly two decades later, Llewellyn definitely seems comfortable in his skin. Because of his dyslexia, he gives himself “plenty of time to learn lines”, but it doesn’t hold him back. He is known for playing nuanced nice guys – he also stars as naive but likeable PC Kelby Hartford in the cosy BBC drama Beyond Paradise – but now wants to go darker. Much darker.

“I mean, my dream role from watching something recently… I would love to have played Barry Keoghan’s character in Saltburn – going buckwild like that,” he says. “You’re like, ‘Ah, he’s a nice, warm, fluffy character’ and then you’re like, ‘Oh my god, he’s really not!’ I’d love to play a mysterious character like that.”

Until a Saltburn-style curveball comes along, Llewellyn plans to “go with the flow and just keep auditioning”. After all, Derry Girls taught him that a break can come your way when you least expect it. And it will only take one smart director to realise that Llewellyn’s innocent face and natural affability is the perfect front for a seriously twisted screen villain.

‘Big Boys’ airs Sundays on Channel 4 at 10pm. You can stream the whole seconds season on All 4 now

Photography: Joseph Sinclair
Styling: Sarah Harrison
Grooming: Charlie Cullen

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