When Tom Francis was living in New York, playing a “blood-stained beefcake” otherwise known as Joe Gillis in the Broadway run of Sunset Boulevard, a performance that earned the Brit a Tony nom, he Citi Biked to work every day. “I think I was like the top 1 percent of Citi Bikers that year,” he tells me over Zoom.
The habit encapsulates the 27-year-old’s boundless energy, which endeared him to audiences on both sides of the pond. That charm is on full display in Netflix’s newly released The Mosquito Bowl, directed by Peter Berg, the American auteur who brought Friday Night Lights to movie theaters and televisions in the aughts. In what is only his third onscreen credit, Francis stars as Dave Schreiner—a real-life football-star-turned-World-War-II-Marine, killed in the line of duty—alongside Nicholas Galitzine, Ray Nicholson, and Bill Skarsgård.
It may seem strange to see a lineup of mostly Europeans take on this very American story—but watching Francis talk to Skarsgård, with whom he reunited for a conversation, I kept thinking of the camaraderie forged on a football field, or more bleakly, in a battle zone. The easy brotherhood, the physicality, the inside jokes, the spats with darkness. They have it all in spades. But don’t just take it from me. Let Francis and Skarsgård tell you.
Tom Francis: We met in New York, didn’t we?
Bill Skarsgård: We did meet in New York.
Francis: Pete [Berg] had just come over to see me in Sunset Boulevard. He invited me out for dinner, and in true Pete fashion was, like, 40 minutes late because he was caught up in a meeting with you in the next room. That was how I met the wonderful Bill Skarsgård. All 10 feet of him.
Skarsgård: It was not a dinner—it was a lunch. Pete was like, “Do you know this actor, Tom Francis? He’s fantastic. I really want you to stay until he comes.” So it was a deliberate push for us to meet. Little did I know how close we would get by the end of the year.
Francis: I submitted a self-tape [for the role of Dave Schreiner]. It wasn’t the best tape. Basically, my manager has an office near Pete’s and is close to him—their dogs play together a lot—so I think my manager went round to Pete’s with her dog. Then she went full-court press, and he ended up watching my tape. He must have seen something in that dreadful tape he enjoyed, because he ended up flying over to New York literally two days later to come and see me in the show.
Skarsgård: For the role of Dave Schreiner, what parts of yourself did you draw from?
Francis: Dave is described as this overthinking kind of character; he’s always thinking about whether he did the right thing. I am inherently like that. I was in this situation for the first time ever, being in this massive movie, and I felt like every single step of the way, I was thinking, Is this the right thing to do? Maybe it was you or Ray [Nicholson] who went, “Just lean into that. Use that.” As soon as I decided, “Stop trying to play him, just feel it,” that’s when everything locked in for me.
Skarsgård: You were the last one to come to Australia [to shoot Mosquito Bowl]. How did it feel to leave Sunset Boulevard and start this other journey on the other side of the world?
Francis: I was most scared about… probably fitting in. I was coming into a pretty stacked cast with a wealth of knowledge in film and TV. I just didn’t have that yet. But I remember getting there on the first day, and I think you, Ray, and Nick [Galitzine] came over and all just hugged me. You’ve got this smile when you’re really excited… [Laughs] There it is!
Skarsgård: For the readers, it’s not the It smile.
Francis: No, it’s not the It smile. But I just remember we turned up and you were like, “We’re gonna have so much fun making this movie.” Instantly, every single ounce of nerves was gone. Then it was four weeks of starting off the mornings with football training for three hours, and then military drills in the evening.
Skarsgård: More so than us trying to learn football in four weeks, the real gift was for us to get to know each other.
Francis: This movie’s so much about brotherhood and having that time at the beginning without having any pressures of the camera on you, and having to actually go and do it was an absolute gift.
Skarsgård: Our bodies were falling apart even before we started the shoot. But I remember you saying, “I wanna be a sponge. I’m just ready to absorb.” What comes to mind in terms of the things that you really absorbed?
Francis: One of the biggest things I learned from you was probably energy management. With theater, it’s a sprint. Every single day you wake up, and you know you have to go and do a 400-meter sprint at seven o’clock at night, and you do that for two and a half hours. With a film job, the days are really long, and there are moments where you have to know when you can relieve the tension in your body and just relax so that when you need to turn on, you can just turn it on and go.
Skarsgård: You had a lot of nicknames throughout the production, some that I won’t mention, but one was “Tommy Vibes.” You and I shared a makeup trailer together and you were always singing, DJing…
Francis: We definitely had the fun trailer.
Skarsgård: Pete is an incredible director in going against the very rehearsed and precise aspect of theater-making. He’s just a force of chaos; even though he wrote the script, he’d be like, “Fuck the script and be in the moment.” I remember at one point he was giving you lines, and he was like, “Okay, now you’re running up to the coach, and you’re saying this. And remember, you’re pissed off.” And you’re like, hyperventilating because you’re supposed to be running off the pitch, and then Pete’s just going, “Say this line. Say it like this. More angry.” I’m standing there thinking, This is day one on his first film, and he’s about to pass out.
Francis: I had been hyperventilating for so long, I was like, “I need a banana. I need a banana.” He was like, “I didn’t tell you to say that.” I said, “No, Pete, I’m gonna…” Then I went from the American accent straight into English, like, “Pete, I’m actually gonna pass out.” Then suddenly I’ve got two people holding me up.
Skarsgård: Welcome to showbiz. Going back to your approach, you have a God-given gift. But you’re also so curious, you were collecting credits in the movie.
Francis: I don’t think they put them in. I need to have a talk with Pete and Ezra [Emanuel, the film’s executive producer] about that. Whenever I had downtime on the set, I would go and apply blood makeup to different extras or go around and help the hair team out. I was always trying to help out the PAs and be like, “Shall I get you a Powerade after this long day of playing football?” There was set dressing. I also actually operated a camera at one point, which was terrible. The only thing they didn’t let me do was control the explosions. They drew a line at that.
Skarsgård: Let’s talk about the supreme commander a little bit more, aka Pete Berg.
Francis: He really did change my life. He just blindly believes in me and makes me feel like I can achieve anything. I’ve never met anybody whose mind works in the way that his mind does. Seeing him interact in the world is equal parts hilarious and astonishing. The way that his imagination works and how free and willing he is to impart knowledge and advice. It’s infectious.
Skarsgård: It was something that I tried to remind myself as well: You’re lucky if you get to do something like this once a decade, even if you do two, three films a year. One of the most special things about what we do is that you can meet friends for life at any given turn. It is a rarity, but when it happens, it’s very special—and I love you, Tom.
Francis: I love you too, man.
Skarsgård: We talked a couple of weeks ago, and you kind of described your life right now as feeling like you’re strapped onto a rocket.
Francis: I just remember you saying to me, “Enjoy this time. Enjoy the experience.” Before then, I was probably freaking out a little bit. But it was great advice: “Just enjoy the ride.”
Photography by James Anastasi
Styling by David Nolan
Grooming by Travis Nunes
Executive Production by Jude Spour
Production Management by Mia Tessema
Photography Assistance by Stefan Ebelewicz
Production Assistance by Elliot Spour
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