Joe & Co.

 Welcome to my new Blog!  I've been away for a while, but now I'm back ..... and hopefully with a bang!

You may recognise Joseph Gilgun for his role as Woody in This Is England, but it is his latest turn as Misfits’ newest and most intriguing ASBO superhero, Rudy, that’s got everyone talking. IDOL headed down to the set in the deepest depths of South London to talk crying on cue, fashion and being saved by Shane Meadows.

You’re an actor now, but I read that you started doing fashion design?

Yeah, I was in Coronation Street when I was 8, but I came out of it and didn’t do anything for ages. I got really spotty and started puberty and I hated everyone for quite a few years. I did various courses at college, I did an art course and I was shit at it, because I couldn’t keep up with the academic side of it, which shouldn’t be what an art course is about. I was good at the creative stuff, like drawing but I just couldn’t read or write very well.
I was starting to get in to girls a bit more and I wasn’t very interested in my academics, I’d just finished secondary school and I was one of those kids that didn’t really give a shit. Eventually I got on this Year 0, which basically means if you didn’t get the qualifications from school then it allows you to get into university… and renders your GCSE’s completely fucking pointless. I did the fashion degree and this one time a girl challenged me about wearing the same jeans two days in a row. I was having a really bad day and I was losing marks because of my writing and spelling so I just threw my folder out the window and fucked off, ‘Sod it, I’m so sick of this shit.’…You know, I predicted the gypsy dress and I got a really good mark!
I said, ‘This time next year, all girls will be wearing gypsy dresses.’ And I was right. The thing with fashion is that you have to live it, if you’re going to do it as a career. Everything has to be about the changing of trends and I didn’t live it. I didn’t like it that much, that I wanted to live the shit, it’s very fickle.

How did you get back in to acting from that?

Well I was always on and off, but for some reason I just wasn’t very successful at all…(laughs). I think I was trying to do everything I could in every audition that I went to and sort of ruined it. What I’ve worked out now is if I try or start acting professional, I fuck it up. I just have to not think and just be. Try not to act, if I can help it.