‘If Tom Cruise calls and asks me to climb a mountain, I’ll be there’: Amir Wilson on His Dark Materials, grief, and the great outdoors

Amir Wilson: ‘People our age are the future leaders and will be stepping up. They will have a voice’ (Domizia Salusest)

Every role I’ve done seems to be something where my dad has to die,” says Amir Wilson, wincing a little. His characters have certainly been through a lot. As plucky would-be knight Tiuri, he didn’t have much to laugh about in Netflix’s fantasy series The Letter for the King, in which his adoptive father dies trying to protect him. Or when he played Simba, scion of a famously soon-to-be-trampled-upon Mufasa, in the West End production of The Lion King. And if his character’s father isn’t dying, he’s absent, as in Sky’s whimsical adaptation of The Secret Garden, in which he played Dickon opposite Colin Firth and Julie Walters.

Then there’s his breakthrough role as Will Parry in His Dark Materials, which we’re here to talk about today. That morbid theme continues in the BBC’s complex take on Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy: Will is a troubled teenage boy who joins forces with orphan Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen) to uncover the secrets of multiple worlds and help overthrow the all-powerful Magisterium. Not enough drama for you? In season two, Will comes face to face with his long-lost father, only to watch him be killed moments later.

Those scenes are all the more poignant given Wilson’s own dad, Paul, died of a heart attack in 2018. “With the grief I felt, I found talking about it was good for me,” the 18-year-old tells me from his home in north London. “In those scenes where Will talks about his father I was thinking about my dad, and it allowed me to come to terms with my grief.” He was nervous, initially, wondering how he’d handle the heavier scenes. Yet this was also why he connected with the character so much, and perhaps explains how he was able to match Will’s ferocity, his emotionally intense nature, so well.

Wilson moves his phone around with a teenager’s carelessness – offering a view of his ceiling in between glimpses of his mop of dark hair, intense gaze, and stubble-flecked chin. “I never felt forced into this acting thing,” he continues, a little snuffly from a winter cold. “My parents just wanted me to be happy.”

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His dad, a bookseller, decided to read His Dark Materials while Wilson was auditioning for the part, learning about Pullman’s fantasy world of multiverses, the dark-matter-like substance called Dust, and daemons – the animal representations of people’s souls that can speak and think for themselves. “He came to the Secret Garden set with me, and that was the last job he ever came to,” Wilson recalls. He stayed with his dad while starring in The Lion King: “I remember I was really young, and I’d finished a show, and I was worn out, and I got a bit upset. And my dad said, ‘You know you don’t have to do this?’ But that kind of made me want to do it even more.”

This is a bittersweet moment for Wilson. He’s saying goodbye to a character he’s played for more than four years. Going into season three of His Dark Materials, he discussed with director Amit Gupta the importance of establishing “a new Will, one who’s got a better sense of himself”. When we first meet Will, he’s an angry kid, scared and suspicious of the adults around him, with the exception of his troubled mother (Nina Sosanya). By season three, he’s gained a new focus – or, as Wilson puts it, “he’s got his head screwed on”. Suddenly, he and Lyra discover that the fate of the world rests on their shoulders.

“I think the idea of listening to the younger people in the world is pushed a lot in this story,” Wilson says. “A lot of the time, it’s younger people having to step up for adults’ mistakes… but ultimately, people our age are the future leaders and will be stepping up. They will have a voice.” Wilson, who was raised in a Muslim household with his Sudanese mother and two older sisters, is also intrigued by Pullman’s critical study of religious hypocrisy in the books. “It was controversial, I know some people [took] it personally,” he says. “But I think people should be able to talk and ask questions.”

He worries that society has lost its tolerance for alternative opinions, for listening to other voices and attempting to understand them. “Even if it’s something bad being said, you should still try and understand what’s going on in their head,” he suggests. “Certain conversations make people uncomfortable, because I guess they’ve been avoided for a long time.”

Amir Wilson in ‘His Dark Materials’ (BBC)

He’s enjoyed the physicality required for His Dark Materials. “I’d love to play a role where I get to climb all day,” he says. “If Tom Cruise hits me up and says ‘I want you to climb a mountain face with me,’ I’ll be there.” Apparently he’s already training himself up, just in case: his rock-climbing bag is packed and ready for a session this afternoon. “I love getting outdoors,” he says with a grin. “You spend all day doing work, and you finish, and you’re still thinking about what you did on set, dwelling on it. [Climbing] helps refresh my mind.” He played football with the camera crew on His Dark Materials every Tuesday, too, but had to get permission from showrunner Jack Thorne first. “He was like, ‘Just don’t kill yourself please, don’t get injured!’”

Other young actors might feel the need to rush into new projects immediately after a big drama like His Dark Materials concludes. Wilson has a London-based film lined up for next year (yet to be announced), and is studying Arabic, his mother’s language, at SOAS University, but is otherwise enjoying what he’s previously missed out on, having worked relatively solidly since childhood. “My friends have just finished their exams, so it’s been a good time to have a proper break,” he says. “Those moments are really important to me.” As for future roles, he’s keen to switch things up, do a non-fantasy role for a change. “I want to make [each performance] different from the last,” he says. “I think if you get too comfortable, it’s easy to slack and fall off.”

Series three of ‘His Dark Materials’ begins on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Sunday 18 December