Corey Mylchreest
stars in Netflix film
My Oxford Year
Photography: Philip Gay
Fashion Director: Deborah Ferguson
Interview by Stella Hofferman
Corey Mylchreest stars as Jamie in Iain Morris’s (“The Inbetweeners”) adaptation of Julia Whelan’s acclaimed novel, My Oxford Year. The romantic-comedy follows grad student Anna, who gives up her life in America to live out her dreams of studying at Oxford University. She soon meets (and quarrels with) Jamie Davenport, who turns out to be her professor. The two embark on a foes-turned-lovers relationship, where they must face-off against the reality of time and the concept of fate. The film is available to stream on Netflix as of August 1st.
Mylchreest meets with us today to discuss My Oxford Year, as well as the processes and origins of his acting career.
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SH: Congrats on the release of the highly-anticipated My Oxford Year! Without giving too much away, what parts of the film are you most excited for fans to see?
CM: What’s great about the film that we made is that, from start to finish, there are so many brilliant scenes that the audiences are going to hopefully find endearing and revealing of the intricacies and wonderfulness of both Anna and Jamie’s characters, but are at the same time funny. The amazing thing about the film is that there is a lot of comedy in it, which will hopefully open the audience’s heart to when there are moments of the film that might be slightly more of a punch–which I’m also excited for.
SH: My Oxford Year not only features some swoon-worthy and tender moments, but some comedic ones too! With that in mind, are some of your favorite rom-coms?
CM: I would have to say that in terms of there being a favourite rom-com one stands out above the rest, and it is just one of my favourite films full stop, and that is Crazy Stupid Love. It has everything that you need in a rom-com and in a film. It’s hilarious, it’s heartwarming, brilliant performances, and the story is lovely and complex and intertwines in all the right places. Without a doubt, it’s my favourite.
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SH: When you are preparing to portray a character in an adaptation, how much inspiration do you draw from the original source?
CM: When preparing to portray a character in an adaptation, it’s always important to do as much research on and as much preparation as possible. And, if there is a book that that is out there that has more information that you can draw from about your character–regardless of whether your film is paying homage identically, word-for-word, scene-for-scene, or is just taking inspiration from it loosely–I think it’s always a good idea to do that. I definitely took lots of different useful bits that Julia had written in her wonderful novel, and tried to use as much of that, as much of the script, as much of my own research, and as much of my own instinct on who I believe Jamie to be in order to try and bring a full three-dimensional version of him to life.
SH: What was it like getting to work with Sofia Carson? Were you familiar with her work beforehand?
CM: Working with Sofia was amazing. She is an absolute powerhouse. She is, I think we can all agree, the queen of Netflix right now. It’s incredibly impressive what she’s doing and it’s lovely to be a part of just a small section of that. And I was familiar with her work, I’d watched Purple Hearts and enjoyed it, I’d watched The Life List and enjoyed it and I’d watched Carry On and enjoyed it, and I’m still very jealous of her for getting to work with Jason Bateman who is one of my heroes.
Cashmere Coat & Top: Acne Studios, Trench: Le17Septembre
SH: As someone who now has a lot of experience playing a love interest, what goes into creating onscreen chemistry?
CM: Although dramaturgically you have to analyse your role in the script, I don’t think it’s necessarily useful for any actor to identify themselves or their character as a love interest–you’ve just got to view them as a person of their own accord. It sounds very selfish, but a good tactic that a drama school teacher once told me was to make every script that you’re in—whether you’ve got one line or 300—convince yourself that the film is about you. Try and fill as much of that character’s life up in your imagination as possible. But regarding chemistry, I haven’t cracked it yet. I don’t know what the magic thing is. Even Sophia and I have very different opinions about what it is. Sophia is much more in the camp of it is this intangible thing that you either have or you don’t. I think I am more in the camp of believing that it’s about the two actors committing to the work and making sure that they’re very specific about what it is in that specific relationship that the two characters admire about each other, are attracted to each other, and what makes the two of them specifically fall in love in the specific way in which they do. But, I wouldn’t have any idea on how to really describe it.
SH: How old were you when you began acting, and what sparked it?
CM: I would say that I was about maybe 13 when I started properly acting but there was a man called Anthony Glenn who came to my school when I was about 8 and did “1 man Shakespeare” and would bring Shakespeare to local primary schools and he would perform it as a one-man show and then he would work with year six—so ages 10 to 11—throughout a week and put on a condensed version of a Shakespeare play right at the end. That was the most fun I’d ever had I think up until that age, so I guess you could say that was when I first fell in love with it. It wasn’t until later that I decided that I wanted to do it.
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SH: What genres would you like to act in in the future?
CM: I don’t know if there are specific genres that I would like to go into. I think it’s much more about the character and the creative minds that you’re working with and surrounding yourself with really amazing people that you can learn from. That’s what I’m most excited about the future for. Having said that though, I would love to do an action film.
SH: Who inspires you, in and out of acting?
CM: Speaking of people, I think that’s what inspires me in and out of acting. I think wonderful performances from people across the board. Christian Bale, particularly at the moment, seems to be someone that I look up to and am drawn towards. I just watched The Big Short again on the plane on the way over to New York, which is where I am now, and I am mesmerized again by his ability to dive into each character and give them such amazing life and nuance, both physically and vocally and emotionally, psychologically, all the rest of it. And other than that, Steven Gerrard.
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SH: What do you hope viewers take away from My Oxford Year?
CM: I guess that the film is quite life-affirming, ironically, given the subject matter of some parts of it. However, I do think it is a life-affirming film and I hope the audiences take away some of the life lessons that Jamie lives his life by, some of the philosophies that he tries to lead his life by. One of them in particular is: Life has a way of derailing even the best laid plans and sometimes the messiness of life gives you the best bits, which is near enough a direct quote from the man himself and it’s something that I learned from him.