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A FEW DAYS before we speak, Tom Rhys Harries turned 34 years old—and by his own admission, he didn’t make too big a deal out of it. Rhys Harries prefers not to dwell on the past and, beyond that, only spends so much time thinking about the present; his focus is often on what comes next. Still, he’s facing down an October full of milestones, and with them a press cycle full of questions about the comic book character he’s brought to life. A few short weeks after his birthday, the biggest project of his acting career will hit theaters: Clayface, the most experimental outing yet in James Gunn’s quasi-rebooted DC Universe and Rhys Harries’s debut as a blockbuster leading man.
The film is the sort of project fans have been begging Marvel and DC alike to take on for ages: a lower-budget exploration of a character (in this case, one best known as a Batman villain) through a real genre lens. And make no mistake, Clayface commits to the horror genre wholeheartedly. It is a gnarly, hard-R-rated body horror joint that had the audience at our small early screening squirming (Rhys Harries quietly joined in the back, the first time he’d seen the film with a proper audience of any kind). At the center of a cast featuring Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan is Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, an actor on the cusp of superstardom whose career is derailed by a vicious attack from Gotham City mobsters. An experimental treatment provided by Ackie’s character begins to restore balance to his life, only to spur on a further descent into mutation and madness.
There are certainly parallels between Matt’s budding stardom and the position Rhys Harries finds himself in now, one where any future restaurant birthday dinners might come with a side of craning necks and iPhone camera flashes. It’s the sort of perpetual perception that pushes Matt’s life further and further off course in the film.
But Rhys Harries seems, for his part, unfazed by all this. When we speak on a sunny Sunday morning in Los Angeles, he’s in his home getting ready for a day of press. In talking about the film and his craft, he’s straightforward and thoughtful, completely devoid of frivolity or sound bite answers. It is—and I mean this as a compliment—very difficult to imagine him answering a series of canned “This or That” questions for a TikToker or YouTube channel. He lights up when talking about literature, motorcycles, the work of other filmmakers, and seems hesitant to center himself even when talking about the film he’s in. It does, as you get to know Rhys Harries a bit better, make sense. He grew up aspiring not to the Oscars but to pro rugby, a sport of uninterrupted play. If you find yourself on the wrong end of a tackle, nobody’s stopping to check on you. The game keeps moving forward, bloody noses and all.
Ahead of the release of Clayface, Rhys Harries tapped in with Men’s Health to discuss his leading man debut, body horror, and why fixing motorcycles helps to keep his head on straight.
MEN’S HEALTH: Was the screening last week your first time seeing Clayface with an audience?
TOM RHYS HARRIES: Yes, it was. I’ve seen it before with just the director [James Watkins] and Naomi [Ackie]. But even with last week’s screening being kind of a small room, yeah, it was my first time.
MH: What was that like? I know a few of us were reacting pretty viscerally to it at times.
TRH: There’s something specific about watching a movie like this in that environment. It would be completely different in a full theater, but there’s something kind of exposing about being in a room with, like, six or seven people. You can’t necessarily feel like you have the license to be vocal, even if you can’t help it at times.
MH: In the last week you’ve celebrated a birthday, seen Clayface with an audience for the first time, and in just a couple of weeks it’s going to hit theaters and most likely change a lot of things for you. What’s the experience of all this happening at once been like?
TRH: I don’t really get too fussed on my birthday. The older I get, I’m like, All right, that’s that. I feel like that with work as well: I’m pretty pragmatic, and I want things to go well for everyone involved. But I kind of want it to be done and out of the way—I like forward motion.
Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor on the rise in the DC Universe film Clayface.
MH: The Matt Hagen/Clayface character—in a film filled with graphic, violent content—is an interesting choice for your blockbuster debut, but it’s been far from an overnight success for you. You’ve worked steadily for the last several years.
TRH: No, but there’s an undeniable aspect of reach here with these studio films. That’s a real thing. Regardless of whether people engage with it and it resonates, you do have wider reach with something like this.
MH: It’s a compelling decision, though—your breakout role coming as an actor who just got his first Oscar nomination and is really starting to cement himself as a movie star. It puts the concept of a leading man and performance under a microscope. What compelled you about Matt as a character and the film’s point of view on performance?
TRH: It’s a pretty multifaceted role. I felt like I was at a point in my career and life where I could meet the requirements of the role and a project like this. I say that with the caveat of knowing that I don’t think I would have been able to handle it when I was younger. I started acting kind of late—I wasn’t a child actor or anything. The role didn’t feel like something that was naturally in my wheelhouse. I had to spend a long time trying to feel as if I understood just a semblance of what it was about. I’m fairly inquisitive and curious, so I have to scratch at something for a long time before I feel like I have a handle on it. Maybe that speaks to an insecurity in me, or maybe it pertains to everyone. But there’s an element of it within us all, that question of Am I qualified to be doing this? It makes you think about yourself and overlaps, in this case, with acting quite a bit. But when you’re in a position like this, there’s just nowhere to hide. I felt like in taking this on I was kind of asking myself, What kind of actor do I want to be? What interests me? You keep going back to that and reviewing it and trying to push yourself, and that’s what I did here. I never want to rest on my laurels, even if that can be pretty seductive.
