Inspired by the Guy Ritchie movie of the same name, the new Crackle series Snatch centers on a group of low level London criminals and hustlers who find they’ve accidentally escalated things into a much higher (and more dangerous) bracket when they find a truck of stolen gold bullion.
The trio at the center of the story are Albert (Luke Pasqualino), Billy (Lucien Laviscount) and Charlie (Rupert Grint) and I spoke to Pasqualino and Grint about the fun of working in a classic crime story of this sort.
IGN: What were your first thoughts when they approached you about this show and you learned they were doing this new version of Snatch?
Rupert Grint: First of all, I loved the movie. It was one of those films that always kind of stayed with me. I was probably way too young to see it when it came out. [Laughs] But I was really excited. It’s an opportunity with the long format - you can really flesh out the characters and have more character development. You can’t really do that with film. It’s too brief. That’s the great thing about this. You can carve out your arc throughout ten episodes.
Luke Pasqualino: Yeah, I’m such a huge fan of the movie and I think one of the big draws for me was that the movie is two hours long and we’re given the opportunity to play out in ten episodes and use the inspiration from the movie and bring it into our own world. I think it was twelve, fifteen years ago that the movie came out so to revive it and do our own thing with a more contemporary feel to it, that was a big thing.
IGN: Your characters are pals but there’s some tension there with the differences in their background. Is that something that’s always a little bit under the surface?
Grint: Family plays a lot for all the characters. They’re trying to escape their home.
Pasqualino: They’re each other’s chosen families, aren’t they? Every character comes from a dysfunctional family or some sort of broken home in some sense. They’ve been friends since they were kids and they don’t know anything else but to be with each other. In my own personal experience in my life, people that I argue with or have confrontations with are the people I love and care about the most. I wouldn’t think to argue with somebody I couldn’t give two s**ts about. There’s no point in arguing if you don’t care. So there’s those underlying tones of if they’re slightly more confrontational with each other, it comes from a place of love, it comes from the heart. That’s the one thing to try not to let the audience forget. It’s all meant with love.
IGN: Luke, your character’s father clearly steered him in a certain criminal direction, which we get a glimpse of in the pilot. But Rupert, do we begin to see more of why Charlie was drawn to this world?
Grint: Charlie is an interesting one because we assume he came from wealth and is very proud of his family name and yet is desperate to have nothing to attach himself to. He goes home occasionally and it affects him deeply. His parents are these weird bohemian hippies that make sex movies in their kitchen. He witnesses some horrible things when he goes home. That’s why [Albert, Billy and Charlie] are friends. They’ve formed their own foundation and that keeps them together.
IGN: The end of the pilot clearly establishes that they’re in deep and what they’ve stumbled upon is going to cause a lot of problems. How much do they have to debate or argue about what their next move is?
Pasqualino: It’s stated in one of the episodes - Billy says to me that Albert is the self-appointed leader of this organization, so to speak. Albert has taken it upon himself to call the shots and what not but you see everyone has their input, even in the opening of episode two when they talk about what they want to do. But the final call is Albert says, “No, this is what we’re going to do and that’s final.” Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Grint: They’re completely out of their depth. We do small time scams and suddenly we’ve got millions and millions of pounds of gold. It’s interesting how it affects the characters. It’s almost like the ring in Lord of the Rings. It has a real effect.
Pasqualino: It’s got a hold on everyone. It’s kind of like an addiction. They get a taste of this big time world they’re immersed in completely by chance. The gold becomes the backbone of the series, what they’re going to do with it, how they get rid of it, can they get rid of it. That becomes the crux of the show really. It’s got a real hold over them and they can’t quite seem to let it go.
IGN: Right from the get go you can sense the nods and feel of the movie but are there any direct connections or is it just it’s own thing, unrelated?
Pasqualino: I think It’s its own thing. We’ve got a huge inspiration from the movie but that’s the best way to put it. It’s inspired by the movie. Different characters, different storylines. It’s fifteen years later. But the essence of Snatch is still there, the way it’s shot, the edit, some of the scenes, the box scene in episode one. There’s still Snatchy elements to it and it still has that Snatchy tone but it’s very much its own thing.
Grint:I think that's important. There’s a bit of pressure when you’re reimagining something so iconic and loved. But the only way you can really do it is completely reinvent it. It lives in that universe and that’s where it ends. It’s in the language and the tone of it but it’s really its own thing.
Pasqualino: We want to do our own thing anyway. You don’t want to copy something else. We have to make it our own otherwise what’s the fun of doing it? There needs to be some form of originality as well which is hopefully what we’ve done and we’ll let the audience be the judge of that.
IGN: It feels like it would be a lot of fun to do this sort of crime/caper story. Were there a lot of days on set that were like “Oh, this is great, we’re getting to do this right now”?
Pasqualino: There was a lot of those. One of the things I’m going to take away from this job is just the laughter that we shared and as much as we all get along as a group of friends, just finding ourselves stood there on set just like we’re standing here with all these dozens and dozens of fake gold bars. One of the beauties about being an actor is that nothing really has to make sense. You just do it and live it and hope it comes out and try to find the truth in what’s in the text in your own way and hopefully you can find truth in the text and everything else just comes.
IGN: Were the producers and writers giving you hints at what’s to come or did you find out when you got the next script?
Grint: Yeah, it was kind of a lot like that because Alex [De Rakoff] was writing it in real time. We didn’t really know the end result. We learned it as we filmed, which was good. It gave it a real spontaneity and free form.
Pasqualino: It lends itself to the story as well and what we’re doing. The characters find themselves from one shit situation to the next. As characters, they don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. For us as actors, to not know what’s going to happen from one episode to the next is sort of like it keeps it alive and keeps the spontaneity and it allows you to immerse yourself in the episode you’re shooting and not think too far ahead. You live in the now and shoot it and not worry about the next episode until it comes.
IGN: As you mentioned, the big advantage that TV has over film is that you can tell these long term narrative and follow the characters. It occurs to me that the Harry Potter series is one of the rarities in that it was serialized from the start, thanks to the books. Having done that series, Rupert, do you enjoy doing a TV show which -- while very different -- allows you to tell a continuing story of this sort?
Grint: Yeah, I love that. And it’s something I haven’t really gotten to do since I finished Potter, is having a character and carving out their journey. TV is the perfect medium for that.
IGN: In general, it just seems like the past few years, the perception of TV has changed quite a bit and "the new golden age of TV" is touted a lot. For both of you guys, as young actors, is that exciting for you because there are a lot of realms that they’re going into in television now?
Grint: Yeah, it’s true. There’s quality. I think there used to be a lot of difference between film and TV and that’s not so anymore. There are great scripts and so many different outlets as well. It’s really exciting to work with Crackle as well. There’s a real kind of buzz. It’s hungry. It’s a great platform, particularly for Snatch. It's such a great fit.
All ten episodes of Snatch debut Thursday, March 16th on Crackle.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at http://ift.tt/LQFqjj.
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