Interview: 'Rain Comes, But it Eventually Goes Away': Actor Zach Wyatt of A LITTLE LIFE on Handling Emotions and Filming Live Theatre

After a run at the Richmond Theatre and two runs on the West End, A Little Life will be screened in venues across the UK and Europe from 28 September, allowing more people to see the staged adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel.

The story focuses on four friends - Willem, Malcolm, JB and Jude - and how their relationships change over the years. Yanagihara’s work has received much acclaim and was first adapted for the stage in the Netherlands, adapted by Koen Tachelet and directed by Ivo van Hove.

BroadwayWorld had the chance to sit down and talk with Zach Wyatt, who plays Malcolm. We discussed what it was like to film the show, how he handled the emotional aspects of the story, and what he hopes audiences take away from A Little Life.

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What made you want to be involved in A Little Life?

It was the book! It was the book and the story of friendship and love, and the trials and tribulations that come with that. I had known about the book before receiving the audition and the opportunity to meet with Ivo and Jan. However, I hadn't read it before the audition. So in reading the play, I was reminded that when I was at drama school, I had a friend who was reading the book that would tell us, chapter by chapter, what was going on. So it re-jogged my memory. And Hanya is just the most amazing writer and is able to get to real human understanding in quite a painfully vivid way. It was a real privilege to take part in sharing that story.

What is it like being in an adaptation of such a popular work?

Quite nerve-wracking at first! With any novel, every reader forms their own character, they form their own relationship with the stories and the characters’ lives, and they have their own, I expectations of who those people are going to be. So at first, I was quite nervous about starting. But under the careful eye of Ivo van Hove, we were able to create something incredibly beautiful and touching and hopefully true to Hanya’s book.

Can you go into a little bit more detail on your character, Malcolm?

I played Malcolm, the architect, who seems to be a person in Jude's life who has a lot of patience and leeway. He allows him to really be his own person and not ask a lot of him, which, in particular with the male figures in the novel and in Jude's life, is something that is a rarity. Malcolm has this wonderful outlook on Jude's condition that is helpful and loving and nurturing. He really cares about Jude's well-being, perhaps at times more than Jude seems to care about his own. In the relationship of their core group of friends - Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm, he is the one that sees Jude for who he is.

We all had individual chats with Hanya about our characters and bringing her characters to life in this adaptation. That was something that she had mentioned, that Malcolm is the one person in Jude's life that doesn't ask too much of him and just has this outpouring of love that isn't in a physical and intimate way like Harold and Willem, but is through his work, through the designs and the carefully detailed architecture that he's assigned for Jude. Jude is able to live as you should, comfortably, at peace and with love. That is something that Malcolm really champions for Jude in his life.

What was it like working with Ivo, the creative team and everyone involved?

We had such a fantastic creative team, from the set designers to the sound engineers. We were working with a lot of the creative team that had been in the original Danish production. Music was something that was a heavy focus of Ivo’s. Mahler, and Jude’s relationship to Mahler, was another character in itself. The music plays such an important role in an insight into Jude's mind; the cacophony that it can create, and the clutter that is in Jude's head, but also the serenity and beauty that perhaps Jude can't really see in his life. So on those grounds, it was incredibly detailed from the very beginning.

We had an incredible company manager, Tamsin, and her team of stage managers that created such a world for us. The very first day of rehearsals, we had a complete set, so we really stepped in A Little Life from day one. We were in costumes, we had all our props . . . And for the five weeks of rehearsal in tech, we were really just stepping into the skin of these characters, in their world, every day. And this is all down to our incredible producers at Wessex Grove that allowed this to be the case. They really supported and nurtured a relationship with the story that was able to be realised and true from the beginning. Someone had said, I think it was Emilio, the actor who played Andy, it was like a five-week long tech because we had every aspect of the creative side of the show from day one, which meant that it just became more and more natural, more and more embedded in the grooves of our characters before we did our first preview at the Richmond. We were really, really privileged. The talent in that room was just incredible.

How did you handle being in such an emotional story for so long?

You rely on each other, you rely on your cast. You rely on the fact that this is an important story that people have a relationship with that might be far better than your own understanding. And so to play with each other in the space and to discover what it is that certain moments needed to be . . . We approached it with a level of delicacy and a nuance that I think supports the detail in the book and supports Hanya and Ivo’s vision. But there were tough moments. It's a tough story! It's a very real story for all characters, predominantly Jude. He goes through relationships that I don't wish for anybody. And so to be a part of that, in a rehearsal room, when you're seeing it happen, there's a lot of care and there's a lot of time and space that you need to allow people to find those moments and to play them truthfully.

There's a lot of time that you need to afford yourself to get to a certain place, as well as to let that place go. The wonderful thing about being in a show for as long as we were is reminding yourself that you are telling a story. Like any actor, there's an element of making this world and this character and this tale as real as possible, but also allowing that story to leave your body, to leave your voice, in the hope of not bringing it home with you. We relied heavily on the text itself and making that something that was above us. But it's bringing each of us as characters as close as we could, but also allowing that to leave. Rain comes, but it eventually goes away. And it's that process of allowing these things to happen and allowing them to leave night after night, day after day. So gentleness and kindness were the main things that we were all holding on to.

What was it like filming a live performance for the screen? 

Bizarre! I mean, we had gotten into such a groove of doing it as live theatre. Not that it wasn't live theatre when it was being filmed, but it adds a different element to it. The beauty of live theatre is, “Blink and you’ll miss it.” It exists like a flame for that period of time, and then it is extinguished. And then you rebuild the fire pit, and you allow every night, every matinee to be its own individual experience, and allow that to be an own individual experience for every audience member that comes. 

Did you find yourself changing anything about your performance with the cameras on you?

Sometimes you can get into your head about things and go, “Oh, God, is my face a bit too big?” Or, “What's going on?” And, “Is this moment going to read?” But the main thing that I tried to think about was just to trust that the story we were telling was the right one. Whatever the edit will be, will be. You've just got to say the lines, be truthful and listen. Be attentive, actively listening to what's going on, so you can respond. So, no, in short, or at least we tried not to!

What do you hope audiences take away from A Little Life?

For those audience members that had read the book and had been touched by Hanya’s writing, I hope they take away another element of that story, which is one that is realised and a bit more tangible and visceral. And for those that didn't know the book before, or hadn't read it, I hope that people do read the book!

But I hope, overall, audience members take away a greater understanding of what it is to love and what it is to care for someone as a friend, as a lover, as a child. I think that's what Hanya wrote about, this relationship we have with people in whatever category you put them - a friend, a family member, a lover, a child, a brother. I think Hanya is striving for us to really understand what that relationship and whatever category it might be, what that really can be, or at least should be. And, as arguably with everything, it starts and it ends with love.

And finally, how would you describe your experience with A Little Life in one word?

There are a couple of words that spring to mind. Overwhelming, because of the story in which we were telling, and how emotional that could be. At times, I felt incredibly full. So full would be a word as well. It's so wonderful to be in a show that people really want to come and see and that have a visceral, personal relationship with. Every night, every matinee filled me up with a multitude of feelings! Gratefulness would probably be another word.

A Little Life will be screened in venues across the UK and selected European countries from 28 September 2023. Watch the trailer here.

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