The following article contains major spoilers for Sinners.
Fans of cult British dramedies will probably still best remember Jack O'Connell from his stretch on the original UK version of Skins, a show that did grimy teen angst years before Euphoria made it cool. He has since had his time on the big screen, cornering the market on loveable rogues, bad boys and war heroes, from Angelina Jolie's directorial debut Unbroken to Troubles drama ‘71, parts that have made the 34-year-old BAFTA winner about as popular as cult screen figures get. And yet 2025 could be the actor's most consequential year to date, with major roles in two of its most hotly anticipated releases—not least 28 Years Later, the latest installment in a zombie franchise that has become a beloved horror institution.
But first comes Sinners, another blood-splattered horror exercise that takes on an entirely different kind of ghoul: vampires, and in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Helmed by Creed and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, it contains some of the most pulse-pumping, supercharged filmmaking in a studio blockbuster for years. To try and sum it up in a few sentences: Michael B. Jordan plays a notorious pair of gangster twins, the deliciously named Smoke and Stack, who return to their Deep South hometown after a stint helping out Capone in Chicago and open a juke joint in what they think is an old sawmill.
The night begins with dance, revelry, and rip-roaring musical sequences that surge with confidence and stylistic verve. But soon evil arrives, lured there by the generational talents of up-and-coming bluesman Preacher Boy (Miles Caton), so staggeringly brilliant as to tear a hole in the divide between the real and spiritual realms. (Yeah, it's a wild movie.) Said evil is O'Connell's Remmick, a vampire from Ireland who now prowls the Southern states looking to share his gospel of “fellowship and love,” or in other words, to chow down on necks and spread his vampiric plague. He arrives at the juke joint with a pair of recent victims in tow; gloriously gory chaos promptly ensues.
Remmick is menacing, duplicitous and devilishly alluring, and with every minute he is on screen, it's clear that O'Connell is having a ton of fun. “In order for him to get what he needs, in order for him to survive, he has to purport to be trustworthy,” O'Connell tells GQ over Zoom. “That's a fucking fantastic character to step into. Personally, I wanna see the prequel to this. So if Coogler's up for it, I am.”
Here, O'Connell talks GQ through Remmick's Irish origins, his gnarly prosthetics work, and the many skills he learned (or relearned), from banjo-plucking to Irish jigging. Plus, he offers a delicately-worded update on his secretive 28 Years Later role.
GQ: You saw Sinners for the first time at the New York premiere. What was it like catching it with a crowd?
Jack O'Connell: Man, it was great. I mean, you're always kind of reluctant to lean into the reaction too much when the audience has been slightly curated. This is one where it might be worth just going and getting a ticket and just sitting in the back row, and sussing it out a bit.
Do you do that often?
Never done it in me life. [Laughs] But I'd be interested to see what a neutral audience makes of this.
How'd Sinners come your way, and what appealed to you about playing Remmick?
I was told I would be sent a script, and I had three, maybe four, hours to read it, before the meeting with Ryan [Coogler] was to be scheduled… I would argue that you definitely need three or four reads of this script before you can wrap your head around it properly. So I was just winging it, man.
But I had my talking points, I had stuff that I wanted to ask, so the conversation was kind of dominated by that: What is “Rocky Road to Dublin” doing in this story? Will I really be singing it? Do you like Irish traditional music? I'll talk to anyone all day about Luke Kelly and the Dubliners.
What did you make of Remmick's Irish origin story?
I think it's beautifully handled. Obviously, by virtue of me dad [who was from Ballyheigue in County Kerry], the Irish story is something that is, and always has been, interesting to me. My understanding [is that Ireland's] biggest export is people. Just to understand the influence that had on the American south at this particular time, and how that found its way into the music there, was something I know that Ryan's savvy to, and I think part of the reason for Remmick being from Ireland.
Are there any classic movie vampires that you returned to as a touchpoint?
I'd be slightly remiss to not mention Gary Oldman's Dracula [from Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola]. That was mainly down to watching somebody perform with that amount of prosthetic makeup on. It's not something that I'm particularly well-versed in.
I once heard Gary Oldman say [that with] prosthetics, first you just have to surrender to it. And it's totally true, man. You're in the chair for a long, long time... You do feel like, once this all goes on, and once this is attached to me, it's so convincing that it's going to offer a fair amount to the performance. In regards to surrendering to it, once you do that, things reveal themselves to you, and you can incorporate that in the character… Rather than just being like, What the fuck are these fingers doing?
Going to the bathroom is obviously impossible. Contact lenses, no one likes being shoved onto their eyeballs. But once they're in, it can take you somewhere entirely different. As an artist, that's a fucking treat.
And what's it like having half a guitar hanging out of your face?
You just think, “This is demented.” That was all done with magnets, and… Obviously, [per] vampiric lore, vampires are quite reactive to silver. So that smoke you see coming out of Remmick's skull, that's not VFX. They rigged all of that up, and we shot that live.
You've got a couple of accents to work with: the Southern twang, and occasionally Remmick drops into an Irish brogue. How do you find accent work?
It helps when the accent is very definitely something. If it's generic, or hard to place, I often find that more difficult. So it was great that Remmick was at least pretending to be from North Carolina. And when it came down to his Irishness, I just wanted that to base that from the region my family are from—sort of Kerry, sort of Munster. It's a part of the job that I really enjoy... It's a great entry point for your characters.
Had you ever played the banjo before Sinners?
Not really, man. I've got a couple of guitars, so I found it was translatable. But yeah, brilliant team around us, and plenty of time on your hands. I got in there early, and picked up one from Denmark Street.
And you've got a couple of great music numbers. Were you apprehensive at all about singing on screen?
I was massively apprehensive. I still am. But I think you just gotta fucking go for it, haven't you? I love the idea of doing a musical. This is the nearest thing I've got to it. [It's an] amazing arena to be doing that in, working with [composer] Ludwig Göransson, Serena Göransson—they'd get a tune out of anyone, them two. If we weren't shooting on set, more often than not we were in the recording studio, either trying to find it, or just laying it down. Maybe a little bit of whiskey, just a touch.
Did you work with a vocal coach to find the singing voice, or was that all natural?
I was in a privileged enough position with this that the style of music, the traditional Irish stuff, it's kind of in my bones—through Irish dancing as a kid, and then developing a vast kind of appreciation for the great recording artists in this genre of music. Liam Clancy, Luke Kelly… Definitely just belting it out in pubs, and things.
You know, it's a music that I have a strong connection to, and it's a bit of a gateway for me in terms of my heritage, and my relationship to my dad, who's passed away. It's all of that, and I guess that's music for you.
Remmick gets stuck into an Irish dance late into the film. Did that come back naturally?
I think last time I would've done that is probably five or six years ago, down O'Dwyer's Bar in Derby. Couldn't even tell you if it was a weekend or not. But obviously, I did it loads as a kid.
And I suppose I did want to try and dust it off a little bit, and see where it's at, aside from this job. Booking Sinners gave me all the excuse I needed. I consulted a dance coach from around here, Angie… We just hooked up, hired a space, and out came the jig again. She was brilliant.
The film's standout scene has to be that one-take in the middle. What are your memories of shooting it?
It was such a great atmosphere to be around. It was a bit carnival-like… Credit to Ryan for cultivating that type of atmosphere, and the assistant directors for trying to strike that balance between getting shit done, and also getting it done too, and making it feel alive. It was phenomenal to watch, and I just think it's a brilliant cinematic feat. We go through this journey through time, and what blues music was the basis of… I just think it's fucking genius, y'know?
To touch on 28 Years Later briefly, your character is called Sir Jimmy Crystal. What can you say about him?
Yes, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, [to give the] full moniker. He's a… [O'Connell hesitates] He is a gas cunt.
That's going straight in the official bio.
I don't know quite how to describe him yet. But thrilling to portray, that's for sure. He definitely exists in the darker pocket, certainly in contrast to anything I've ever played before.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.