Ben Loyle-Carner, aka the musician Loyle Carner, has opened up about his foray into acting, while speaking at the launch of BBC One’s eight-part crime drama series, Mint, coming out at the end of April.
“I was just really nervous, you know? I was pretty scared,” he admitted, as he discussed making the transition after 12 years in music.
Mint tells the story of Shannon (Emma Laird), a daughter born into a Scottish crime family, who is waiting for romance to sweep her off her feet. Carner, credited here as Ben Coyle-Larner, makes his acting debut as Arran, a young man returning from London as the prodigal son of a rival crime family.
Arran is Shannon’s love interest in this Romeo and Juliet style tale, with the two characters embarking on a complex relationship full of highs and lows.
Speaking at the British Film Insititute’s (BFI) screening of the first two episodes on Thursday night (9 April), Coyle-Larner recalled a conversation with director, Charlotte Regan, on how to channel his nerves into positivity and excitement.
“I remember at the start I said to [Regan], ‘I should do prep, actors do prep, I don’t know what prep is. What should I do?’
“She said, ‘Honestly, just how you feel now, how nervous you are and how everything is new and exciting to you – just hold onto that because it’s rare.”
The three-time Brit nominee acknowledged that it felt “weird to be a true rookie” at something after spending most of his life developing his music career, “being 31 and coming into something brand new”.
Coyle-Larner grew up and studied in south London before earning a scholarship to attend the Brit School for Performing Arts and Technology. He later turned to rapping, releasing his first EP at the age of 19, titled, A Little Late. Coyle-Larner began to use music as an outlet to explore everything from mental health struggles to his experiences with fatherhood.
This is not technically Coyle-Larner’s acting debut. He had a small role as a young hunter in the 2008 action movie 10,000 BC – but it’s not something he’s keen to dwell on. When the subject came up, he glanced down, visibly embarrassed, and asked jokingly, “not to bring that up!”
The hip-hop musician told the audience that he came to learn that, in some ways, acting is not too different to music after all.
“It’s kind of the same, but different,” he said. “[Both are] a space to create – this was just like trying to learn how to use a different part of me to do the same thing, to tell a story.”
Coyle-Larner added that, while he was apprehensive about his first big acting role, there was also a bizarre sense of “relief” he felt in the production of Mint.
“I’m used to being too much in control of what I release and what I share,” he told the BFI audience. He explained that when he was acting, he didn’t feel the need to be “f***ing stressing about it”, he added with a laugh.
He ultimately felt that the novelty of the experience for him actually translated into something exciting for everyone else on set as well.
“For everything to be magic for me, I think it was useful to everyone else because I think it’s so easy to get used to the thing you do for your job. And because it was brand new to me, I think it became brand new for everyone. That’s what I hope I brought,” Coyle-Larner said, cheekily adding: “And a lot of snacks as well.”
All episodes of Mint will be available on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Monday 20th April, with the series airing on BBC One from 9pm the same night.
