Ade Oyefeso interview
Ade Oyefeso says he loves the optimism of his character Sean.
Anders Hayward was telling us about your relationship between the two of you. Because you're tight, as characters. Does that grow between the two of you as actors?
Yeah definitely. He is the first person I met from the cast. Before we were even cast in it, we met up before too at our old auditions. So I got to know him from before that, and then meeting him in the audition we kind of just got along so well. We're from similar age groups and similar areas. So yeah, it's been nice to have him along on this job. It's been good to have people you get along with you know?
Set up your character Sean for us. Who is he? What's his background? Because he's very different from Dylan.
Well Sean is Dylan's old school friend, they both grew up together in Crystal Palace. Sean took a different path where he didn't go to university. I'm not so sure if he chose to do it or he had to, because he didn't get the grades or whatever, but he decided not to go to university and he started to work as a plumber with his step-dad. So he's kind of gone straight into the world of work and has been in the mind-set of a man, I guess, where you just kind of always working, always working.
He hasn't had that experience of being able to lay back with friends and just chill and have fun at uni and stuff. So I guess he sees this time with Dylan as time to actually relax, and just take a backseat for once. He wants to hear all the stories from university, all the things he's missed out, and it doesn't turn out the way he expected.
And this is the first time his character has come to this part of the world.
Yeah. This is the first time Sean's left the country; he's not a travel buddy at all. There's a funny scene where he didn't know the toilets on the plane were male and female. That's how out of it he is - he doesn't have a clue.
There's lovely scene early on between you and Janeane Garofalo and Anders. That's the first set-up where she's saying, 'You've got no idea, you're not going to beaches...'
Yeah exactly! Meet loads of girls; get drunk. He thinks he's going to the pub round his own area but just in a hotter country. He thinks things are just going to be like that and it just turns out to be not that at all! [Laugh]
The show seems full of wonderful misunderstandings between your and Dylan's characters in particular...
Exactly, exactly. Because of the time that we spent away from each other, Dylan's obviously grown in his own way at university, and I've grown in my own way through working. We're trying to relive the experiences we've had in the past but we've changed so much that it's kind of hard to keep hold of it when everyone is at that point in your life where everyone's trying to find themselves.
And tell us about the journey that you've been on as an actor. What have been the standout moments for you?
There have been so many. At the beginning, when we first started shooting, doing scenes and seeing monkey's jumping from trees - I was like 'Whoa!' this is amazing.
Langkawi was amazing. We were staying in a hotel right by the beach so every morning you would wake up to the ocean. It was surreal. Shooting the rainforest - that was crazy! We were shooting in the oldest rainforest in the world, it was 150 million years old so shooting in that as just surreal!
China was surprisingly difficult to film in. It was obviously beautiful but there was the smog and the weather - it was so hot! And the smog kind of gave it this impression that it was a lot more claustrophobic than it really was. When we went up to the Great Wall it just changed the whole thing. We had these amazing drone shots going on and it was just surreal. You could get the full landscape of the whole place.
Do you think Ashley and May help steer the boys through the journey?
Yeah exactly! It's so interesting, because Alice [Lee]'s character, May, she just doesn't like us to begin with. She doesn't want to be around us. She's like 'let's leave these guys and duck out'. Whereas Brittany [Wilson]'s character is more like, 'Oh they're kind of fun!' She's a bit more easy-going.
And then Tim Key's character, Greg, kind of sits in between in an awkward way.
I'm the first to meet Greg and when I do I'm thinking 'this guy's weird!' I've just met him and he's telling me his whole life story and I'm just thinking, 'whoa! This is a bit full on!' and then I think I just want to stay away from him. It's like, 'it was fun talking to you, now I'm going to go and get drunk, let's just leave it there.'
I think gradually, Sean and Greg start to get to know each other better, especially when they're trapped in the forest together, where... I don't want to give away too much... Greg's just having a bit of a meltdown and Sean's just there to pick him up. From that episode on they kind of have a mutual understanding of one another. Before that thought it was all 'this guy's weird!'
Your character goes on quite an interesting journey quite early on because you kind of get 'kidnapped'!
That was amazing because I was working with Aisling [Bea] and Trystan [Gravelle] who played Eugene and Kendra. They are hilarious; they're just this wacky couple that I was able to sit there and watch these crazy characters do their scenes. It was just amazing being able to watch and just to react to what they were doing. It was surreal.
We were in tea plantations, we were on trains, and we were all around. Packed train stations with no extras, with normal people around, and they'll just be screaming in the train station, and everyone's looking and I'm thinking 'this is crazy!' It was nice to be able to have gone off on my own for a bit, and because we shot that quite early on, it was good to be able to build up my character in that kind of way. Just to be on your own and kind of figure out how you'd be by yourself. And I got to drive a car, which was cool!
What do you love about Sean?
I love Sean's optimism. No matter how bad things get, no matter if he doesn't get the girl, no matter if he gets lost, loses money he's just like: 'Well there's nothing we can do now, let's just move on'. He's just got this really good optimism about him, which I really admire. I wish I had that at times.
How important is it for you that it's not just a flat-out kind of comedy. There's sadness in it too, is that important?
I think it's really important because of the characters' ages are at the time when people are leaving school, and as much as it's played down, as it's all young people just getting drunk and taking drugs, there's a real confusion around that time where you're thinking 'What am I going to do with my life?'
This show kind of shows that moment where you're just finding yourself.
Has this given you a taste of travelling.
Yeah! I don't want to go home, but, yeah definitely. I feel like I've done so much travelling now though that I'm willing for a break.