The British actor David Dawson stars in this autumn’s hotly anticipated film My Policeman,

about a gay affair in the repressive Fifties. His co-star? A certain global pin-up called Harry
Ordinarily in David Dawson’s line of work, when you take on a new project –
a play, or a film, or a TV show – “You have a meet and greet and a big read-
through with coffee and cake or whatever,” he says. When the actor signed
up to My Policeman, however, the country was still deep in Covid, and
meeting, greeting and sharing cake in person was firmly out. “It’s a very
bizarre thing when you’re then told you’re going to be on a Zoom discussing
scenes with a very, very famous person. And you think, ‘How weird is life?’
He’s not exaggerating. The very, very famous person he was about to meet –
albeit virtually, initially – was the world’s celebrity crush, the former boy-
band member turned fashion plate whose current sellout stadium tour looks
set potentially to continue indefinitely. He’s the star of two of the most
talked-about films of the year; a man who can send the internet into a
tailspin over whether or not he spat on his co-star, Chris Pine. He is one
Harry Styles.
Adapted from the novel by Bethan Roberts – and based loosely on the author
EM Forster’s 40-year relationship with a married policeman, Bob Buckingham
– the film stars Styles as Tom, a sexually confused copper in Fifties Brighton
who meets and marries schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin) while
simultaneously conducting a clandestine relationship with worldly,
sophisticated museum curator Patrick, played by Dawson. It is a tragic love
triangle with a wholly non-equilateral apportioning of sex. By which I mean:
poor Marion.
Forty years later, Marion moves Patrick into the cottage she shares with Tom
to care for him following a stroke, much to Tom’s consternation.
As with Tom and Patrick, there was an age gap between Forster and
Buckingham, who was 28 when he met the 51-year-old author of Howard’s
End and A Room with a View, beginning what Bethan Roberts has called “a
functioning triangular arrangement… sharing their beloved Buckingham”.
And, like Marion, Buckingham’s wife, May, nursed Forster in his later years;
after a stroke in 1970, the writer moved into the Buckinghams’ home in
Coventry.
“I now know that he [Forster] was in love with Robert and therefore critical
and jealous of me and our early years were very stormy, mostly because he
had not the faintest idea of the pattern of our lives and was determined that
Robert should not be engulfed in domesticity,” May Buckingham later wrote.
“Over the years he changed us both and he and I came to love one another,
able to share the joys and sorrows that came.”
“We had three weeks of rehearsal, which is unusual, and was so useful to
build a friendship and a chemistry with Emma and Harry,” says Dawson, the
40-year-old’s soft Widnes accent a dramatic departure from the aesthete
Patrick’s clipped vowels.
How much of that three weeks was spent on the extensive sex scenes
between him and Styles? “A good few days, actually,” admits Dawson.
“Michael [Grandage, the director] brought on board an intimacy co-ordinator
and it was very much a collaboration. It felt like a beautiful dance. And me
and Harry promised each other on day one that we would always look out for
each other, that we would always continue to check in with each other. Harry
and I wanted those scenes to be the best they could be.”
“So much of gay sex in films is two guys going at it, and it kind of removes
the tenderness from it,” Styles has said of the film. “There will be, I would
imagine, some people who watch it who were very much alive during this
time when it was illegal to be gay, and [Michael] wanted to show that it’s
tender and loving and sensitive.”
Dawson – who has appeared in a raft of period dramas including Peaky
Blinders, The Borgias and The Last Kingdom, the adaptation of Bernard
Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories in which he played King Alfred – had limited
experience of sex scenes in his career to date. “I’d done Secret Diary of a
Call Girl when I was young, and I did sex in that, but no, I hadn’t done many
intimate scenes before this.”
This is also his most high-profile role by some stretch. Is he prepared for the
attention that his steamy scenes with Styles – whom he has called “a true
professional and a gentleman” – are about to bring him? “I’ve not really
thought about that, actually,” he says. I don’t believe him for a second.
Dawson arrives at the studio in east London in black skinny jeans, boots and
a blue trench coat, an indie-band frontman’s floppy fringe and cheekbones
you could grate parmesan with. He’d make a great understudy for Brett
Anderson from Suede.
“It felt so strangely personal to look at your life and think, ‘How would I have
coped?’ ” he says of playing Patrick, settling on a leather sofa with an
oatmilk Americano. “How lucky I am not to worry that my reputation could
be destroyed, or I could lose friends.”
He and his fiancé, Josh, a mental health nurse and author, got engaged just
before Covid struck and plan finally to marry next year; he sports a large,
black onyx engagement ring next to the silver McQueen snake ring his family
bought him for his recent 40th birthday. The couple – plus Dodger, the
French bulldog – are in the process of moving from north London to
Manchester to gain a garden and be closer to their families. “The pace is
slower, you can breathe more. And I’m sick of sharing a wheelie bin,” he
says, grinning.
What he loves about Patrick, though, is that, “He has an awful lot of pride in
his sexuality even though he’s living during this time. He knows who he is
and he’s not ashamed of it. He’s developed this persona out of necessity, not
only to survive but to thrive – in terms of his ambitions but also in terms of
being respectable in this society.”
He is at pains to stress that even though it’s a period film, “I hope we don’t
think that everything’s OK now. This film makes me acknowledge how
incredibly privileged my generation is to have the freedoms and the rights
we have. There are many people around the world where these laws and the
society that Patrick lives in is the reality right now.”
The film is shot across two time periods, 40 years apart, with the elder
Patrick played by Rupert Everett (the elder Tom is played by Linus Roache
and Marion by Gina McKee). Everett, now 63, who publicly came out at 30,
has repeatedly stated that he believes doing so derailed his Hollywood
career. “It was a huge issue,” he has said. “There’s only a certain amount of
mileage you can make, as a young pretender, as a leading man, as a
homosexual.”
He has even gone so far as to advise fellow actors not to come out for fear of
ruining their film prospects. “It’s not that advisable to be honest,” he has
said. “I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his
career, to come out…” He has called Hollywood “an extremely conservative
world” that “pretends to be a liberal world”.
“I really do hope it’s changed,” says Dawson. “Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
I’ve been with the same agent since I came out at drama school in 2005. So I
know I’ve got their support.”
He also pays tribute to his “legendary parents, who’ve always been there.
It’s an incredible thing and I acknowledge that a lot of my friends and a lot of
people do not have that in their life.”
Though he identifies as an introvert, growing up his performative streak was
obvious from a young age. “I’d raid my mum’s black wool box, I’d get tinfoil
and a coat hanger and be seriously Captain Hook.” His first major role?
“Joseph. My mum made me a beautiful staff and I had a really lovely tea
towel from Marks & Spencer. But I was a very serious Joseph,” he says,
laughing. “I told the shepherds off for not focusing properly.”
He was heavily involved in local am-dram, but not only acting. At 16 he
wrote his first play, Divorced and Desperate, which ran at the Queen’s Hall
Theatre in Widnes for three nights. “I was obsessed with Rik Mayall. He was
one of my heroes, so it was quite anarchic and bizarre.” A year later he
wrote and starred in The Boy in the Bed, “about a boy who was pretending to
be bedridden, is obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and who was abusing his
home carer – it was really dark”, at the Tower Theatre in Islington, a
production funded, in part, by Barbara Windsor and Julie Walters. He’d
written – somewhat improbably – to the two actresses to ask for financial
backing. “I loved the Carry On films when I was little and Peggy Mitchell was
iconic, so I always loved a bit of Babs, and Julie because she’s long been a
hero,” he says of his benefactors. “I never expected a reply. I think I had that
‘f*** it’ attitude where you just try. It was quite brave of them to give money
to a 17-year-old…”
By then he’d moved to London where, after failing to get a place at Rada, he
spent a year as a silver service waiter. I’m about to offer my own
experiences of silver service ineptitude at provincial hotel weddings, but
Dawson’s gigs were a cut above. “I worked for the Beckhams and Princess
Anne, at marquees in the grounds of Beckingham Palace and Sotheby’s. We
had to sign a lot of confidentiality things.”
He got into Rada the second time round in a class alongside Tom Hiddleston
and Andrea Riseborough. His first professional role on graduation was
understudying Kevin Spacey in Richard II at the Old Vic. “It’s a weird thing,
being an understudy. You cross your fingers a bit. I’m sure that’s not the
case for all understudies, but I certainly was hungry to play Richard II.” I ask
what it was like working with Spacey – long before the actor was accused of
misconduct. “I didn’t really get to… We were kind of supporting artistes, the
people I was with, so we never really got to work with any of the lead
actors,” he demurs.
Dawson is equally cautious about commenting on the accusations of “queer
baiting” (the practice of hinting at but not actually depicting same-sex
romance or representation) that have been levelled at his co-star Styles,
whose brand is built on sexual ambiguity. “I think everyone, including
myself, has their own journey with figuring out sexuality and getting more
comfortable with it,” Styles told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “It’s not like,
‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about
wasted time to me.
“Sometimes people say, ‘You’ve only publicly been with women,’ and I don’t
think I’ve publicly been with anyone,” Styles went on to assert. “If someone
takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to
have a public relationship or something.”
Dawson spends time mulling over the subject. “I appreciate that who I am
playing – [someone] who absolutely understands who he is in the world –
that as a gay man I got to play that part,” he says eventually. “But in terms
of who he is playing, it’s kind of ambiguous. Harry’s playing someone who
doesn’t quite know who he is. The problem with Tom – and he’s the one who
causes all the problems – is that he doesn’t know who he is throughout his
whole life.” He stops for a beat. “I’m not saying that about Harry, by the
way.” Nor is he criticising Tom. “I understand that he was growing up in a
time where you were not allowed even to think about alternatives.”
Audiences may disagree that only Tom causes problems; Patrick’s
motivations might seem questionable too. “I’m really excited by projects
where an audience will find their relationship with the people that they’re
watching conflicted at times – because they’re only human,” says Dawson.
“They make mistakes, like all of us, or they make bad decisions. But I hope
in My Policeman that you understand it’s the world in which they’re living
that has made them make those decisions.”
When making My Policeman, Dawson spent a lot of time, he says, reflecting
on his first lead role on television. He played Tony Warren, the creator of the
long-running soap in the BBC drama The Road to Coronation Street in 2010.
“He was openly gay in 1960 and he was only 24.
“I suppose when you look at My Policeman as a modern person you might
have a certain element of anger or feelings of sadness about that period,”
says Dawson. “But Tony used to take me for dinner and he would tell me
what it was like being a young man then.
“He told stories of romance and passion and that being something quite
sexy. It shows the strength of that community to find joy in a time that was
incredibly difficult.”
My Policeman is released in cinemas on October 21 and streams on Prime Video
from November 4