In Lenny Rush’s newest role there’s a moment his reluctant vampire escapes the ire of an angry mob by pretending he’s just innocently practising his kissing technique on a pumpkin. Did you go full method and practise kissing a pumpkin for the kissing-a-pumpkin scene? “I’m going to be honest, no, I did not practise,” he tells Big Issue.
Just a natural then? “No, but it was my first on-screen kiss. I don’t think many people can say their first on-screen kiss is a pumpkin. So yeah, got to live that down…” At least now, I reassure him over a video call, it’s October and the right month, if there is one, to be kissing pumpkins. It’s becoming more and more difficult for Rush to score screen firsts. Only 17, he’s already had a long and accolade-filled career.
Now he’s scored his first TV series lead, as Valentine in The Reluctant Vampire. He told us all about it in this week’s Big Issue.
What else is in this week’s Big Issue?
How Right to Buy is costing councils
Right to Buy, its proponents said, was a social revolution that would allow tenants to achieve the dream of home ownership. But we found 50 properties sold through Right to Buy rented back as temporary accommodation. Read the special investigation in this week’s magazine.
The hidden lives of women rough sleeping
Big Issue shadowed the women’s rough sleeping census, an annual count which has published groundbreaking data since it launched four years ago. It proves that women are underrepresented in the official statistics on rough sleeping. When women’s homelessness is hidden, on the streets as well as in the data, it makes it so much harder to get them support.
The inside track on rough sleeping
To get a handle on rough sleeping in London, academics put trackers on people experiencing homelessness to try to understand the habits of rough sleepers. Phase two of this project is under way, but the subjects are being heard and not just mapped.
