Cillian Murphy: ‘There’s this massive imbalance where the most important people can’t afford a house’

After phenomenal successes on TV and in cinema with Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy has leverage in the film industry. But what to do with it? Murphy has gone for hardcore social realism. Big themes. Provocative and vital stories. Low-budget, high-quality storytelling with a political edge.
And it’s paying off. 

New Netflix film Steve is a depiction of a chaotic day in the life of a ramshackle reform school for permanently excluded boys, a place just about held together by Murphy’s empathetic and inspirational leader. 

He plays a sensitive teacher driven to the edge by a combination of painkiller addiction and the chronic pain inflicted by the continual underfunding of his last-chance reform school for teenage boys excluded from education. Anyone who worked in public serves in the austerity era or Thatcher-Major years will relate. 

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“It’s no coincidence that Steve is set in 1996. So it’s the beginning of ‘things can only get better’ and Cool Britannia and all of that,” says Murphy, when Big Issue meets him in Central London.

“But it’s just after this long Tory rule. And the school is hanging on by its fingernails. So I suppose Steve is trying to demonstrate that things aren’t getting better for one section of the community. Clearly last year, by the end of the last Tory rule, the same thing was happening – and it ain’t got much better in Britain since, to be honest.

“It’s the same in Ireland. There’s a crisis in teaching – and not because of a shortage in teachers. There’s a problem because teachers can’t afford to live in Dublin or Cork or any of the major urban centres because they can’t afford a house. So therefore they’re all leaving. And there’s a big shortage in education.

“There’s this massive, systemic, societal fucking imbalance where the most important people can’t afford to buy a house. So there’s a big problem. And the trickle-down effect is that places like this [the
school for excluded kids] get shut down. And then kids who are in these places get abandoned and they become statistics.”

Steve follows last year’s Small Things Like These – a short, stark adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella highlighting the horrors of the Magdelene laundries in Ireland, in which Murphy’s minimalist performance produced maximum impact.

As a TV news crew and pompous politician arrive to upset the unsteady equilibrium of Stanton Wood, Steve struggles to retain control. He’s supported by a team who idolise him – played by Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Simbiatu Ajikawo (aka Little Simz). But even the film’s eponymous hero can’t overcome the systemic neglect of both the young people who have been written off by society and the institution he loves.

“Hero might be a bit strong. But I know where you’re coming from,” Murphy says. 

He’s the son of two educators, so understands the everyday heroics performed in classrooms.

“Steve looks after everybody else and is not looking after himself. He’s a great leader and teacher. The kids truly trust him and his staff would do anything for him. But he’s going downhill quick. And this is the day that everything breaks. 

“It precipitates this kind of breakdown. It comes back to how do you fix or care for somebody else if you don’t fix or care for yourself?”

Director Tim Mielants knows Murphy well after also directing Small Things Like These. “What we’ve seen in this performance is Cillian Murphy himself,” he says. “I think Steve is as close as you can get to him, in the empathy.”

The film is timely. School exclusions are at record levels. Murphy advocates an alternative approach to hard-to-reach young people, rather than excluding and punishing. 

Read more:

• Dreaming Whilst Black star Adjani Salmon: ‘Black people are asked again and again to explain ourselves’
• New Netflix film Steve shows that behind every school exclusion lies a different story
• Harris Dickinson: ‘There are so many injustices. How do you stay across all of them?’

“The punitive or othering or stigmatising approach to difference or to struggles clearly doesn’t work,” Murphy says. 

“It clearly backfires. All the time. And the more compassionate, caring, connecting, listening approach does work. I’ve been very involved in this movement in Ireland to get empathy taught in schools. We’ve managed to get it on the curriculum now – and that is something I’m very proud of. 

“We have stats that show that kids taught empathy perform better academically as well. So it’s a holistic thing, but it’s about changing, ideologically, the way we look at people that are struggling.”

Murphy is more open to talking about politics than expected. He’s always played his cards close to
his chest. But he sees the interconnectedness of things – how poverty is linked to inequality of health and education outcomes, how a failure of mental health support can lead to a greater likelihood of school exclusion, and how that, in turn, can directly lead to an increased risk of homelessness. 

He’s keeping a watchful eye on the upcoming presidential election in Ireland, where Conor McGregor won Elon Musk’s backing for his celebrity populist ticket – a warning that the Trumpification of politics is everywhere – before dropping out. Faultlines were exposed. Murphy, who returned to live near Dublin with his family in 2014 – joking (or was he?) that it was to stop his kids getting a posh English accent – knows his priorities. 

“It’s gonna be very hard to follow Michael D Higgins. His empathy and tolerance were magnificent,” says Murphy. “But I hope whoever follows in his footsteps can highlight these issues. Homelessness is a huge problem in Ireland. For the wealth of the country and the size of the country – we have this massive surplus – why can we not house our homeless?”

Talk turns to 1996. It was a big year for the young actor, with a life-changing role in Enda Walsh’s hit play Disco Pigs winning rave reviews and starting a journey that would lead to the Oscars. 

“This is probably all because I was 19 or 20 in 1996, so it was rose-tinted, but it genuinely felt extremely hopeful back then,” says Murphy. “You’re at the cusp of becoming an adult and that’s part of it, but it also didn’t feel like the world was fucking falling apart before our eyes. It really didn’t. It felt like the future was ours, you know? And I don’t think my own kids feel that way. I have a 20-year-old. I won’t speak for him – he can speak for himself – but I don’t think he feels that.

“So 1996 was a great time for me. The music was amazing. There’s this Kruder & Dorfmeister mix at the beginning of Steve that is so distinctively 1996. I have it myself. And we have Geoff Barrow from Portishead, one of the most iconic British bands ever, who were at their height back then, doing the score. So that felt good. All the jungle tunes are handpicked by [writer] Max Porter – he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of that era. 

“But it’s funny, isn’t it? There is definitely a cycle. Back then I was massively into The Beatles and The Kinks, and now all my kids and all the youngsters are going to see Oasis.” 

Back to the present, and Murphy returns to what is driving his career through this new phase. He is, he says, “addicted to re-collaboration” and building long-lasting work relationships. 

It could sound flippant. Wouldn’t we all like to work with our pals? But it’s become a bit of a mantra for the 49-year-old, who reunited with Disco Pigs co-star Eileen Walsh in Small Things Like These, which was adapted by Enda Walsh. 

“It’s sort of what keeps me going,” grins Murphy. “It’s a trust thing. It’s a shorthand. This whole film has come from a place of collaboration and friendship. Max and I have been very good friends since we adapted his book, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. So we were trying to dream up a new project.”

Porter suggested a new lens on his novella Shy. While in the book, he hooks us into the brain of teenager Shy (played, so impressively, by Jay Lycurgo), in Steve, he zooms out, telling the story of through the eyes of the teacher who could be Shy’s last chance.

“He’s passionate about telling the stories of carers and people we don’t see that much on screen in cinemas,” says Murphy, who since worked – sorry, re-collaborated – with Lycurgo on the upcoming Peaky Blinders film. 

“He’s such a remarkable young actor, and we’re so lucky to have him at this point in his career. He’s just gonna blossom from here. We’re going to be hearing an awful lot from him. You just want to keep working with the best people, so we’re lucky to have him in Peaky as well.”

Speaking later, Lycurgo is equally complimentary of Murphy.  

“I really love Cillian. When chemistry works, it is just like music, it just flows,” he says. “I feel like what we created with Steve and Shy is so important. Because every single man has a lost boy within him. 

“This film hits somewhere deep within me that feels so fragile but true. Honesty, truth, rawness are the most exciting things for me – and this film is sending a message of love. We won’t let these boys fail.

“Sometimes I would just watch Cillian behind the monitor, curious to see what he would pick up on. Acting is an impulsive thing, going with your instincts, but some of the best actors are very technical as well. Now on Peaky Blinders it is a different scale. But Steve is so raw that we had to be vulnerable with each other. I’ll never forget this.”

As well as showing younger actors the ropes, as a producer Cillian Murphy was able to shape the way the film was shot. After decades working with some of the best in the business, for this slice of social realism, he knew whose methods to borrow: filming in sequence to help actors stay on top of their characters’ journeys, and, for a scene in which the school board arrives bearing bad news, keeping a distance from those actors before shooting to help create friction between Steve and the suits. 

“A lot of this I have to thank Ken Loach for,” he says. “I asked the first AD to keep them away from us before filming, so it was this explosive thing. That’s another technique of Ken’s, so you’re not sitting around having a coffee and talking about the weather before going up against each other. 

“It was amazing to be able to tip my hat to Ken Loach on this. Because he changed my life as an actor when I worked with him 20 years ago [on The Wind That Shakes the Barley]. His films are very, very important.”

Murphy is now using his industry power to tell important stories himself. Is he getting used to his elevated status, and being introduced as Academy Award-winner Cillian Murphy yet? “I always get a little surprised when people say it,” he says, shyly. “You know, it was an amazing, bizarre, wonderful time but it seems quite far in the rear-view mirror now. You just keep on working. 

“I’m really, really proud of that film [Oppenheimer]. And I’m so proud of my collaboration with Chris Nolan. But you have got to have forward momentum as an actor or as an artist, otherwise you’re fucked.” 

But there’s still time for looking back. For a moment, as I pack up my stuff, we’re just two 6 Music dads in a room – even if one of us is an Oscar winner and the other has a hole in his shoe. “We could have talked about 1996 all day,” grins Murphy. “I’m just glad you didn’t ask me ‘are you Blur or Oasis…’”

Steve is out now on Netflix.

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