{"id":468247,"date":"2026-02-09T09:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/468247\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T09:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:40:12","slug":"david-thewlis-on-fagins-criminal-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/468247\/","title":{"rendered":"David Thewlis on Fagin\u2019s criminal origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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David Thewlis is covered in muck. His head is bald and his beard is long. But that\u2019s the way the award-winning British actor likes it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI quite enjoy having a shaved head, because it means I can get up in the morning and I know what I look like,\u201d he says, chuckling. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to bother with your hair. I recommend it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is May last year, and Thewlis is sitting in the afternoon sun on the set of The Artful Dodger in Lilyfield<\/a>, in Sydney\u2019s inner west. Softly spoken but with a definite twinkle, he is in the middle of filming the overdue second season of Disney\u2019s historical romp, in which he plays one of the more controversial characters in literature: the master criminal and child trafficker Fagin from Charles Dickens\u2019 Oliver Twist.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Thewlis (left) and Thomas Brodie-Sangster star in The Artful Dodger.<\/p>\n

However, instead of drawing directly from the source material \u2013 in which Fagin is described as a \u201creptile\u201d with \u201cfangs\u201d similar to a dog or a rat and, most controversially, as a \u201cloathsome Jew\u201d (Dickens eventually made revisions in later editions of the book and wrote an apology to a reader<\/a>) \u2013 Thewlis turned to another criminal mastermind.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Jason<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI used to know, actually, back in Britain, this man called Bruce Reynolds, who was the mastermind of the Great Train Robbery in the \u201960s,\u201d says Thewlis. \u201cNow, through strange circumstances, I got to know him quite well and became very good friends with his son [Nick], because he was a consultant on a film [Gangster No.1] I did in the \u201990s. So Bruce became a friend of mine and all his extended gangster friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, my research, really, is with the man who pulled off the biggest heist of the 20th century in Britain, and was the mastermind of that. He was absolutely a really wonderfully beautiful man, actually, and he would be very happy to talk about that crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could always ask him about it because it wasn\u2019t like you can\u2019t ask Bruce about the train robbery \u2013 it was always, \u2018Go on, ask him about it\u2019 because he loves talking about it, and he\u2019d always start off going, \u2018We was thieves, Dave, we was little thieves.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Thewlis as Fagin, his version of which is inspired by the mastermind of the Great Train Robbery.<\/p>\n

As it so happened, those \u201clittle thieves\u201d operated in Clerkenwell, the once desperately poor London suburb where Thewlis now lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI live, maybe, 200 yards from a road called Saffron Row, which is where Fagin, the original Fagin [the real-life criminal Ikey Solomon<\/a>] that Dickens based [the character] on in the book, lived,\u201d says Thewlis. \u201cIt\u2019s where he had his gang of children, and where the Artful Dodger first meets Oliver is Clerkenwell Green, which is right opposite my home.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I live completely in that world, and where I used to know Bruce, the train robber, was also in this area \u2026 so it\u2019s always been quite present.\u201d<\/p>\n

(If ever you wanted a sign that your life is quite boring, try talking to one of the stars of Harry Potter \u2013 Thewlis played Remus Lupin \u2013 while he regales you with stories about his great friend who is a criminal legend. Anyway, back to the story\u2026)<\/p>\n

In The Artful Dodger<\/a>, Fagin lands in Sydney in the 1850s (he dies at the end of the book, but has been resurrected for televisual purposes), where he meets one of his former charges, the pickpocketing prodigy the Artful Dodger, aka Jack Dawkins.<\/p>\n

\"MaiaMaia Mitchell as Lady Belle in The Artful Dodger.<\/p>\n

Played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who is best known for The Queen\u2019s Gambit and Love Actually, Dawkins is now a surgeon who learnt his trade in the navy, and the pair are drawn into criminal activity again like moths to a flame.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like Fagin\u2019s trying to be rehabilitated,\u201d says Thewlis. \u201cFagin is proud of being a criminal, he sees it as a noble art, he celebrates it. He\u2019s not ashamed of himself, and he thinks it\u2019s a fine job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"What<\/a><\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t seen it, the show is a complete hoot. Thewlis and Brodie-Sangster are the ultimate odd couple, while Maia Mitchell, who plays aspiring surgeon Lady Belle, adds crackle to their pop.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, the relationships between Fagin and Belle and Dodger it\u2019s on, or it\u2019s off, or it\u2019s falling apart, or it\u2019s blossoming, so it\u2019s kind of this constant up and down roller coaster,\u201d says Brodie-Sangster, who arrives to chat also covered in muck, but with added glitter so he sparkles on camera (\u201cIt\u2019s a Twilight romantic sparkle filth,\u201d he decides).<\/p>\n

Season two has expanded the Australian cast<\/a>, adding Luke Bracey as Port Victory\u2019s new commander Inspector Henry Boxer, and Jeremy Sims as the Duke of Shrewsbury, the brother of Port Victory\u2019s governor. The set has also been extended, with most of the filming now taking place in Lilyfield, where the roar of overhead planes is understandably edited out, and a Hollywood-style back lot was created for the multimillion-dollar show.<\/p>\n

\"ThomasThomas Brodie-Sangster, Luke Carroll and David Thewlis in The Artful Dodger. <\/p>\n

Season two picks up six months after Jack (Brodie-Sangster) was sentenced to death for the murder of Captain Gaines. Desperate to clear his name, Lady Belle turns to Fagin for help. Needless to say, it does not go well.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Celia<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very fatherly protective of him, to not be hung,\u201d says Thewlis. \u201cTherefore, I don\u2019t want anything to do with Belle. I loathe Belle, which is very funny, I can\u2019t stand her, and just don\u2019t want anything to do with her because she represents an existential threat to me and my ostensible son.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Brodie-Sangster, the love between Fagin and Dawkins is what threads the show together.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Fagin\u2019s] always been a bit of a fatherly figure,\u201d says Brodie-Sangster. \u201cHe\u2019s the closest thing that Dodger has to a father \u2013 a messed up father \u2013 but there is a form of love there. It\u2019s a bit of a weird, strange, twisted form of love, but it\u2019s certainly love.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove is the overriding feature that runs through this whole show. I mean, there\u2019s a role reversal, [Fagin\u2019s] been my servant convict in season one and one of the reasons, one of the terms in which I\u2019m released [in season two], is that I have to be looked after by a trusted member of society. And someone decides that that trusted member of society should be Fagin.\u201d<\/p>\n

In season one, Brodie-Sangster was often elbow-deep in blood and gore (an amputation springs to mind), and while he enjoyed it, he was also happy to step away from surgery a little bit in season two.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, I\u2019m very squeamish,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the trickery of the film industry, and that\u2019s fun. I just see it as fun. And it\u2019s impressive, too, when you\u2019ve got blood pumping out of a shark wound. It\u2019s very cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think we brought down the gore [for season two]. I was always pushing for that [gore in] season one, but I think having watched it, that we could get away with having little bit less [blood].<\/p>\n

\u201cI had friends as well that had young children that started to watch it and [thought] maybe this isn\u2019t quite appropriate. I think, maybe, we lost out on a segment of our audience. Also, I\u2019m a believer in the power of suggestion. You can put a scene out, and you don\u2019t always have to show extreme close-ups of exactly what we\u2019re doing. You can leave that to the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Artful Dodger (season two) streams on Disney+ from February 10. <\/p>\n

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-468247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}