I got to speak with star Burn Gorman and director Barnaby Roper about All the Devils are Here, Gorman’s unique character, the challenges shooting in small set spaces, and more. Roper first explained how he got the idea for the film’s story and how it interested him.
“I got the idea for it in a newspaper article about the Great Train Robbery and there was a whole section of photos of the hideout that they were living in,” Roper remembered. “Everyone knows about the Great Train Robbery, and this film is not about the Great Train Robbery. But what just drew me in was what happened in that house for four days?”
Roper also highlighted the film’s integral idea that holds All the Devils are Here together. “The most important thing that we wanted to do was not go down a route of glamorising these criminals. We wanted to go back to that kind of heart, back to those Long Good Fridays and have that kind of strength.”
“Obviously, there’s violence and all that, but it also gives a little bit of the English eccentricity of the lady killers and the Lavender Hill mob,” Roper added. “That’s where we pushed, especially with Burn’s character, that kind of world.”
Gorman was particularly interested in playing Numbers, the group’s secretive handler, due to how peculiar the character was. Gorman recalled how Numbers’s personality intrigued him when he first learned about him: “I think your use of the word peculiar is right. That is actually what came off the page immediately reading the script was that he was quite hard to define as to where his motivations came from, who he was allied with. On top of that, you had his substance abuse issue, which is obviously as an actor, very intriguing.”
“You can only do the kinds of classes that you might have. Peculiar is definitely the key, the reason I wanted to get involved, apart from Barnaby and [John Patrick Dover]’s script and Barnaby’s involvement and the rest of the cast.”
Given how Numbers acts very unusual around the others, All the Devils are Here had some uniquely shot scenes focused on Numbers. Gorman and Roper explained what shooting those scenes were like, before and after.
“Barnaby, I think, knew that those scenes were going to have this dreamlike quality to them,” Gorman said. “Very quickly, we just came up with this particular way of movement. If you notice, the camera also moves. It has the saturation of the texture of the room, all the details and everything. It’s actually really easy to work on a set like that, because it’s kind of half the work’s done for you.”
“They weren’t scripted too: we saw his movement and everything,” Roper added. “We were just like, ‘Let’s go for it. Let’s see what happens.’ And I just want to see him in action too!”
Most of All the Devils are Here takes place in a single place: the deteriorating house that serves as a hideout. Although, the characters in the film consider it a prison of their own. Roper and Gorman also discussed what it was like recording on those sets.
“We designed that whole house for the film,” Roper began. “We could take out walls and we could do things like that. So everything was very much thought about.”
“It was shot in a studio in West London, which is actually quite a small studio,” Gorman added. “It’s not like a Pinewood or a Leavesden or anything. It did have a feeling of sort of not only the legacy of other British films that have been filmed there, many of the classics, but also a kind of intimacy.”
“Barnaby, the team and the production were so detailed,” Gorman praised. “It really was like going onto a fully immersive kind of sandbox really, where you could just relax and be the characters.”
Furthermore, Roper also noted how the aesthetic of the sets played an important role in the film. “The set is like the fifth character in the film. It’s like every single angle and every single view, there has to be this kind of feeling that people have been there for hundreds of years, you know? Even if they’re there, there could be like hundreds of people who’ve been through that.”
Gorman will be returning to the big screen soon with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, but is also planned to star alongside Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller, and Jesse Plemons in another film still in development. “It’s definitely one of the wonderful things that come along in a career every so often, and you don’t have to think about it for very long,” Gorman stated.
“Working with [Alejandro G. Iñárritu], he has his way of working, which is incredibly refreshing and intriguing, but also with Tom sort of leading the company, he’s an absolute dynamo and a really funny, smart guy and it’s a pleasure to be around him.”
Watch the full conversation with Burn Gorman and Barnaby Roper below.
All the Devils are Here is now playing in select U.S. theaters and available on digital.
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Christopher Gallardo is a freelance entertainment writer and critic. While not running The Reel Roller, Chris can be found writing reviews and breakdowns on all things films and TV. Outside of entertainment writing, he’s currently taking classes for a Bachelor’s of Science with a minor in Digital Media & Journalism. Plus, he loves Percy Jackson, animated films and shows, and Fallout! Follow Christopher on Instagram & X.