Ray Panthaki
Ray Panthaki is a British actor, writer, director, and producer. He has extensive experience in both stage and film, and television productions. His most recent acting credits include the film Boiling Point and the Netflix series Away. He most recently directed the short film Ernie, which will be featured as part of The Uncertain Kingdom. Outside of acting, he is an activist and advocate for a more racially diverse and socially equitable film industry.
1. What was growing up in London like as a third-generation child? How did you relate to that city?
London’s home and it will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s a city that’s given me a lot, I loved growing up here, and I’m proud of the reputation it has around the world for its diversity and inclusiveness. But I’m also a hippy at heart and as much as London has given me my life and my tribe, I think my soul benefits from escaping it, travelling and finding a change of pace every now and then. London’s too fast, and to live here without taking a break isn’t sustainable for me. I need time out in nature, by the coast, on mountains, or in deserts. I come back rejuvenated.
2. How did you end up deciding to pursue an acting career? Did you always want to be an actor?
I look back on it now, and It definitely came from a place of feeling insignificant. I always felt different as a kid, maybe it was my skin color or maybe it was because I always hated the way I looked, but I felt different. I was a shy kid, and the idea of acting was a quick-fire way to gain significance and attention from girls. I knew it worked because a kid in my class acted professionally and he was the golden boy of the classroom. I went home one day at the age of twelve and told my parents I wanted to become an actor, they were shocked because I was such an introvert, but I was uncharacteristically adamant. So they phoned around, got me into a local drama school and it changed my life. I look back on it now, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever that the child—me--would become a performer, but that’s what makes me believe in destiny.
3. You have experience as both a stage actor and a screen actor. What has been your experience in going between the two? What parts of the transition were most difficult for you?
I love them both with equal passion. They’re two vastly different crafts in the sense of technique, but I find the transition quite easy. I get bored quickly and forever need change in my life, so the fact I’ve managed to build a career that allows me to flit between the two is a beautiful thing for me. Similarly, the fact I can do an acting gig and then go off and write, direct, or produce something straight after, helps me with that incessant need for change.
Vintage Christian Dior
4. It is often said that a skill such as listening (for a stage actor) is essential. In your work would you agree? How does listening play a role in your on-screen performances?
Listening is everything on stage, but also in life I think. It’s something I still haven’t completely mastered myself but let me tell you, the people you love hanging out with and feel most comfortable around, if you really think about it, are all great listeners. It’s a beautiful and attractive quality, and in terms of acting I do believe it’s the most important thing. Real honest listening—with your whole heart and being—creates an unrivalled presence on stage and screen.
5. You just wrapped Boiling Point. What was production on it like? Do you feel close to Freeman as a character? How did you build a relationship between yourself and Freeman as you prepared for the role?
Boiling Point was interesting because it was a movie all done in one continuous take, so essentially it was combining my love of theatre and film together, and I’m sucker for anything experimental. I’d actually been toying with making my own single take movie for the last ten years, but never quite had the right idea, so when this came along it felt honest and truthful and it was a chance for me to get it out my system. It also meant working with Stephen Graham, who’s arguably one of the finest British actors of a generation. The film is set in a high-pressured restaurant and one of the gifts I get with my job is the training I get to do and for this I was packed off to chef school, which was a great experience. Unfortunately, though, convenience often wins and Uber Eats still gets most of my dinner business.
6. How did you transition into screen acting during your stage career? What was your “big break” during the transition? When did you know you were on the right track?
You can only fully look at these things with hindsight, and I think there’s been four real significant moments that happened in my career that got me here today, the first of which was at the age of 15 being given my first leading role in one of my drama school’s plays. I’d waited a couple of years for a chance and never got it because I couldn’t sing or dance. Finally, I had my moment, they cut the singing and dancing from my role in a chorus line, but what I did have, was a two-page monologue where my character Paul ‘comes out’ on stage to the director. Anyway, I deliver this speech on the night of the performance and, as I’m doing it I begin to cry, now you gotta remember this had never happened in rehearsal prior, so I look out to the audience and I'm stunned to see they were crying too. Right there, in that moment, that knowing that little insignificant me was actually making people emote, was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was then that I realized I had to do this as a career. The second was when I was 19, after I’d had a few small roles but needed to make the transition to becoming a professional actor. One of my best mates fed up with me moaning, sat me down at his house one day and made me write to all the big agents in London. It took a whole day, but we did it and sent everything off. Cut to, me receiving rejection letters by all of them except one, who’s still my British agent now. I often look back at that day and wonder, if I’d chosen to not listen to my mate and instead sat back and expected the industry to somehow come to me, would I have still ended up on this path? The third is me realizing that I was never going to be seen as a leading actor unless I took things into my own hands, so I took my first decent wage packet, bought a laptop, and taught myself how to write, produce, and make my own movies, which I did successfully and that took me to the next stage. The fourth was getting recognized by BAFTA in 2014 because prior to that I kept hitting a glass ceiling that I couldn’t get beyond, and as soon as I got the seal of approval from the biggest film establishment in the country, things began to shift again. As I look back at all these moments, with the benefit of hindsight and with a spiritual perspective, I can clearly see that each one of those breakthroughs came when I first put in the hard work. I think that’s a big lesson; that luck, destiny, divine, intervention, or whatever you wish to call it, only really meets you when you’ve first put in your part of the bargain, and once you do, it takes you beyond where you could go with your own strength.
Right: Vintage Christian Dior
7. 2020 has been such a crazy, historical year. In the thick of it all, you’ve had a really busy year both as a director and an actor. How have your ways of working changed during the pandemic? What changes have you made for yourself and your life? What has changed and what has stayed the same?
I feel lucky because I managed to get AWAY and BOILING POINT in the can just before CoVid hit. I feel unlucky because, against all the odds, AWAY didn’t get picked up for season 2 despite it being such a success. Obviously CoVid’s played a big part in that. During the first lockdown I kept myself sane by using the time to finish writing projects that had been hanging over me for a while. Right now, we’re in the midst of a second lockdown here in London, my writing assignments are over, and there are other ideas I could start, but I’m bored and need change again, so I’m starting to go out of my mind a bit. What I would say though, is that there’s two particular scripts that I’ve completed during this time that I’m so proud of and have purged so much of myself into. They’re honest and personal in so many ways, and that wouldn’t have come if not for the vulnerability of what we’re going through.
8. You are also an activist for racial equity in casting and production. How does this activism inform your acting and directorial work? Was there an event in your career that pushed you towards activism?
I don’t know if I fit into the category of an activist because there are people actually dedicating their lives to it and they deserve that title more, but you know, I learned early on that my best personal currency to the diversity cause was not to scream and shout about it, but to do something about it. I’ve been blessed with the gift of storytelling and the gift of being able to conceive an idea, make others believe in it, and then see it through to completion. I’ve always felt that my energy is best served by actually creating the roles that are needed, and I guess in a sense that’s my activism. For me, artists should be seen as artists, and I’ll always look to cast the best actor regardless of race, age, or gender, and from there work the script around that choice. Ok, you can’t do it with everything but you’ll be surprised that with a bit of creative thinking how much can be adapted to accommodate. Even as I say this, I’m realizing my ideas mostly come to me because I have an actor I like or want to work with, and then I fit a project around that person. For example, ‘Convenience,’ a film I curated, produced, and starred in, had two Indian actors in lead roles not defined by their race. They were simply the best actors for those roles because the film was written for us. It released in 2015 and, in a sense, it was too forward thinking for its time. Had it come out a few years later when the diversity movement really took off, I think it would’ve found a much bigger distributor and been a much bigger hit than it was. We made the film for 80k, all the major studios called me into meetings to find out how I was able to make something so cinematic for so little money, but no one would take it on because they didn’t know how to market it. To them it wasn’t Bend It Like Beckham or East Is East, so they didn’t know where to place it. I was like ‘put race aside and market it like you would Kevin Smith’s Clerks’, but alas, that kind of thinking was unchartered territory, even in 2015.
9. You have a short film, Ernie, in the film anthology The Uncertain Kingdom . For that project, what was the curatorial process like? How do you think your film fits in with the others in the project? What was making Ernie like? Why did you make Ernie? What was the inspiration behind it?
I’d directed a short film back in 2013 about the UK’s knife crime epidemic. It was the first thing I’d ever directed, and it made me realize that directing was an equal calling to my acting, and if I’m brutally honest it’s probably something that comes more naturally to me. The film won awards and had an amazing journey and that led to people sending me things to look at as a director. I realized early on if I were to direct again, it had to be something that came from my own heart. Then 2019 I got a call from the curators of the Uncertain Kingdom anthology, saying they’d seen Life Sentence and wanted to see if I’d be up for being one of twenty directors commenting on the U.K. as it entered the uncertainty of 2020. Anyway, what really sold it to me, was that they gave me full creative control over whatever I wanted to make so that’s how Ernie was born. The shoot was a nightmare, a day before principal photography I had a passing in the family, and it just didn’t feel right to step on set with the wrong frame of mind, so I made the difficult decision of pulling it. Then everything was up in the air because I had to leave for Vancouver to shoot Away for seven months, which then meant missing the delivery date I’d committed to and letting people down. So, like a lunatic I flew back for three days in the middle of shooting Away and crammed what should’ve been a six-day shoot into three. I killed myself getting it done, but you know what, we got something so powerful and it just reminded me of how I’m always at my most creative when I have limitations.
10. How does your work as a director influence your work as an actor? And vice versa?
I remember how revelatory it was for me when I first started producing and I was on the other side of the audition room for the first time. I recognized exactly what works and more importantly what doesn’t work when an actor walks into a room. And you’ll be surprised, it’s less to do with performance and more to do with persona, attitude, and commitment. That’s a lesson that no doubt made me better at the whole process. When it comes to being on set as a director, I naturally know what to say and do to coax a performance out of someone because I know the things that work for me.
11. Who or what is the most inspiring thing in your life right now? Who do you look up to most as a director and an artist? Why?
My Dad will always be the most inspiring person in my life, that will never change. He’s my hero in every way. What he's taught me has made me who I am. His work ethic, his kindness, his commitment, his integrity, and his honesty. They’re all traits I’ve tried to bring into my own life, both as a person and an artist, and I like to believe those traits have served me well. It’s often the road less travelled in the arts, but it’s undeniably the route of longevity. As an artist, I look up to so many people and for so many different reasons. Love him or hate him, Vincent Gallo for never compromising and always doing things his way. As an actor, Mark Rylance because I really don’t think there are many better, and for the fact he turned down Hollywood for years to focus on theatre, Meryl Streep for her consistency, Marlon Brando for bringing a new style of naturalistic acting to the mainstream, and Shia LeBeouf for his choices. Directors I’m drawn to are generally auteurs like Lynn Ramsey, Larry Clark, Xavier Dolan, Michael Haneke, and Tony Kaye. So many, so many, how much time you got?
12. What is your life motto?
“Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
It’s a quote I always fall back on because I’ve only been able to truly deal with whatever life has thrown at me since I went on a spiritual journey. Prior to that there was nothing rooting me. So now, if I ever find myself diverting off course or in need of guidance, this quote reminds me to go back to seeking spiritual principles first and trusting that by going that route, everything will play out more promising than trying to do things in my own strength.
13. Social Media:
@raypanthaki (on both Instagram and Twitter).
CREW CREDITS:
Photographer: Lefteris Primos
Model: Ray Panthaki
Groomer: Lauren Griffin
Interview by Alison Hernon, Editor-In-Chief, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearshsheets by Casey Claros
