After headlining the biggest show on television, Hollywood’s doors swung open for Cosmo Jarvis—but the Shōgun star chose to lock himself in. In the British actors’ new film, INSIDE, he paints a devastatingly human portrayal of life behind bars.
Cosmo Jarvis doesn’t speak like a man who just helmed a record-breaking smash. Candidly unpretentious and endearingly skittish, the 35-year-old British actor paints a starkly different picture than his brooding on-screen personas may point to. Or at least, that’s what I imagine.
When we speak over Zoom, his camera is turned off and I find myself awkwardly hurling questions into the abyss, waiting for some unknown presence to respond from the darkness. Our conversation is punctuated by long, drawn-out silences of the introspective kind, and at times, I wonder if the connection has dropped out. But sure enough, when I ask how life has changed since becoming a household name, through the crackling speakers of my worn-out MacBook, a voice rings out.
“Oh, dear. Well, it hasn’t really. It’s still the same slog, just trying to get the work, do the work, that kind of thing, really.”
He sounds nothing like I had expected. More fidgety Hugh Grant than controlled Tommy Shelby, Cosmo pauses on words, cautiously presiding over each phrase with meticulous compulsion. It’s surprising, beguiling, and entirely disarming.
Across a 20-minute conversation, we swing from spiritual to trivial to meditative. So, when we finally settle on the topic of Shōgun, the smash hit series that generated over 9 million views in its first six days of availability, I half expect to hear a resounding story of triumph and sensation. Instead, Cosmo’s answer is thoughtfully idiosyncratic, with the actor revealing that he never once dared to think the show would be as big as it was.
“I suppose you never really know anything; it’s always a pleasant surprise if people potentially end up liking something,” he tells me. “You can never really be sure how a more universal reaction might conduct itself. In the beginning, all you really have is your own instinct about what the text conveys to you, and that’s very subjective. It’s always a surprise if people end up liking something.”
Building a Dynasty
Jarvis’ 10-episode stint as John Blackthorne, the 17th century English sailor who mistakenly lands on Japanese shores, was the driving force behind Shōgun’s remarkable success. The series was based on James Clavell’s bestselling 1975 novel of the same name and depicts a ruthless battle for power. On one side, the enterprising Blackthorne represents a changing of the guard, while on the other stands Lord Toranaga, a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous political rivals. In between them, gifted translator Lady Mariko attempts to prove her value and restore honour to her family.
The faithful retelling of the story, which is loosely based on Captain William Adams, who, in 1600, became the first English person to set foot in Japan, was an instant success. The show was the most-viewed series of 2024 and nabbed 18 Emmy Awards including Best Drama, with Jarvis lauded for his portrayal of the pensive and enigmatic outsider.
It was a role that, in all likelihood, should have catapulted the emerging star into the stratosphere of global cinema. A defiant talent with undeniable screen presence and a frame that seems to carry the heft of enormous resolve, Jarvis is a natural fit for a franchise film helmed by a marquee director. And while those roles are on the horizon (he has a new film with Robert De Niro in the works, alongside a combat epic from Civil War’s Alex Garland), his first cinema foray post-Shōgun speaks volumes about the kind of actor—and person—he is. Eschewing the traditional Hollywood trajectory, Jarvis’ next project isn’t a VFX-laden blockbuster, but rather a small-budget independent Australian film from a first-time director.
Going INSIDE
Set to release later this month, INSIDE is the remarkable debut feature from ascendant filmmaker and 2018 Short Film Palme d’Or winner Charles Williams. A starkly Australian drama, the upcoming film paints a dark and desolate picture of remorse and incarceration, and at its heart lie three men in varying stages of emotional decay.
When teenager Mel Blight is transferred from juvenile detention to a maximum-security adult jail, he’s assigned to share a cell with one of Australia’s most infamous inmates, Mark Shepard. Sensing a weak link, hardened inmate Warren Murfett recruits Mel to kill Mark, and suddenly, the three men are thrust into an evolving relationship that becomes more entangled with every passing day.
Jarvis is the man tasked with playing Mark Shepard, a despised offender whose crimes are almost too shocking to note, but this isn’t your standard jail time romp. From the moment Jarvis appears on-screen, all previous notions of his character disappear. Visibly weighed down by guilt, uplifted by faith, and driven to cleanse an unshakable past, Mark is the kind of character that requires complete immersion. Jarvis delivers.
“It certainly had its challenges because at first, it was difficult to place his narrative function for me,” Jarvis explains. “I tried to take the parts of him that were specified, the things that he’d not only inflicted but also gone through—the examples or the clues as to his thinking because of these things and amalgamate them into one person.”
The performance is masterful. In a way, Jarvis manages to draw blood from the stone, urging sympathy for a man who has inflicted the most heinous of crimes. As a viewer, the underlying sense of good that subtly shines in Mark is at times confronting and altogether conflicting. But to Jarvis, capturing the duality of the character was key to the narrative structure.
“People are not black and white. There were many moments of levity that were easy to see in the way that Mark conducted himself, and there were many moments of sincerity and earnestness. These were all things that I believed the blanket declaration of a ‘villain’ would not have honoured.”
This meticulous approach to character creation is what makes this performance so enthralling. His portrayal of Mark is both unsettling and sad, layered with remorse and detachment, underpinned by faith.
“I had to do a lot of research on certain things to do with faith and the kind of faith that Mark has, so that that could be represented honestly as well,” he says. “I mean, it’s difficult to explain. There were some earlier iterations of him (Mark) and it didn’t feel true to what he came from. I researched a lot of criminals and I found as many examples as I could of people who’d had a difficult time and lived in difficult places with difficult circumstances, and I spent a lot of time listening to them.”
Finding His Voice
When watching INSIDE, you can’t help but spend a lot of time fixated on Mark’s words. One of the most striking elements of Jarvis’ performance in the film is his near-perfect Australian accent. Not content with simply getting the vowels and sounds right, Jarvis’ vocality feels like an extension of the character’s inner psyche. It’s heavy with a quiet, lived-in weariness as if every word carries the weight of his character’s past. Jarvis attributes this to an instinctive process, one that comes from absorbing the world his characters inhabit.
“At a certain point, I ultimately just sort of fell into it. I mean, there was the severity of Mark’s person, the severity of his character, what he’s a product of and the things that he has been responsible for and continues to be responsible for, they sort of just conjured up him.”
The Weight of ‘Uncompromising Mass’
It isn’t the first time we’ve seen Jarvis step into the shoes of a damaged character. The British star first gained global attention as the diamond-in-the-rough enforcer Arm in Nick Rowland’s masterful Calm with Horses, before landing a breakout role as the shell-shocked soldier Barney in the BBC hit Peaky Blinders. As Jarvis explains, he isn’t so much enticed by roles that imbue a sense of dark optimism, but rather, to people who have something to say.
“I’m sort of drawn to specific and unique characters that are components of stories that are equally specific and unique.”
“Because often, there are stories where the events unfold and they unfold in a way where almost all of the parts and all the characters could be interchangeable. But when the characters are integral to the story and I get the sense that they cannot be interchanged with anybody else, then those are the sorts of characters that I go for, where the piece of the world that we’re looking at and the characters within it are sort of married and concreted into this uncompromising mass.”
“That’s interesting because it shows that whoever conceived the thing needed those people to tell that story, and those people are the ones that provide an opportunity to delve deep and really find someone, form someone and arrive at the person that the narrative requires.”
With INSIDE, the connection between the three lead characters provided that platform. Working alongside Australian screen legend Guy Pearce, who plays hardened con Warren and newcomer Vincent Miller as the wide-eyed juvenile Mel, Jarvis was able to explore a world rarely depicted on screen.
“It was the script, but in a couple of different ways,” he tells of what drew him to the film. “Not only was it concerned with a world that had a lot of potential and a setting and a demographic of people and the kind of people that had a lot of potential for interesting, seldom explored drama and narrative, but also the relationship between the three characters provided this sort of really interesting symmetry narratively between Mel, Warren and Mark. There was something about the shape of their relationship that seemed like a no-brainer, really.”
It is no coincidence that Jarvis found kinship in his co-stars. In many ways, Pearce’s own career trajectory mirrors Jarvis’—eschewing the obvious choices in favour of roles with substance. The veteran Aussie actor famously rejected the lure of big-budget blockbusters after his breakout role in Curtis Hanson’s crime noir L.A. Confidential. Jarvis, fresh off an incredible run in Shōgun, is treading the same cautiously articulated path.
“He’s a very, very, very lovely man and very peaceful to be around, very encouraging and instils a productive atmosphere around for everybody else, particularly those of us who are relatively more junior than himself,” Jarvis explains of Pearce. “Filming was quite straightforward in a lot of ways because it was so simple, and the environment that we were shooting in did allow for those moments to breathe. It’s always about the exchange. It’s always about the thing that’s going on and that allowed us time to work closely together and to allow the scenes to breathe and to be explored.”
Jarvis admits that a great deal of the credit for that must go to Charles Williams, the visionary director behind INSIDE. “He really always wants things to feel authentic as much as possible, and I know that he wanted it to feel unmistakably real despite it being a thriller,” he says. “Very cerebral guy and he’s very … the emotional core of things are really at the centre of his concern.”
The Slow Burn
In speaking with Cosmo, you get the impression that Jarvis is indeed his harshest critic. Viciously self-deprecating and quick to downplay his own achievements, the actor is far from the chest-beating thespians who generally occupy first billing, but perhaps that’s what makes him so intriguing.
When I ask him what’s next, Jarvis remains characteristically nonchalant. “I’m just going to keep chipping away, keep trying to find roles and find interesting parts—that’s the plan, really. It’s a slow burn,” he says. “I have a couple of other movies coming out at some point that I’ve worked on. I have no idea what the dates are, but we’ll see how that goes.”
It’s a response that feels entirely fitting with his character, yet it is so foreign from what I expected. In truth, it’s difficult to say who the real Cosmo Jarvis is. When we finish our chat, and I wave goodbye to the blank, black screen I’ve been smiling into for 20 minutes, I am left with more questions than answers. Cosmo’s ponderance of purpose and his approach to the tragic characters he so effortlessly brings to life feels more spiritual than self-serving. He’s not interested in being the next leading Hollywood man; he wants to tell stories that matter.
As a movie-lover, Cosmo Jarvis is the kind of creative that makes me very hopeful. In an age where influencers are shoehorned into roles to boost the marketing collateral and actors are judged by their Instagram followers, the stocky Brit imbues a certain old-world charm. Like a relic from a bygone era, Cosmo Jarvis feels like the very antithesis of contemporary Hollywood. His virtually non-existent social media presence, coupled with a cautious aversion to the kind of rapid-fire interviews that regularly flood our feeds, make for a rather enigmatic profile.
It’s unusual these days, but it does prove one thing—When you strip away the pomp and pretence, there is very little for an aspiring actor to hide behind. In Cosmo Jarvis’ case, the bare-bones approach has forced him to rely on the one thing he does have in abundance—raw, natural talent.
So while it might be, as he so aptly puts it, a ‘slow burn’, I get the feeling Cosmo’s will be a flame that blazes brightly.
INSIDE is an Australian prison drama film and the feature-length director debut of Australian auteur Charles Williams. Starring Cosmo Jarvis, Guy Pearce and Vincent Miller, the film will be released in select cinemas on 27 February 2025. Raw, striking and powerfully poignant, INSIDE is a sharp examination of life behind bars, helmed by a trio of remarkable cinematic talent.
Image Credit: Lee Malone Photography, Bonsai Films, FX
