James Nelson-Joyce on ‘This City Is Ours’, his “brother” Stephen Graham, and those James Bond rumours: “I’d like to do it my way”
Few actors have had as transformative a 2025 as James Nelson-Joyce. The steely-eyed Liverpudlian had spent the previous four years catching the eye in supporting roles in a host of British TV series like Time, The Responder, and The Gold, as well as Andrea Arnold’s uniquely empathetic Bird alongside Barry Keoghan. However, when the one-two punch of the Disney+ historical boxing drama A Thousand Blows and the BBC’s Scouse crime epic This City Is Ours hit screens, Nelson-Joyce’s unmistakable presence was suddenly everywhere.
In February, the 35-year-old star introduced audiences to Edward “Treacle” Goodson, a bare-knuckle boxer in 1880s London who sees the legitimised future of the sport coming, even if his savage older brother, who runs their small portion of the East End with an iron fist, refuses to accept that the old ways are dying.
Then, in March, he captured viewers’ imaginations even more with the cold and calculating Michael Kavanagh, the right-hand man of a crime boss who may be attempting to cut him out of their drug empire. Kavanagh, though, is murderously determined to get what he is owed from the second he senses it beginning to slip from his grasp.
These shows supercharged Nelson-Joyce’s career in a manner unlike anything he had experienced before. So much so, in fact, that he woke up one day to see online reports that he had been linked with the currently vacant role of a certain iconic superspy, and the working-class boy from Walton, Liverpool, could scarcely believe what he was reading. “Look, to be honest, all the James Bond stuff, it kind of blew me away,” a stunned Nelson-Joyce admitted to Far Out. “To even be linked to that role is the stuff dreams are made of.”
In truth, it’s hard to imagine there are many young British actors who wouldn’t bite Jeff Bezos’ hand off to play 007, whether it’s in the next big-budget movie or a spinoff TV show. Nelson-Joyce is no different, although he was admittedly surprised when his name was rumoured to be in the frame. Having said that, he’s not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if he were to be contacted about the part, he’s got some ideas.
“I’d like to do it my way,” the actor mused. “When you think of James Bond, you think charming and smooth. All those cool things, which he has to be, because that’s the way he’s written. But also, if you look into the text, and you really look into what he’s been through? I’d like to delve into his past, the stuff about his parents, which isn’t discussed in the films.” Still, even if his association with Bond amounts to little more than some light pondering about what he’d bring to the role, Nelson-Joyce is excited to see who inhabits the character next. At his core, though, he wholeheartedly believes, “You have to put your own spin on it. That’s the beauty of Bond.”
If you’d told Nelson-Joyce when he was a football-obsessed teenager with no aspirations to act that, within 20 years, he’d be the leading man in a hit TV show that has already been renewed for a second season, and that people have floated the idea of “00-Scouse,” he’d have probably called you crazy. This is why his rise to the upper echelons of British acting is so inspirational, though, because it shows that great things are possible if the arts are introduced to young people at formative times in their lives.
Indeed, Nelson-Joyce’s origin story sounds like something out of fiction. As a teen, all he wanted was to play for Liverpool – “Obviously, I was never good enough” – and he even pretended he was interested in sports psychology so his school would secure work experience at the club’s Melwood training ground. Amazingly, it worked, and he had “one of the coolest experiences ever.” At no point, though, did he have any interest in acting, until one of his teachers changed his life forever.
While in Miss Griffiths’ English class, Nelson-Joyce would put on accents to impress her, and instead of seeing a class clown or a troublemaker, she recognised an innate talent. She put him forward for a Speech & Listening exam that entailed him reciting a monologue in front of an examiner. He told a tale of a young boy whose dog had passed away, and did it so poignantly that the examiner was moved to tears. A month later, he was told he’d achieved the highest mark ever awarded in the North West of England. Then, before he left school, Miss Griffiths suggested he consider pursuing acting, even pointing him in the direction of The City of Liverpool College.
Over the next decade, Nelson-Joyce took Miss Griffiths’ advice, studying his craft in Liverpool and then at drama school in London. Before he knew it, he booked TV and theatre roles and began climbing the ladder of success. None of it would have been possible without acting being presented to him by a teacher who cared and presented it to him as a viable profession, though. After all, he grew up a working-class boy with a dad in the “building game” who “didn’t know any actors” growing up, and had no clue “how someone ended up on a film set, or how anyone ends up in theatre.”
With the benefit of more than a decade of hindsight, Nelson-Joyce has grown to believe that there must be scores of other children and teenagers out there who are like him, but don’t have a Miss Griffiths figure in their lives. He believes part of the problem is the British government’s disdain for the arts, which has led to a lack of focus on creative pursuits in schools all over the country. In this situation, how will young people discover they have a talent for something if it isn’t put in front of them to explore?
“This new thing that Ed Sheeran is doing, getting music accessible to kids in secondary schools, I think it’s imperative,” the impassioned star noted. “How are you going to find the next John Lennon if kids aren’t being taught in school?” However, he acknowledged that it “shouldn’t be left to these artists to fund these things. To me, it’s great that he’s doing it, and it’s great that he’s taking it on, and it’s great that Stephen Graham and [wife] Hannah Walters have started Matriarch Productions [which offers a platform for underrepresented voices in the UK film industry]. It’s great that they give back, but it shouldn’t be solely left to them.”
Speaking of Graham, the importance of the Adolescence star in Nelson-Joyce’s career cannot be understated. They first met in Nando’s, of all places, when the young actor had just started booking his first roles after drama school, and he plucked up the courage to approach someone he considered an idol. He told Graham how he’d inspired him as a fellow Liverpudlian, and then went back to his table. To his surprise, though, Walters later came over and gave him her e-mail address, saying, “Let me know when you’re in stuff, and we’ll watch out for you.”
Three years later, while sitting around a table read for the harrowing ITV drama Little Boy Blue, Graham stared at Nelson-Joyce for a few seconds before exclaiming, “You’re that lad from Nando’s!” He soon introduced the young star to his agent, telling Nelson-Joyce he’d only previously done that for one other actor: the Jodie Comer. This was the beginning of an enduring friendship, with Graham also acting as a mentor who calls Nelson-Joyce monthly to check on his life and career progress.
By the time the pair were hired to play brothers in A Thousand Blows, they had become so close that their on-screen bond could barely feel more real or lived-in. “It was a gift,” Nelson-Joyce smiled. “He’s my favourite actor. We’ve got a very close relationship, and he is like the brother I never had. You know, it’s love on both sides. I know Stephen cares about me; he’s so generous, kind, and warm, and the same with Hannah.”
As Nelson-Joyce emphatically states, if his career could amount to even 1% of Graham’s, who balances British film and drama with Hollywood blockbusters and Martin Scorsese pictures, he’ll be “very, very happy. When you watch Stephen, you genuinely don’t know what he’s going to do next. You know that scene in Adolescence where Owen, the lad who plays his son, is stripping off, and the camera just holds on Stephen’s face? You don’t know if he’s going to burst into tears or if he’s going to scream and shout and kick off. That, for me, is what acting is.”
In truth, though, This City Is Ours features plenty of evidence that Nelson-Joyce may be on a path to becoming as captivating an actor as his beloved mentor. Michael Kavanagh is one of the most psychologically complex characters to appear on British TV in a very long time, and the star expertly portrays his conflicted nature in a highly subtle yet powerful manner. Kavanagh isn’t prone to outbursts of emotion and screaming tirades, but all his emotional turmoil is written in his eyes. Nelson-Joyce also conveys Kavanagh’s mental gymnastics perfectly, with almost every scene balancing on a knife-edge of lies, deceit, and desperate scheming.
“This is a once in a blue moon opportunity, so you’ve got to grasp the opportunity when you’re given it,” Nelson-Joyce noted about the show, expertly created and written by Shardlake’s Stephen Butchard. “There are a lot of layers to basically every scene because of what certain people know and what other people don’t know. And Michael knows more than everybody.” It meant Nelson-Joyce had to be meticulous about tracking who Kavanagh had lied to and when, and whether it was a different lie than the one he told another character. It amounted to playing a character who behaved slightly differently depending on who he was in front of, and the actor always had to be on his toes.
Indeed, Nelson-Joyce wound up inhabiting Kavanagh so fully that he changed the show’s most pivotal scene in a truly fascinating way. In episode two, he murders Sean Bean’s Ronnie Phelan, his business partner and mentor, because he’s worried Phelan is trying to push him out of their operation. In the script, the description was simple: Kavanagh approaches a sleeping Phelan on a sun lounger and stabs him to death. Nelson-Joyce felt the murder and the emotional motivation behind it deserved a little more nuance.
“It’s like going through a breakup, isn’t it?” he explained. “You love someone so much, but then you’re angry by what’s gone on, and it’s never black and white. It’s a multitude of colours, and that’s what I wanted to bring to it. So, I said to the director, ‘Look, I want to wake him up. I want to take the wine glass out of his hand. I don’t want a drop of the wine to spill on him. I want to wipe the knife on his dressing gown with the blood on it; all these little things. I wanted to open it up.” It made for a scene that can be read in multiple ways, and was simultaneously more tender, yet more upsetting, than in its initial conception.
Overall, Nelson-Joyce couldn’t be happier about where his career is in 2025, and he’ll soon be seen in the second seasons of A Thousand Blows and This City Is Ours. Whether or not he’ll wear Bond’s famous tuxedo is still up in the air, but it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see him land something huge in the next year or two.
In the end, even though he admits show business is cutthroat and “full of rejection,” acting is also his dream job, and he gets to travel the world doing what he loves. “It’s very fulfilling,” he nods with a warm smile. “I’ve done things I would never have dreamed of doing, you know? And it’s given me some opportunities where I’ve had goosebumps. I’m very, very lucky to do the job I do.”
