James McAvoy ‘California Schemin” Interview

James McAvoy Speaks Candidly About His Directorial Debut, ‘California Schemin”

The ‘Split’ star spoke about his new film during a post-screening Q&A with Complex in New York City

Not that there‘s something in the water, but it’s dope to see creative individuals we know for one thing diving into a different aspect of their field.

Earlier this week, we spoke to SNL’sMichael Che, who made his directorial debut with his latest Netflix special, Shot in Minnesota. Days before, Complex caught up with James McAvoy (Split, Speak No Evil, Professor Charles Xavier in Fox’s X-Men series) at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, where the actor was promoting his feature film directorial debut, California Schemin’.

Shot in Dundee and Glasgow, California Schemin’ tells the story of Silibil N’ Brains, aka Billy “Silibil” Boyd and Gavin “Brains McCloud” Bain, two Scottish rappers who discovered that pretending to be American could open doors that had remained closed to them as themselves. Their story was chronicled in Bain’s 2010 memoir and the 2013 documentary The Great Hip-Hop Hoax. Starring Samuel Bottomley and Séamus McLean Ross, McAvoy’s film is Certified Fresh, but its heart lies beyond the music industry: it’s about two individuals determined to make a way for themselves in a world that told them they couldn’t.

On Saturday, October 10, 2026, following a screening of California Schemin’, Complex moderated a conversation with McAvoy about making the transition to directing after 32 years of acting, finding his own Silibil N’ Brains, and whether he ever became an “actor whisperer.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

James, first off, directorial debut in theaters now. How are you feeling?
Really, really good. It’s scary. When you’re a director, it’s with you for years. So TIFF, a year ago, was the first time. April for Europe, when we released it there, was the next time. This is the third time, so I’m slightly less nervous.

When did this process first start? When did you say, “I’m going to direct,” and why this story?
End of 2022, going into ‘23. And then we shot it in October ‘24, and then I spent the rest of the time working on it. And I really didn’t put it down until January of this year. 

Why do I want to do this? Lots and lots of reasons. I think the ones that are most pertinent to this conversation are probably [that] I come from a country beyond the wall. I come from Scotland, from a part of Scotland that is what you guys call a project in a city called Glasgow. We call it a “council scheme.” So that’s one of the two reasons why the film is called California Schemin’. And the other one is because they come up with a scheme, which hopefully you picked up on. When I grew up, I would walk out my door, I was kind of told by the news, and I was told by people that looked down on where I lived, and I was told by the documentaries that were made about my scheme in Glasgow. It was horrible, and it was deprived, and it was unemployment and abuse and drug abuse and alcohol abuse and sexual abuse and child abuse and all the abuse. And yet when I walked out my door in Drum Chapel, my life was full of fun and adventure and schemes and sex and fights and flights and possibility and aspiration. And that just strikes me, in my 32 years of acting, that I watch movies all the time and I just generally don’t see that many movies about those kinds of backgrounds, those kinds of environments, or people who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. And if you do get them, they’re kind of digging deep into the poverty and the deprivation and the problems that some special kid might have, which, of course, we do a bit there, too. And those films are amazing, by the way.

But why, if you come from that part of the world, or that end of the economic ladder, why do you not get films made about how exciting life can be as well, or how exciting the possibilities might be as well? So when this script came along, I thought it gave me an opportunity to do that, because that was something I really wanted to do. I wanted to make a mainstream, entertaining movie about working-class people. And it didn’t necessarily need to be Scottish. It could have been anywhere, but it was nice that the first one that came along was that because these kids…felt like me; it felt very recognizable. Plus, they’re two kids trying to balance the tightrope of how much of themselves they want to sacrifice to make it in show business. I’ve walked that tightrope for 32 years, so I felt I understood, in a much less sensational way, the wild ride that these kids went through.

I’d seen the documentary about this story. Were you aware of Silibil N’ Brains back when this was going on about 20-some years ago?
My sister was in a rap group. My sister’s in the film. She’s the barmaid at the end. 

Oh, shout out!
She’s a really great actor. She’s on a great show back home. She was in a Scottish female hip-hop group at the time. And I seem to remember her talking to me about something, and then the documentary came out 13 years ago. And I remember thinking, “That would make a good movie,” but I wasn’t ready to get into it yet.

You talk about 30-some years being in front of the camera. Talk about that experience behind the camera, what it was like for you, you stepping into that for the first time.
When I’m acting, I’m the head of the acting department, or the head of my character’s acting department. And really I don’t look at it too much. This sounds like semantics. It’s not necessarily acting. You’re not a director, you’re not a good singer, you’re not an actor, you’re not an art department designer or decorator. You are all storytellers. We are all just there to tell a story. We all have a different department that helps tell that story. I think sometimes acting can feel like it’s the end goal. It’s not; it’s just a tool to tell the story. So I’ve always looked at it like that, and I’ve always taken control of it like that. And when I’ve been invited into this sort of scriptwriting process or rewriting process or the kind of planning, prepping, directing process, which has happened a fair bit, you extend your control over that story in terms of your own character; never touch anybody else’s business.

I was itching to get control of everything. And then I got control of everything, and it was really fucking stressful. It was mental, and you are bombarded with questions every day, and you have to answer them. And if you don’t answer them, that crew member doesn’t get to do their job. Or they will do their job, but it’s not what you asked for. And then you turn off the set and you go, “Why are the walls red?” And they go, “Because I said, ‘what color do you want the walls?’ and you didn’t give me an answer, so I fucking painted them red.” And then you get directors going like, “We can’t share anything to do.” And it leaves on the walls. Should have said that 12 weeks ago. So all of that stuff was like, but I loved it. I was up for that challenge.

The one that was surprising was I thought I’d have some sort of special ability with my actors, some sort of “actor whispering” capability. And I don’t think I quite got the full sort of “actor whisperer” status, but I did get there eventually. But the first couple of days I couldn’t resist saying too much, couldn’t resist acting too much. I felt bad for some directors that I’ve worked with before who are just kicking the shit out of the scene. They’re taking all the moments away that I might bring to it myself. But by articulating it so clearly to me beforehand, it’s sort of taking it away from me…I’m not explaining myself very well.

When they so clearly show me the diagram of the scene in their head and then, trying to just walk their path rather than do what I think film does particularly well, which is capture something authentic from the performer, interpreting somebody else’s words and the director’s desires, but capturing something authentically in communication from the performer. And if you’re a really talented actor and really you’ve got chops, you can fake that a little bit. It’s best to make it real. So really it was about trusting all the rehearsal that we had with the actors, all that chat, all that conversation, all that manipulation, benign, benevolent manipulation and prep that we’d done, and just let them be them. And really, I didn’t care if they were like the real people. It was more about I need Séamus and Sam to just be themselves and create that chemistry because the stakes in the movie [are], are they going to get caught? Are they going to get away with it? I don’t really care. The stakes of the movie for me [are] is their relationship going to survive, and is their mental health going to make it? That’s more interesting, but for that you need that chemistry to become palpable.

Was it a difficult task, getting your Gavin and Billy?
In some ways. I mean, if I was making this movie set in Boston or Chicago or New York or something, I’d have 50 actors going up to the role. We’d all make 20 movies at the age of 21. In Scotland, could you make 20 movies a century? We don’t have that, and I’m not dissing my country. I also don’t want to pretend; sometimes people talk like, “you should pick it up.” I think we got the talent, we got the stories, we just don’t make the movies. So we need to do better. 

For Séamus, who plays Gavin, this was at the time of me casting him; this was his first movie. And Lucy [Halliday, who plays Mary], this was her second job. Sam had done a fair bit, and Rebekah had done a fair bit. So that made it a little trickier. Then, we were looking for great chemistry, not just two great actors. And that is also a complicated thing, because some people came in and they were amazing, but there was nobody that they really sizzled with. And when I got Sam and Séamus together, because I did a lot of pairings, I mixed up castings and chemistry castings. Whoever Séamus worked with, he made them better. Whoever Sam worked with, he made them better. And that was sort of amazing. It was like they were not only dynamic and irresistible to look at themselves, but they shone [a] spotlight on other people, which I think is an amazing quality as a lead actor to have. I think it’s partly the ability to listen. So, I was so excited about the two of them and when I put them together, they suddenly sucked, and I was like, “this is really bad.” I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was trying to figure out cool director-y things to say, and I couldn’t. So I just said, “why don’t we just try this? Why don’t we go again?” And we went again, and they fixed it. And I think what happened was they kind of stunned each other. They were kind of enamored by each other, and recognized game, and they were just watching each other a bit too much. And then the second thing, they came back with all their work.

Speaking of work, there’s so much rapping in this movie, and they’re rapping in different accents. They’re putting on [an accent], and then rapping in that for a lot. Did they have to go to rap school? Because doing action films, you got to take a lot of time to [study] that.
Well, back in Scotland, where rap was obviously invented. [Laughs] We have a rap school. [More laughs] No, we had a really amazing guy come in and just spend some time with them, getting them really just articulated and limber, vocally limber. And they had three weeks as well, which, I’ve been on movies with $200 million budgets, and we don’t get five days. And when you say prep or rehearsals, it’s really costume fittings and haircuts and a half-hour chat with the director who doesn’t want to be there. But we had three weeks with these guys, which is such a help because there [were] many things to do. They had to learn how to move like these guys. They had to learn how to sound like these guys. They had to work on accents. In the case of Sam, he’s not even Scottish. He’s English pretending to be Scottish, pretending to be-

That’s what I’m talking about. There’s a lot going on there!
The most important thing, and Sam said this to me… 

Wow.
Yeah, I know. And I was like, “Oh man, we’re going to be fine.” I just thought that was such a beautiful, pure, and vulnerable thing to say. And if you can be a young actor and be brave enough to be that vulnerable, both as a performer but just as a person emotionally, I think that goes a long way to creating that thing that happens on screen that some people see as presence or star quality or magnetism because you let the audience in order to get sucked into you because you’re literally open to the whole world, not just the audience.

California Schemin’ is in theaters now.