It’s an entertainment reporter’s worst nightmare — an important interview thrown off by technical issues.
This is the plight that occurs almost exactly midway into an hour-long conversation with Tom Rhys Harries, the star of DC Studios’ upcoming Clayface. On this virtual coffee date over Zoom in early July, the Welsh actor — dialing in from an undisclosed European hotel for an indie film shoot — is in the middle of describing this particular incarnation of the character, Matt Hagen, a promising actor who slowly transforms into the oozing clay-like shapeshifter of the Batman rogue’s gallery.
Harries references 'A Serious House on Serious Earth', a 1989 graphic novel written by Grant Morrison with a Clayface rendered by artist Dave McKean.
“There’s something so effective and disturbing about those illustrations in that story,” he says, before dropping another touchstone, the Arkham Asylum video game, in which the transmuting character arrives at “a really effective and psychologically jarring moment.”
And then, right when he gets to the good stuff, Harries drops for real — his glitchy, frozen face contorted behind the folded hands in front of him.
A series of post-heatwave lightning storms in New York City results in multiple dropped Wi-Fi connections during the conversation, setting this writer on a desperate effort to switch between a laptop and a cellphone. Then there’s an additional interruption: a knock at Harries’ hotel room door, which the actor assumes is turn-down service.
“It was free chocolate,” he confirms upon return.
In the face of a reporter’s internalized panic, the star, 35, appears unfazed. Perhaps it’s because Entertainment Weekly’s cover story marks his first interview for Clayface. Perhaps it’s a testament to the overall mindset of this former teenage skater boy from Cardiff.
Amid all these call drops, Harries, donning a silver chain necklace over a black Harley Davidson T-shirt to complement an assortment of rocker rings, starts singing “Carry on My Wayward Son” by the band Kansas through the blank void of the Zoom screen. At another point, while testing the audio, he turns a reverberating Zoom echo into his own DJ synth beat. He provides the “untz, untz, untz” himself.
Harries is a music man, which adds to his laid-back vibes and tousled blond hair. But singing was also how he and costar Naomi Ackie, playing the scientist who gives Matt the transmogrifying serum, dealt with such dark subject matter on set.
When you’re screaming most of the workday, you tend to laugh a bit more in between takes, Ackie mentions in a separate conversation (this one amid the heatwave in London). She describes one such occasion, when they were “deliriously tired” on reshoots in Liverpool. Ackie says they devolved into a “feed him chicken” song they improvised on the spot.
“I made it my mission to lighten the mood every time for Tom, who was taking on huge amounts of work,” she says.
Clayface (in theaters Oct. 23), which Harries calls “a mad story,” marks another big swing for DC Studios’ film and TV slate, overseen by longtime creative duo James Gunn and Peter Safran. Designed to mirror the comic books, each title adopts a different genre and aesthetic — from the animated Creature Commandos to the valiance of Superman to the foul-mouthed Peacemaker to the punk-rock space odyssey of Supergirl.
Ackie now states the obvious about Clayface: “I love horror, but I also love comic book films.”
It’s the DC universe’s first foray into R-rated horror — specifically, Safran emphasizes, “the true body horror of a Cronenberg-type movie.”
The studio figurehead adds, “We’re not just telling a villain story, but a real psychological unraveling.”
DC after dark
The Matt Hagen of Clayface — much like Harries himself — is a star on the rise in Gotham City, the home turf of Batman. (The Dark Knight himself has yet to be cast in the DCU, which currently remains separate from the Robert Pattinson films.)
Harries describes how Matt clawed himself out of a violent, impoverished upbringing in the narrows of the city to build an enviable life as an adult. Then, right on the cusp of true stardom, he sleeps with the girlfriend of a local mob boss, who later carves up his face in wrathful retribution.
Now mutilated and desperate to reclaim his life, Matt comes into contact with a scientist, Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Ackie), and her miracle serum. Though it seems to provide the instant gratification of a non-plastic surgery fix, the bubbling substance, upon injection, begins Matt’s fated transformation into the monstrous entity comic lovers know as Clayface.
“We meet Matt at a real turning point in his career and then, very quickly, at a real turning point in his life,” he says. “It’s a horror, but it’s a thriller. It asks, How far would you go to reclaim your life that you’ve built?”
And it’s a horror made by modern mavens of the genre, starting with Mike Flanagan. The prominent showrunner behind The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass brought a long-simmering idea to Gunn, a longtime friend from the biz. It stemmed from his obsession with Batman: The Animated Series and the Clayface character’s two-episode arc on the beloved ‘90s cartoon: Season 1’s “Feat of Clay” Parts 1 and 2.
“We really wanted him to direct it — I mean, really, really wanted him to direct it,” Safran, who produced all the Conjuring movies and their offshoots, recalls. “But Flanagan is so booked up. He had so many things on his plate.” (That includes Amazon’s Carrie TV series, the new Exorcist movie with Scarlett Johansson, and a feature based on another Stephen King book, 'The Mist'.) “So he said, ‘Listen, I can’t direct it, but you have my blessing. Go with God,’” Safran adds.
Instead, they went with James Watkins, who rose to the top of the contender pool after directing 2024’s Speak No Evil remake with James McAvoy. Though he’s also praised for 2012’s The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe, any of the Clayface cast declare his debut feature, Eden Lake (2008) with Michael Fassbender, as their favorite of Watkins’ works.
“I’m interested in films that give people a real rollercoaster ride,” Watkins says, speaking from London VFX house Framestore, where he’s putting on Clayface’s finishing touches. “You want to take people on a journey, but I don’t want that journey just to be clockwork. I want it to have a heart. I thought that’s what this had.”
The script evolved significantly from Flanagan’s original concept once writer Hossein Amini, a Watkins collaborator, came aboard. Of the earlier draft, the director notes, “There were mythic things within the shape-shifting world of him. Questions of our humanity — how we lose our humanity and what it means to be a monster.”
Even after DC’s most recent box-office stumble with Supergirl, which has earned only $117 million to date on a reported $170 million budget, there’s a lot of confidence behind Clayface. Watkins points to positive feedback from early test screenings. But also, as we’ve seen from films such as Sinners, Backrooms, and everyone’s current Obsession, horror remains “one of the most reliable and popular genres with moviegoers,” Safran says.
Speaking days after Supergirl’s premiere, he admits of the DCU strategy, “Obviously, you saw it this weekend, not everything’s gonna work, but we don’t judge the success of our 10-year plan based on any individual project along the way.” It’s more about “expanding the tonal range of the DC universe,” he says — and Clayface does just that.
“It leans into horror and psychological thriller in a way that definitely differentiates it from more traditional superhero entries, while still being anchored in what I would say is a recognizable character,” Safran continues.
That element is also what appealed to Matt Reeves, who directs Pattinson’s Batman movies and serves as a producer on Clayface.
“I’m drawn to the more grounded DC Comics characters, and coming off The Batman, [I] wanted to expand that interest to other characters and stories,” he writes over email from the U.K., where he’s currently shooting The Batman: Part II. “Clayface presented a unique opportunity to dive into an origin story within a specific genre — it’s a tragic character journey wrapped in terrifying body horror.”
The film is completely steeped in horror references. That appears to be Watkins’ love language. David Cronenberg’s The Fly is an obvious inspiration, given the bodily evolution of Matt’s transformation. After the mob boss attack, his bloodied, bandaged look in a hospital bed evokes classic Invisible Man, while a more convenient mask later on feels more akin to House of Wax.
Frankenstein was another visual in Watkins’ mind, around the initial scarring of Matt’s pre-serum face.
“I know the genre quite well, and there’s a reason why some of these myths abide,” the director comments.
One scene seems to channel The Phantom of the Opera: Hagen flees a premiere event with a limp, clutching half of his face to shield his melting flesh — a side effect of the serum. Yet, Harries says it’s coincidental.
“I actually shot all of Clayface with a torn ACL,” he explains. “I hadn’t told the stunts or anyone on production. I was hobbling because I was like, ‘I don’t know if my knee’s gonna give out.’ I was running around Liverpool at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. trying to get away with it.”
Then came a stunt. After running out of the premiere, Matt is so horrified by his reflection in a storefront window that he steps out onto the road and gets hit by a car.
“I had to say to the stunt coordinator, ‘That action is the worst thing you could do to bust it up,’” Harries continues. “But we got away with it! And my knee’s still intact.”
Matt’s full transformation into Clayface — the true towering form with gaping mouth and deep, cavernous eyes — will be saved as a surprise for theaters. You won’t see it officially in any marketing materials, we’re told. Past horrors including Longlegs (with Nicolas Cage’s white-faced serial killer), The Wolf Man (with Christopher Abbott’s animalistic shift), and Weapons (with Oscar winner Amy Madigan’s lipstick-smeared Aunt Gladys) found great success in that strategy.
“You don’t want to show the shark,” Watkins says, alluding to the creature from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. “I think people give away too much…I believe in the power of mystery and the power of suggestion and the power of people putting two and two together. I think it’s more fun.”
Harries does, however, share a bit of his reaction to seeing his character’s final form.
“It’s been a year since I saw that thing being built out. I can’t wait for people to see it,” he says. “I’m constantly in awe of the huge creative machinery that goes into making a film like this, and how talented everybody on board is, and how lucky I felt to be a part of that in any way.”
Actors on actors
Harries is the kind of actor who makes a playlist for a role, including when he played a Manchester-born Ibiza DJ for Netflix’s White Lines, one of his more widely recognized performances to date. The same approach helped him define his specific incarnation of Matt Hagen.
“That was one of my wrap gifts for the [Clayface] crew, a semi-curated playlist of the music I’d been listening to throughout the whole shoot as Matt,” he says.
That list includes George Harrison, Neil Young, and many a Tom Petty jam.
“My dad would listen to Tom Petty when we were growing up,” Harries recalls. “He’s, in my opinion, one of the best singer-songwriters of all time, but a lot of those tracks resonated with Matt to me.”
Max Minghella, who’s hot off an acclaimed season of HBO’s Industry and now plays a Gotham PD detective named John Pearlman, first saw Harries’ appointment to Clayface and thought, “Who is this guy? Who is this actor?” The Englishman, also known for The Handmaid’s Tale and directing The Shell, figured he was talented from the competitive casting process. He was proven right when they arrived on set.
“He handled this whole thing in a way that was pretty mesmeric,” Manghella comments. “He’s in every frame of the movie. It’s rare that there is a studio film that is so singularly focused on one performance.”
By Safran’s estimates, DC saw “literally hundreds” of actors to be their leading man. “We always were clear that we didn’t need a star,” Safran points out. “We just wanted the best actor for it.”
Harries assumed, because he wasn’t a known name, that he wouldn’t get the role. He said as much in an informal meeting with Watkins at a London coffee shop, following an initial audition but predating the start of screen tests. It was an hour-long vibe check, essentially. The actor didn’t have the script at the time, but knew the broad strokes of the work and who was involved.
“How our industry is set up, it’s very unlikely for me to lead a studio feature of this scale,” Harries recognizes. “I remember saying to him, ‘I know this is unlikely, but I am ready for this.’ Had this happened at the start of my career, I really don’t know if I would’ve been.”
Growing up in Wales, with teachers for parents, Harries had many creative outlets but says he practically “stumbled” into the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama after a wayward exit from high school. Does he remember much from that time? Nope.
“Maybe I just felt traumatized in general,” he jokes. “I liked the structure of it, and I liked the discipline of what art required, but then when you’re out in the world, you learn in a completely different way.”
And, at 18, an open casting call held at the drama school led to his first paid acting gig: 2011 film Hunky Dory, named after the David Bowie album. (Another of Harries’ connections to music.)
Harries has worked steadily ever since, but it wouldn’t be until many years later, in 2020, that his face started to become known around the world. White Lines was the first big breakthrough moment, propelled by our collective binge-watching habits at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then 2022 brought Apple TV’s Suspicion (2022), in which he plays one of the main suspects in the kidnapping of a media mogul’s son.
Harries can even say he was in The Odyssey before Christopher Nolan repopularized the epic — at least in part of it. He appeared in 2024’s The Return, about the specific chunk of the story involving Odysseus’ (Ralph Fiennes) arrival back home in Ithaca and discovery of a gaggle of suitors (Harries playing one of them) squatting in his castle.
The actor is quick to clarify, “Chris started writing The Odyssey before The Return came out.”
“I’d seen Tom without realizing,” Safran says now with the benefit of hindsight. “But I really didn’t know him at all as an actor. His [Clayface] audition was great, and then his screen test was magnificent.”
A glimpse of Gotham
Harries wouldn’t call himself more of a comic book enthusiast than a horror fan, or vice versa — even though he read comics and watched the Batman animated series as a kid. For him, it’s just about chasing a good story.
For DC fans, however, the film will expand this comic book-based universe in ways that will surely garner attention.
Safran confirms that the events of Clayface predate Creature Commandos in the canon, and that the Clayface we meet in that HBO Max animated series is the same Matt Hagen we now meet here. (“Yes, it is the same Clayface,” he says.) Watkins’ still sees the character as an “amalgam” and his own thing, in his mind. “We’ve pinched elements from all over the place,” he says.
The film will also introduce Gotham City to the DCU, well before we meet the new Batman. Minghella’s John is one way of exploring that world. Minghella calls it a “childhood dream come true.”
“There is something about the DCU that has always held my subconscious. Even the films that maybe I’ve connected with a little less, there’s something about the aesthetic of it or the tonality of it,” the actor says. “It really seeps its way into my brain. I’ve always been very beguiled by it.”
Speaking of Gunn, Watkins explains how “James and I wanted to create a Gotham that had a certain impressiveness and corruption to it and dirt to it, but also wasn’t murky. I like to have some color in the film and in the universe.”
He references tungsten lighting, “that kind of orange sodium vapor-type light that creates a real atmosphere.” It’s apparent in many moments throughout the film, including one where Ackie’s Caitlyn is stalked by a mystery man in an empty alleyway, lit by flashing lights from an amusement park sign with a smiling clown.
It stands out, given the obvious implication of clown imagery within Gotham City. Is Joker just around the corner?
“There are little Easter eggs for those really in the know,” Watkins says, “but they’re very light sprinklings, whether it’s name references or occasional background references or visual illusions. If you didn’t know this world, you wouldn’t spot them — and they’re not there to pull people out [of the story].”
So what about Batman? Is the Caped Crusader lurking in the periphery of Matt’s vision? Those remain open questions to be answered later.
“The story is Clayface’s story, it’s Matt Hagen’s story. If you just took one person within the world of Gotham and followed their story, it’s about following the integrity of that,” Watkins responds. “You don’t necessarily bump into any of these people…It’s just one big city. I can see why people worry about these things, but that’s not my job. My job is to worry about, Is this story honest to itself? and not try to think of ways to be cute, I suppose.”
“We were joking that we could go and get Rob to do a little cameo for us,” recalls Ackie, who worked with Pattinson on the film Mickey 17. “But he was busy being Batman, saving another Gotham.”
The star of The Drama and Nolan’s Odyssey also films his Batman movies in Liverpool.
“It’s like, through a window, you see Rob in his full gear,” Ackie pitches. “That’s what we were thinking.”
The actors marvel at the scale of Clayface, even with a more modest budget for a comic book movie — and its importance to the DCU. Ackie calls it equally exciting and scary.
“This is a big studio film,” she points out. “There’s a lot of eyes on it. You wanna make sure you’re doing a good job, and you’re not hated by people.”
Harries acknowledges, “It’s fairly uncontestable that it’s a step up for me personally, but the approach to any job doesn’t really change. The responsibility and the privilege of being able to step into a cultural sandbox that is important to so many people is something that I have very close to my heart.”
He’s already had one impactful fan reaction since landing the role. While flying to Los Angeles to see the 3-D models and sculptures made for the movie, he connected with his seatmate, a doctor in his 70s who collected old Clayface comics.
“He messaged me on Instagram afterwards, and then I’d done a back and forth with him,” Harries reveals.
But press has just begun for Clayface, and he’s now set to hit the pop culture mainstage at San Diego Comic-Con International, with thousands of fans in attendance. Even then, he doesn’t fully believe that anyone will care about seeing his face up close.
“Listen,” he says, “I could be at Comic-Con at this point in full cover and then reveal myself. I think most of Comic-Con would go, ‘Who?!’ I don’t think it would be a big surprise.”
Once his mug is everywhere on the big screen, he might change his tune.
