Teen From Near Oxford Plays Arlo in A24's Club Kid
Reggie Absolom, a 14-year-old actor from just outside Oxford, plays a key young role in Club Kid, the New York-set debut feature from writer-director Jordan Firstman. The Hollywood Reporter reported the casting in an interview with Absolom.
In the film, Firstman plays Peter, a washed-up queer party promoter in New York. Absolom plays Arlo, a 10-year-old who turns up saying he is Peter's biological son. Cara Delevingne co-stars. Colleen Camp and Kirby Howell-Baptiste are also in the cast, according to A24's film page.
The route to the role was unusual. Absolom was in the running for the title part in HBO's upcoming Harry Potter adaptation. The UK casting director Lucy Bevan had been assigned to sift through tens of thousands of children for the roles of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Bevan saw Absolom for Potter, then put him forward for Arlo, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Club Kid premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Cannes is also a marketplace, where sales agents and distributors do much of their business, and A24 won the bidding war for the film there. The Hollywood Reporter published a Cannes interview with Firstman at the time.
In that interview, Firstman said Absolom's mother told him that her son came home saying, "I love the dolls!" It is a small detail, but it shows how far a family's own reactions can travel once a child is in a film set.
The film was set for release in U.S. and U.K. theatres on Nov. 6. A24 now lists it as playing in theatres. The running time is 2 hours 2 minutes.
Absolom's interview with The Hollywood Reporter took place in London during October's BFI London Film Festival, the British event that showcases new films each autumn. It is a long way from a Harry Potter casting search to a film about a boy claiming a father, yet one casting director's list ended up placing a teenager in both stories.
