The return of Trainspotting’s psychotic antihero in sequel T2 has reignited old friendships for Robert Carlyle. He talks pushing buttons, Brexit blues and the benefits of getting older
In May 2016, a group of actors arrived in Edinburgh to begin shooting T2, the long-anticipated sequel to the fabled Trainspotting. Picking up the threads of his own film, director Danny Boyle had already been in the city some time. The novelist Irvine Welsh, writer of the original book, occasionally dropped by. And then came the stars – Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle, back to play moustachioed psychotic Francis Begbie. Each was now well into middle age. Their mood was united. “Oh, the fear was palpable,” Carlyle says. He still sounds nervous now. “You just don’t want to fuck it up.”
Carlyle says he fancied a sequel as soon as the original came out in 1996. It made perfect sense. The film had been a hit of giant scale, a cultural Godzilla whose filthy, rowdy portrait of life, death, sex and heroin in 80s Leith became a phenomenon. The cast had been made famous. All of them were up for another go around. It was Boyle who said no. “Danny kept telling us, ‘You’re not old enough.’ And it wasn’t until we actually started this that I understood. Because you can have grey dye in your hair, but if you don’t have real life experience, it’s not going to be there in your eyes.”
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