When Kano hit him, mid-Top Boy audition, Des Hamilton only had himself to blame. After all, the casting director had asked the rapper to bring his A-game to the try-out scenes. Though they’d only met briefly, a few weeks before this moment, Hamilton could see something in the grime artist, born Kane Robinson, that he believed would make a great actor. So, to get a little more out of the would-be screen star, the Glaswegian got creative.
“I said, ‘They think you’re great, Kane, but they think you’re too nice,’” Hamilton tells me. “It was a bad choice of words on my part because the scene got feisty and then he smacked the f*** out of me. I can’t say anything, though. I say to young actors all the time, ‘I want authenticity, I want truth, do what you’d really do in this scene.’ So if a chair comes at you, or Kane decides to slap me around, I can’t complain.” It was ultimately worth Hamilton’s sore jaw: Kano got the part and has thrilled audiences with his glowering, unsettling portrayal as drug boss Sully ever since.
