Dev Patel Landed His Role in ‘the Green Knight’ Because He Would Be an ‘Incredibly Beguiling Hero’
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a fantasy story of a relatable but somewhat dishonorable knight. For casting the lead in The Green Knight, the hero needed to be portrayed by someone who could play the role accurately and who the audience could still root for. Director David Lowery said he chose Dev Patel for the lead role because he knew Patel would be an “incredibly beguiling hero.”
David Lowery wanted to tell a quest film on a smaller scale
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a piece of literature from the 14th century involving Arthurian mythos. The story centers around Gawain, a knight who goes on a journey to find the mysterious green knight to fulfill a deal between the two.
The film version, The Green Knight, comes from director David Lowery. In an interview with Digital Spy, Lowery said he wanted to do a “very stripped down” version of a quest film, and this story popped up in his head.
“I wanted to make a quest film,” Lowery explained. “I wanted to make a movie about a knight on a horse going on a journey; I don’t know why I wanted to do that, it was just the image that popped into my head and it seemed like something that I could do simply with a relatively low budget.”
“So, I had this idea of doing something very, very simple, very stripped down, and I was naturally drawn towards Arthurian legends as a source material for this template,” Lowery continued. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was one that I loved that I’d read in college and I’d always loved the Arthurian myth.”
Lowery chose Dev Patel for ‘The Green Knight’ because he ‘couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the part’
Lowery explained that the character he had written in Gawain was “relatively unlikable,” and he knew he had to cast someone who audiences could still root for. The director said that he chose Patel for The Green Knight because he would be an “incredibly beguiling hero,” despite playing a less-than-heroic character.
“I wanted to work with actors I hadn’t worked with before; I wanted to work with actors who weren’t American [and] I wanted to go abroad to make this movie,” Lowery told Digital Spy. “I’d written a character who was relatively unlikeable and didn’t have much humour to him, and I knew that if I cast Dev he would suddenly become an incredibly beguiling hero, even though he’s not very heroic. Once I’d pictured him on that horse in that landscape, I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the part.”
Patel was prepared for the backlash he would face concerning the casting choice
Patel has proven to be a fantastic actor in movies such as Slumdog Millionaire and Lion. Still, the actor knew that he would face backlash since characters in Arthurian stories are generally white. In an interview with Slash Film, Patel said that his excitement for The Green Knight outweighed any concern he had about “trolls” on the internet.
“I always feel I’m going to come under scrutiny when you step into something like this, but for me, the opportunity far outweighed what the margin of trolls would say about it in the deep web somewhere,” Patel said. “It just was such an amazing opportunity to work with someone like David and the crew here assembled, this cast. The young child in me was so excited to be able to hold that big green ax and wield Excalibur and all those kinds of things that I never dreamt that I would be able to do.”
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