Harry Lloyd has developed a fan base through a number of television roles, including a two-episode arc on Doctor Who and, more recently, as Viserys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, as well as parts on the stage and the big screen. Viewers familiar with his work may be surprised to see the English actor playing the Jersey-native protagonist of Big Significant Things, which premiered at SXSW. With its theatrical run opening this weekend, we spoke with Lloyd about independent filmmaking, the American south, and chewing tobacco.

Most viewers will know of you from Game of Thrones and The Theory of Everything. This is obviously a very different thing. How did you become involved with the film?

Harry Lloyd: I got another script by (writer/director) Bryan Reisberg and it was an offer of the lead part, and I thought there was some kind of mistake because I’m not really used to being offered parts without meeting. I read it, and I thought it’s not really for me, but I wanted to get in touch with the guy because he had a good style, and maybe he had something else we could work with. So we started chatting and he asked me the kinds of things I was interested in doing, and I was talking about always wanting to do a road trip movie, and he was like, “Oh, I have this idea that I’ve always wanted to do,” and he’d already started working on it. He sent me the treatment and eventually he sent me the script, and I was like, this is really cool.

It was my first time getting involved with something from the very beginning; we all kind of helped put it together and developed the script. And then bit by bit, we got really lucky, because it came together. So that all happened at the end of 2012 and in spring of 2013, we were in Mississippi filming it. It was this wonderful kind of crazy journey, and all of us doing things for the first time.

So you got to play more of an active, collaborative role in the making of the film.

HL: Yeah, just because it’s all about Craig, and we had ideas, and you roll with it. Originally Ella was an American character and then Andrew Corkin, the producer, had a contact in Finland, and through him we got to know Krista [Kosonen, as Ella], and suddenly we thought, “That will give it an interesting spin,” so it was all quite organic how it all came together. We had the casting of the local people and we found these amazing kids for that little scene, and all the little locations, and we stayed in this amazing house – it’s one of these old kind of plantation houses in the swamp near Jackson. And then once shooting began I went and stayed in the hotel with all the extras. But the whole thing was, like the film itself, just a crazy journey.

You mentioned before the film really being “about Craig,” and I wanted to talk about the way he’s introduced, because you’re sort of dropped into the middle of the story and don’t know exactly what his motivations are, what decisions he’ll make in the end, and I was wondering how you filled in those gaps when you were developing the character.

HL: Well, that was a lot of the process. Bryan always wanted it to be quite open, he never wanted to fill in all the gaps and do a complete story; he wanted to suggest that moment in someone’s life, and to explore that. But together, we worked out a kind of backstory, which I found really helpful, and some of that fed back into the script. We brought in the brother a bit more, and we made sure that they all tied in together, that there was a cohesive story. But it’s one of those films where hopefully you do your job right and other people take different things from it. Some people will find Craig one way and some people another and people will relate to him, according to their own previous experiences.

One interesting thing is to see the way different people will react to his behavior in the film; he’s lying to his girlfriend, for example. So there’s an issue of how vulnerable or how likeable he really is.

HL: You don’t play him like a good guy or bad guy, you just try and make him likeable, you just have the situation and you try and sell it and make sure that it’s believable. I wasn’t trying to make it abundantly clear what he was doing because the guy is clearly very lost.

We were trying to make it as authentic as possible, using these real locations and a lot of non-actors, keeping it all very real. So it was important that there were some touches where you see his vulnerability and his childishness. Even though he is doing bad things, he is a bit immature, he’s in that moment in your life when you kind of need to man up, and he’s putting it off, you know, “I’ll man up when I’ve done this and I’ve just got a few things done,” in a 21st century young adult period, which I think a lot of guys more and more relate to, because men grow up a lot later than they used to, these days, because they’re allowed to. If you don’t relate to it, then you could easily say, what a douchebag and he deserves what he gets, and well, this is what he gets. We’re not trying to make a judgement call.

I think people will relate to the moments when things really start to go badly between Craig and Allison and the long distance phone drama they go through. How was it developing that relationship when we don’t really see or know or Allison?

HL: Me and the actress playing her, with Bryan, talked and worked out the kind of story and what points we were going to tap into; we knew that there were 3 or 4 phone calls, and we didn’t want to stuff them too full of backstory, so it’s not an expositional chat, but at the same time it’s a chance to really find out about his life. So they were these really crucial scenes. Luca del Puppo, the brilliant cinematographer, was making sure that each of the phone call scenes was designed in a very specific way, because his iPhone is a really big character, in terms of what it represents. The fact that he’s always trying to pull up his map when he wanted to go on a crazy road trip and see where the road takes him, but actually he’s following Google maps and doing what he thinks is the right thing to do. And then he throws the phone away, and the phone is this link to his life, and he wants to get away from that responsibility, so his phone is representative of a lot of that. In a way I feel like the iPhone is my co-star.

The idea of a road trip and discovering yourself seems like a reference to films of an earlier era; this is really amplified by the call-in radio show, “After Hours with Glenn Hollis,” which I was surprised to discover is still being recorded.

HL: He’s a real guy, Bryan heard him and got in touch with him and called in; we got some pre-recorded stuff and got some fresh stuff just for us.

But with these road trip movies in the 60s, people would go and explore this new land and it was so exciting, and now we explore the land hoping to have the same experience that we saw in the movie. It’s all that much more self-conscious now and we’re trying to repeat the romantic version of it. Which is kind of sad, but there are obviously still ways of doing it; but someone like Craig doesn’t quite have the balls or the imagination to do something original.

The fact that he even knows that there are six “Largest Frying Pans” shows how artificial the discovery aspect of the trip is.

HL: By that point in the film he’s just kind of open and he’s suddenly sees what it is, he’s exasperated. And the movie depends on these moments; sometimes they’re really funny and sometimes they’re actually kind of stupendous and great and a cause for celebration and sometimes there’s just something kind of sad about them. I think when you go and visit these roadside attractions it’s really interesting the kind of people you see there; some people are really excited and visit all of them in the state and some of them just happen to drive past. It’s a really interesting people-watching spot.

The roadside attractions feel very much like an Americana thing; I’m sure they don’t have these in the UK.

HL: It’s a very American tradition. The thing about America is that people do things that in some ways are kind of small and unnecessary and quirky, but on a massive scale – because that’s what America is about. You’ve got all this space. And it’s the only place where these things would exist. In Europe you’d have some model village, something kind of small. But in America it’s the “world’s largest.”

Had you ever chewed tobacco before?

HL: No, and I really wanted to! Everyone told me not to because generally the first time you do it you will be sick. I was like, let’s use some real stuff and they were like, “No, we have all these other scenes to shoot afterwards and you’ll be pasty and messed up.” So I watched some youtube videos and sure enough it takes a little while but… There was one I remember watching where a guy was gonna talk you through it, like, “Here I’m chewing tobacco,” and then he comes back to the monitor an hour later and he’s like, “Yeah, so I’ve just been violently sick,” and he sort of talks you through this whole process… So still to this day I’ve never done it.

The Southern setting is interesting because it’s recognizable without the characterization coming across as judgmental.

HL: That was very important. You’re making fun of the main character a lot, the jokes are more at Craig’s expense. You can mock the south with some kind of hillbilly characters, but as soon as we got down there any trace of that went away, because that was just not the people that we met and we wanted to reflect the experiences we had. We used a lot of the characters we met; we cast really great individuals and tried to look at what the south looked like today, outside of the cliches, which was probably what Craig was expecting.

Are you interested in working on more indie movies like this?

HL: Absolutely; I’m always interested in movies or TVs or plays of any kind of shape or form, just something that grabs me, if it’s got an idea you can play with. I loved the whole experience of making it, it was such a treat. Being down in Mississippi, the people down there were so friendly and welcoming to a bunch of young filmmakers. In independent films there’s this massive freedom because you’re not beholden to some big company; you’ve got the money and you can do what you want with it, within reason and according to the promises you’ve made, so you’re really free to explore things as it happens and as you go, and it’s very liberating. And sometimes you risk all kinds of things. But it definitely encourages boldness. And that’s something I think is generally a good thing when you’re working.

I enjoyed working with Bryan and Andrew and Luca and Krista and Danny, the producer, and it became a really tight little family, the core people. I’m really interested to see what all those guys are doing next. There were a lot of people doing things for the first time. I have to say, you felt very safe in their hands; and it was wonderful to see Bryan exploring things for the first time, and the things that he was learning, and he was always so excited and his energy was the heart of it.