It’s time to check in: How was the year in books for you, dear reader? Now that we've approached the conclusion of 2024, it's time to reflect on the year's embarrassment of literary riches—and now we’re here to spread the gospel about our favourites.
The best books of the year took us to dazzling new frontiers. In the fiction landscape, a spate of new novels offered visions of humanity from unlikely narrators, including robots, aliens, and the undead. Meanwhile, it was an outstanding year for memoirs; new outings from luminaries grabbed us by the heartstrings and refused to let go. In the non-fiction space, some of our finest intellectuals released titles that helped us make sense of our changing world, from the culture-flattening force of algorithms to the future of work.
Here are the best books of 2024.
Lauded as “the first great incel novel,” Rejection opens with a bang: In the first of its several linked stories, titled “The Feminist,” an aggrieved young man details his youth spent “dragging his virginity like a body bag into his 20s.” In the brutal and brilliant character studies that follow, Tulathimutte paints scorching portraits of lonesome outcasts: a depressed woman spiralling over her unrequited crush, a start-up bro seeking his other half, a gay man going to shocking lengths to pursue his convoluted fetish, and more. Flayed open by the author’s scrutiny, these characters blister off the page, all of them electric in their rage, their alienation, their tragicomic grossness. Paired with a deft metafictional coda, their voices coalesce into a unified theory of rejection. Perverse, profane, and profound, Rejection will make your skin crawl.
Anna Williams-Bonner, the widow of the best-selling novelist at the center of The Plot, takes center stage in Korelitz’s enthralling chaser, The Sequel. After her husband’s supposed suicide, Anna enjoys collecting his royalty checks as a famous literary widow, but when she pens her own runaway best seller, trouble follows. Soon enough, she begins to receive mysterious excerpts from a novel she never expected to see again—a novel no one can know about. In a twisty-turny quest to contain her secrets, Anna hunts down her anonymous tormentor, but much to her frustration, the dead don’t want to stay buried. Much like The Plot before it, The Sequel revels in lambasting the literary ecosystem, but this time there’s a winking metafictional glee about sequels as a form. Through the narration of this unforgettable antiheroine, a deliciously nasty storyteller, Korelitz delivers a ripping good read.
Ten years after the conclusion of his Southern Reach trilogy, VanderMeer returns with a surprise fourth volume that puts the weird in “Weird Fiction,” to delightful effect. At once a prequel and a sequel, Absolution shades in some of the previous volumes’ dark corners, but rather than provide answers about Area X, a coastal wilderness colonised by something alien, it poses new questions. In Part One, set two decades before Area X’s formation, a team of government-funded biologists introduce alligators to Florida’s Forgotten Coast, with disastrous consequences; Part Two is a potboiler investigating the ongoing aftermath, still tormenting locals 18 years later. Part Three contains some of the liveliest writing in the series: Recounting the first expedition into Area X, it’s the story of Lowry, a foul-mouthed self-styled “hero” with his own ulterior motives. Surreal and Lovecraftian, packed with cascading cosmic horrors, Absolution shows a singular mind at work.
As we embrace new digital experiences, what embodied truths do we lose? That’s the aching question at the center of The Extinction of Experience, a roving investigation of the threat technology poses to our social and cultural norms. Rosen writes about the danger of “mediated” experiences curated by data-hoarding megacorporations—for example, we check the weather on our phones instead of stepping outside to sense the temperature. “In these new worlds, we are users, not individuals,” Rosen writes. “We are meant to prefer these engineered user experiences to human reality.” But don’t mistake this book for a hand-wringing polemic against change; rather, in each disappearing ritual, Rosen highlights the deeper loss to the human psyche, as in the connection she draws between the end of cursive writing instruction and a measurable loss to children’s cognitive skills. Rigorously researched and elegiacally told, The Extinction of Experience is a compelling reminder that “go touch grass” is more than just an Internet punchline—in fact, it’s a human imperative.
“You can’t give back what already belongs to someone,” writes Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle in this powerful history of land theft in Oklahoma, spanning more than 200 years of atrocities committed against the Five Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole). Blending reportage and historical research into a propulsive narrative that reads like a legal thriller, Nagle traces the connections between key inflection points, from the Trail of Tears to a small-town murder on treaty lands. More than a century later, that murder would lead to McGirt v. Oklahoma, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed Indigenous rights to Oklahoma land. Through the checkered history of this one state, By the Fire We Carry tells a broader story about the ongoing fight for justice and tribal sovereignty among Indigenous Nations. Detailed and impassioned, it’s a gripping corrective to the historical record and not to be missed.
At 17, Ciment began a sexual relationship with her drawing teacher, who was 47 and married with two teenage children. In 1996, she published a memoir of their unconventional marriage called Half a Life; now, nearly 30 years later, the widowed author throws a stick of dynamite at that book. In her new memoir, Consent, Ciment reconsiders her love story, disassembling the careful mythologies she’s constructed around her early years. In Half a Life, she insisted that she initiated the first kiss; looking back decades later in the pages of Consent, she remembers how her husband pulled her into a kiss when she hung back after class to ask a question about careers in the arts. “Does a kiss in one moment mean something else entirely five decades later?” Ciment writes. “Can a love that starts with such an asymmetrical balance of power ever right itself?” Unflinching and bravely told, this postmortem of a marriage is one of the gutsiest books of the #MeToo era.
Indiana Jones meets Star Wars meets Nietzsche in this thrilling galactic heist packed with existential thought. Kitasei’s nail-biting story centers on Maya Hoshimoto, once the galaxy’s most notorious art thief, who now lives a quiet life as an Ivy League archivist. When a dead explorer’s journal materialises at the archive—one that promises to lead her to “the grail,” an artifact with the power to open portals to other solar systems—Maya is forced out of retirement. But she isn’t the only one searching for the grail, and if it falls into the wrong hands, interstellar travel could become impossible. Maya’s quest across the stars is a space opera of the highest order, rich in breakneck pacing and memorable alien accomplices, but it’s in the quest for moral clarity that The Stardust Grail really soars. As Maya journeys from planet to planet, Kitasei offers a profound allegory about the dangers of colonisation, taking this rousing romp to the next dimension.
When 30-something Lauren returns to her London flat late at night, she finds her husband waiting at the door. There’s just one problem: When Lauren left the house, she was single. She quickly discovers that her attic is generating an endless supply of husbands; as soon as one goes up, another comes down, and her life re-forms around him. At first, Lauren wonders which husband she can live with for now as she seeks a suitable plus-one for an upcoming wedding; then, which husband she can live with forever; and ultimately, which version of her life and herself she can live with. In this warm, wise, and bittersweet debut, Gramazio delivers a moving meditation on the paradox of choice in modern dating (and modern life).
In Wayne’s latest novel, we see “the real winners of America” through the wide eyes of Conor O’Toole, a college athlete raised by working-class parents. Fresh out of law school, Conor decamps to coastal Massachusetts for a luxurious summer: In exchange for tennis lessons, he’ll receive free lodging on Cutter’s Neck, a gated oceanfront community for the grotesquely wealthy. But Conor has student loans to repay, so when a sharp-tongued divorcée offers to pay twice his hourly rate for more than just tennis lessons, he can’t help but acquiesce. Soon enough, he tumbles into an erotic affair that challenges everything he thought he understood about sex and power; meanwhile, he falls for a young writer. As Conor’s double life spins out of control, one horrifying mistake threatens to punish him for his trespasses among the elite. Gutsy and shocking, The Winner is a palm-sweating thrill ride through the lives of America’s winners and losers alike.
In a series of immersive reported vignettes, the Financial Times’s AI editor takes readers around the globe to investigate the technology’s damaging effects on “the global precariat.” In Amsterdam, she highlights a predictive-policing program that stigmatises children as likely criminals; in Kenya, she spotlights data workers lifted out of brutal poverty but still vulnerable to corporate exploitation; in Pittsburgh, she interviews UberEats couriers fighting back against the black-box algorithms that cheat them out of already-meagre wages. Yet there are also bright spots, particularly a chapter set in rural Indian villages where under-resourced doctors use AI-assisted apps as diagnostic aids in their fight against tuberculosis. Fair-minded but unsparing, Code Dependent is the most lucid reporting yet on a fast-growing human-rights crisis.
Just how much do algorithms control our lives—and what can we do about it? In this eye-opening investigation, Chayka enumerates the insidious ways that algorithms have flattened our culture and circumscribed our lives, from our online echo chambers to the design of our coffee shops. But all is not lost: Chayka argues for a more conscientious consumption of culture, encouraging us to seek out trusted curators, challenging material, and spirited conversations. After reading Filterworld, you’ll be ready to start your “algorithmic cleanse” and get back in touch with your humanity.
In 1977, Adina Giorno is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Then, at age four, she’s “activated” by her extraterrestrial superiors 300,000 light years away on the dying planet Cricket Rice, who task her with reporting back about how humans think and behave. Through a fax machine in her bedroom, Adina transmits astute and often hilarious observations about the confounding behaviour of earthlings (for instance: “human beings don’t like when other humans seem happy”). Meanwhile, she experiences the bittersweetness of growing up; ostracised by the popular clique and mocked for her dark skin, she learns how, sometimes, being human means feeling alien. Warm, witty, and touching, Beautyland is an out-of-this-world exploration of loneliness and belonging.
Set in 1895 at the border between Texas and Mexico, The Bullet Swallower centers on Antonio Sonoro, the scion of a moneyed but deplorable family living in Dorado, Mexico. After a train robbery gone wrong outside of Houston, a shoot-out with the Texas Rangers leaves Antonio’s brother dead and Antonio horrifically disfigured, earning him the nickname “El Tragabalas” (the Bullet Swallower). Antonio’s quest for revenge against the Rangers takes him through the heart of the Texas badlands, where he weighs his violent impulses against the opportunity for repentance. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative set in 1964, Antonio’s grandson Jaime, a Mexican movie star, transforms his grandfather’s story into a feature film, hoping to redeem the Sonoro name. Linking the two narratives is the mystical stranger Remedio, a reaper of souls guiding the Sonoros toward the light. Rich in lyrical language, gripping action, and enchanting magical realism, The Bullet Swallower augurs a bright future for the new frontier of westerns.
One of our finest practitioners of the short-story form delivers her debut novel at last—and what a novel it is! The Book of Love is a phantasmagoric door stopper rich in characteristically Link-ian pleasures, like the collision of the mundane and the magical. In a coastal New England town called Lovesend, four teenagers investigate how three of them died, only to be resurrected by their music teacher (to whom there’s more than meets the eye). Then Lovesend is transformed by magical happenings as the veil between this life and the afterlife is ripped away, leaving our young heroes desperate to hang on to the real world. Enchanting and immersive, The Book of Love is a landmark achievement from a writer who never stops surprising us.
Fifty years after Studs Terkel’s Working, a historian delivers a comprehensive sequel for the age of late-stage capitalism. Assembled in a polyphonic oral history, Larson presents 101 conversations with American workers from all walks of life, including teachers, nurses, truck drivers, executives, dairy farmers, stay-at-home parents, wildland firefighters, funeral directors, and many more. In the wake of the pandemic and the Great Resignation, Larson’s subjects share their struggles to make ends meet, reckon with economic upheaval, and locate meaning and purpose in their work. Presented together in one thick volume, these often-fascinating anecdotes are a rich portrait of modern-day economic anxiety and social change.
In her latest bravura memoir, Jamison chronicles a wrenching period of rupture and rebirth. When their daughter was 13 months old, Jamison and her husband separated; what followed was a brutal struggle to balance parenthood, work, dating, sobriety, and creative fulfilment, all while the pandemic loomed. Told in overlapping, ever-widening circles of thought, Splinters details Jamison’s struggle to inhabit the roles we ask of women: mother, daughter, lover, friend. At the same time, the book is an intimate tribute to the author’s rapturous love for her daughter. Splinters thrives in this messy, imperfect complexity—in “the difference between the story of love and the texture of living it, the story of motherhood and the texture of living it.” Honest, gutsy, and unflinching, Jamison scours herself clean here and finds exquisite, hard-won joy in the aftermath.
Born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo Territory in New Mexico, Taffa situates her outstanding debut memoir in similar collisions of culture, land, and tradition. Here she recalls the people and places that raised her—especially her parents, who pushed her to idealise the American dream and assimilate through education. Taffa layers in diligent research about her mixed-race, mixed-tribe heritage, highlighting little-known Indigenous history and the shattering injustices of colonial oppression. Together the many strands of narrative coalesce to form a visceral story of family, survival, and belonging, flooding the field with cleansing light.
In 2019, Crosley suffered two keelhauling losses: First her apartment was burglarised and her jewelry stolen, then one month later her friend and mentor Russell Perrault took his own life. For Crosley, the two losses became braided together; “I am waiting for the things I love to come back to me, to tell me they were only joking,” she writes. In this raw and poignant memoir, divided into five sections that correspond to the five stages of grief, she links her frantic desire to recover the stolen jewelry with her inability to bring back Perrault. Leavened by Crosley’s characteristic gimlet wit, this excavation of grief, loss, and friendship leaves a lasting twinge.
In this stirring sequel to his breakout novel, There, There, Orange tells two linked stories: One centers on a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, Jude Star, who’s taken to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and forcibly stripped of his identity and culture. The other traces his modern-day descendants in Oakland, reeling after the powwow shooting that ended There, There. In this wrenching story about the legacy of colonial violence, we see generations of Indigenous characters orphaned from their past. Through poignant resonances between then and now, Orange delivers an epic saga of generational trauma, devastating to behold and impossible to put down.
Cunningham’s sensitive and sophisticated roman à clef centers on David, a 20-something Black man working in a minor fundraising role on an upstart senator’s presidential campaign. The author, who worked in the Obama White House, is clearly writing about an Obama analogue (this eloquent Black senator “project[s] an intimacy that was more astral than real”), but connecting the dots between fact and fiction is the least interesting reading of Great Expectations. As a young father and a college dropout, David struggles to relate to the privileged world of political palm greasing. As the campaign burns toward the White House, Cunningham spins a wise coming-of-age tale about power, idealism, and disillusionment.
In this provocative debut novel, Greer delivers a Frankenstein for the digital age. Sexbot Annie is the perfect girlfriend for her wealthy human owner, Doug. Programmed to please, she cooks, cleans, and adjusts her libido to Doug’s whims. But Annie is an “autodidactic” robot, meaning that she’s always learning and changing. As she experiences jealousy, secrecy, and loneliness, she becomes less perfect to the loathsome Doug and ultimately flees to meet her maker—with dangerous results. Annie’s painful journey of becoming is a poignant parable for the age of AI; it’s a rich text about power, autonomy, and what happens when our creations outgrow us.
James centers on a seminal character from American literature—and yet, seen afresh through Everett’s revelatory gaze, it’s as if we’re meeting him for the first time. Blasted clean of Mark Twain’s characterisation from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the enslaved runaway Jim emerges here as a man of great dignity, altruism, and intelligence. The novel opens in Hannibal, Missouri, where Jim teaches enslaved children to run their speech through a “slave filter” of “correct incorrect grammar,” designed to pacify white people. Then the story settles into Twain’s familiar grooves—on the run together, Jim and Huck raft down the Mississippi River, facing danger, separation, and charlatans aplenty. Along the way, Jim imagines verbal sparring matches with dead philosophers, falls in love with reading, and begins to pen his own story: “With my pencil, I wrote myself into being,” he writes. And so he does. On the road to freeing himself and his family, Jim becomes more self-determined than ever. Clever, soulful, and full of righteous rage, his long-silenced voice resounds through this remarkable novel. Subversive and thrilling, James is destined to become a modern classic.
Originally published on Esquire US
Like many other actors when they debuted, Jung Hae-In played the lead character's brother or friend. It was not till 2018 when he paired with Son Ye-Jin in the romance drama, Something In The Rain, his role as a "warm boy" caught the public's attention and he was conferred the title of "National Cougler", that Jung's career reached its turning point.
During this interview, Jung's leading role in D.P. season 2 was about to be aired, his part as a soldier is a stark departure from his previous "warm boy" roles in romance dramas, which can be said to be another breakthrough for Jung's career.
During D.P.'s first season, it had already triggered social discussion in its native country as the drama explores the South Korean military's hierarchical practice and the associated bullying. Jung's role of a private assigned to a team, tracking down military deserters, endured various experiences in the process. Likewise after the series aired, not only did it ignite many heated discussions, it also evoked memories of people's own experiences during their military service. The drama received critical acclaim and went on to win "The Best Drama" at South Korea's Baeksang Arts Awards, so naturally all eyes are on the new season's plot. "The characters in the second season are explored more in-depth than the first season, delving into the characters' inner contradictions and battles. The second season will also add new characters to enrich the plot," shares Jung.
He will be promoted in the new season, and the series will continue to explore why the dark side of the military is deliberately ignored, and why bullying and discrimination are daily military occurrences that are not taken seriously.
Coincidentally, D.P. season 2's airing marks Jung's 10th anniversary since his debut. Jung's childhood dream was to become a bioengineer. That is until after his college entrance examinations, and he was on the way to the movie theatre, when he was discovered by a talent scout. Thereafter the idea of becoming an actor began to germinate, and he subsequently enrolled himself in acting courses.
His parents were initially opposed to the switch, but Jung managed to win their approval and support through his persistence and enthusiasm for acting. "Since then, I have enjoyed acting very much. Different works and roles have also allowed me to accumulate rich performing experience, and I believe my acting skills will change and evolve with age. My goal in life is to be able to continue to act, but I will not say that I have achieved my goal yet. I'm continuously moving toward my dream. My dream is actually quite simple: to be healthy and to live every day and with a grateful heart," says Jung.
Having been in the industry for a decade, it's logical to sort out and summarise Jung's performance over the years. "If I had to choose my proudest work, it would be difficult. Put it this way, I would think D.P. brought me a breakthrough in my acting career, because the character and plot are completely different from all my previous work.
"The thing is, I have never deliberately counted how long I have been in the industry. Whether it is five or 10 years, it's just a number. The most important thing is that I hope I will not regret my past performances if I were to watch them in the future. In the past 10 years, I have acted in more than 20 dramas and movies, and I have enjoyed satisfaction from these works, regardless of how tough the process was, or the challenges I faced. I still find it very interesting.
"Of course, I will want to take a vacation and have a good rest. If my body sends a signal, I will definitely take a vacation to recharge and clean the slate of my previous roles, so I can absorb new subject matters and perspectives. I think this kind of treatment is applicable to everyone, energy can only be added if there is an offloading."
Apart from acting, Jung also likes to sing. He fell in love with South Korean singer Lee Moon Se's song when it was included in the original soundtrack of the drama he acted in.
"I fell in love with his song when I heard it, I listened to it on repeat. I generally pay attention to lyrics when I listen to songs as well as the emotions carried in them. Recently, I've taken a liking to sports too and I really enjoy playing golf. Contrary to how it appears, golf is not an easy sport, and I'm attracted to overcoming unique challenges," shares Jung.
Jung has always been stereotyped as a "warm boy" or a "National Cougler" in his career thus far. The truth is that his persona also falls in line with the "warm boy". When he is not working, he enjoys dinner with his friends. He particularly enjoys barbequing and would volunteer to grill food for others to enjoy, so much so that he is fondly hailed "barbeque expert".
"I like to help others barbeque meat because I'm confident of my skills, and I feel that I'm very good at controlling the heat and taste. But I'm not a master chef and I usually cook simple dishes like stew or fried rice at home," says Jung.
Looking forward to the future, Jung doesn't have too many thoughts, he just hopes to do his best for every role. "If I hadn't become an actor, I think I would still work hard to equip myself to become an actor eventually. To be honest, if I'm not an actor, I can't think of what else I would like to do. Every time I watch the work of my seniors, it reinvigorates and motivates me. I respect the two seniors, Han Suk-Kyu and Lee Byung-Hun, and I appreciate that they can perfectly present different images and characters in each role. If I had to choose my favourite movie, I would say it's About Time, the portrayal of people and time in it is quite beautiful," says Jung.
There's a spark in Jung's eyes whenever he talks about acting. With his hard work and determination, becoming the next best actor could just be around the corner.
Photography: Choi Moon Hyuk
Art Direction: Paddy Chan
Styling: Yoon Seul Ki
Photography Assistants: Kim Dong June, Seo Hye Yoon, and Jeon Sung Woo
Makeup: Soon Yeol
Hair: Sung Chan
In the acting world, Corey Mylchreest is considered to be in the throes of infancy. He is a relative unknown as far as actors go, but his portrayal as King George III on Queen Charlotte has got him newfound fans and acclaim.
The spin-off from Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte follows the titular queen in two phases of her life. The elder Queen Charlotte is still played by Golda Rosheuvel from the original series, with the younger queen portrayed by India Amarteifio. Cast opposite her is Mylchreest, as the young King George III. The series focuses on their marriage and the effects of King George III's ailment.
Still reeling off from junkets and interviews, Mylchreest has to contend with one more: ours. Thus, a day before his photo shoot with Esquire Singapore, we meet over a Zoom video call for his turn on the hot seat. Mylchreest's hair has grown out, which softens the angles of his mien. He's relaxed, his posture slants, favouring his right, as he sits in what appears to be the nondescript room beneath the attic.
I congratulate Mylchreest on the success of Queen Charlotte and his performance in it and ask, not certain if the question puts him in a spot, because Queen Charlotte is a Bridgerton spin-off, how he feels about the hype around the sex in the series overshadowing the drama, the complex human nature and acting?
"In the eyes of the beholder, that's where the story lies," Mylchreest says. "But that is the point of all storytelling—it is for the audience, not for us. It doesn't really matter what I think; whatever the audience chose to focus on, that is success for the show."
While there were challenges in filming Queen Charlotte's intimate scenes, Mylchreest sees more difficulty in accurately portraying George's mental affliction without bordering on caricature.
"That was something that I was really worried about. We wouldn't be diagnosing King George and that brought a heightened importance to what I think is the antidote to caricature: specificity and detail."
For his role, Mylchreest dives deep into the sea of research. He spoke to a specialist about the script; on whether he was going in the right direction to highlight the moments where George transitioned from confusion to lucidity.
"There was a doctor's report," Mylchreest adds. "A sort of daily report that was sent to Charlotte. They were delivered later in his life but it was still useful to read. It was so factual, so black-and-white. It'd describe the days when George would talk non-stop for 12 hours and would start to foam at the mouth because he has been speaking for so long. Then, there was an entry that said, though his mind was still ravaged, George seemed physically at peace.
"It's very clinical, without emotions, these documents, but the pain of that moment seemed to scream out. By then I'd done a lot of research and it was then that my empathy peaked. I just wanted to hug him. He didn't have an easy life by any means."
Like Mylcreest's research into KingGeorge III, I've embarked on my own into Corey Mylcreest.
Search results on him reveal myriad interviews of him doing press for Queen Charlotte. There is only one social media platform that he's on—Instagram—and on his feed, his first post is dated 7 April 2022. The casting of Queen Charlotte was announced the day before, 6 April 2022. For a Gen Z, you'd think that he would be more active on social media.
"I have a private account," Mylchreest says, "but the last time I was on it was maybe four months ago, and before that, I wasn't on it for about three or four years. I think I jumped off it in 2019 because I find Instagram, or social media in general, a hotbed for procrastination. I don't think it's necessarily the healthiest place for people's mental health."
But Mylchreest sees benefits in getting on social media. It's a fantastic vehicle for getting the word of Queen Charlotte and any other projects he's part of out there. "If I was going to be on it, I'd want to make it limited in some way. Not only to protect my own privacy and the people around me that I love, but also to protect my own work ethic."
Is that part of the reason for privacy? That if the public were to know more about your personal life it would affect how you'd portray other lives on screen.
"That's a really good question," Mylchreest says. He thinks about this for a while. "I think that there's an inherent usefulness in the mystery of someone. Especially when you use your appearance like an instrument. Sometimes the less someone knows of you, the more powerful your character portrayal can be."
He highlights an example: people who have known him all his life, would watch a film that he is on, and then in the slivers of the act points out, That's Corey! I saw a glimpse of him. "For people who aren't initiated into my private life, I think those kinds of moments can pull you out of the story. To tell a story requires the audience to suspend disbelief. A forensic knowledge of the actor can break that."
But this is what he is willing to reveal about his life: he can't remember when it started but, as that old saw with any origin story of many actors, Mylchreest has always been interested in acting since young. "I remember doing plays at school and it was the most fun I'd have in that week. I gladly stayed on even when it was time to go home."
There's a quote from a composer that his mom used to tell Mylchreest: the thing that you should do in your life is the thing that makes the hours feel like seconds.
Time's steady beat quickens as Mylchreest enrolled into Guildhall [School of Music and Drama]. Each Saturday, he would spent five hours learning advanced lessons like Stanislavski's acting techniques; discovering that there was method behind what you see on stage. It soon dawned on Mylchreest that drama school was a possibility. That there will be no half-measures in pursuing an acting career. "I didn't even try to go to the university. I knew this was going to be something that I wanted to do and I did for four years of training at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts)."
While incredibly supportive, his father professed concerns and suggested that he get a vocational degree as a backup. "That came from a place of love and concern," Mylchreest is quick to add. "I understand where he was coming from. Maybe if I were to have children, I'd do what my dad did."
His mother, on the other hand, championed his decision. She grew up in a working-class environment in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, and escaped on a full music scholarship. "She understood what it was like to have such love for the creative and the need and hunger to dive into it."
"I think that there's an inherent usefulness in the mystery of someone. Especially when you use your appearance like an instrument. Sometimes the less someone knows of you, the more powerful your character portrayal can be."
Corey Mylchreest on keeping a private life
Mylchreest graduated from RADA in spring 2020: not the best time for launching an entertainment career when the world was ground to a halt. All things considered, the young actor was lucky; he already had an agent before the lockdown. The Sandman would pass his way. Mylchreest never read the comic series the show is based on but he met with casting director Lucinda Seisen and auditioned for the lead, Dream. After a few callbacks, Mylchreest was about to go in for a chemistry test when the decision came down the line that "he was too young". They had him read for other parts.
"And then, about four months later, I got an email offering me the role of Adonis," Mylcreest says. "I think it was a pity hire because they knew that I had auditioned many times and didn't get anything."
It was a role so small that if the character wasn't in it, it wouldn't have any ramifications on the story. But there are no small roles, Mylcreest reminds me. Only small actors. Mylcreest came up with a whole backstory for Adonis—why he was there that evening, why he needed to be admitted to see the Magus.
His appearance as Adonis lasted less than 30 seconds. He had two lines—"Oh, the Magus insists, does he?" and "Can we still come back tomorrow?"—which he captioned on his Instagram: "'Best two lines delivered on screen'—my mum".
Jokes aside, this foray into a multi-million dollar production would prove useful. In the past, Mylchreest acted on intimate sets of short films. For The Sandman, he is awed by the hugeness of it all. The scene was filmed at Joyce Grove, a Jacobethan-style mansion that Mylchreest pointed out was where Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, spent most of his childhood at.
"There was a rumour at the time that Harry Styles was going to buy the place, which everyone seemed excited by, but I just remember being completely racked with nerves." He was a speck in the grand scheme of things; surrounded by 60-70 extras, all dressed in 1920s ball gowns and three-piece suits. Restored cars from the era criss-cross in the background. Massive lights bathed the expanse of the set; cranes with attached expensive cameras swept and swivelled. A hubbub of different departments; cogs in the film machine, setting up for the shoot.
"But to be honest, by the time the camera started rolling, I was so nervous that all the backstory just flew out my head." Sheepishness creeps into the edges of his face. "I was just glad that I knew the lines. I was told to, at a certain point, turn and deliver my line but I could never quite see where the camera was and we had to do it a few times. I felt really bad for the director and everyone because we had to reset everything."
Regardless, this experience prepared him for his first day at Queen Charlotte. "I was incredibly nervous when I started filming Queen Charlotte but I'd have been even more so if I hadn't filmed The Sandman.
But his roles in The Sandman and Queen Charlotte are vastly different and the necessity for preparation and research into the latter warranted more attention.
On the set of Queen Charlotte, before shooting commenced each day, Mylchreest would run through scenes and ideas with India Amarteifio to make sure that they are on the same page. They would run the scene in the hotel they stayed at or over the phone or Zoom but what's important to Mylchreest is the preparation needed for a shoot.
"I say this with acknowledgement that I am just starting my career, so I know very little in comparison to others who have been acting far longer. On Queen Charlotte, I found it useful to know the scene inside and out. I would record the lines of the other person and run through a slew of questions for the scene."
This allows Mylchreest to figure out the "points of concentration". The process could determine his character's intention; where he might go to and come from; what the relationship with the other player is like. "What this [preparedness] allowed me was once to earn my own trust in the moments that matter. Once I got onto set I have this whole host of possibilities in front of me that I could then let go of because I've done them a million times. I don't have to worry about lines or where it sits in the story.
"There is only the way forward."
Mylchreest tasked himself to read Andre Roberts' bio on King George III and accessed 20,000 of the king's personal writings. There was another avenue of exploration into King George III that Mylchreest could venture into and that is the portrayal of the king by other actors before him.
The depictions of King George III are many and mostly unkind. He's been played by Jonathan Groff in the musical Hamilton; Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George; Tom Hollander in the mini-series John Adams... the list, albeit short, goes on.
"I wasn't sure whether [watching another actor's portrayal] will be a good idea because sometimes you can start overthinking your own performance. I saw some clips of Lin Manuel's Hamilton and The Madness of King George and both of those depictions feel like they exist in completely different worlds to the George that we see in Queen Charlotte. If anything, it gave me confidence because I knew that I was going in a different direction with him. There would be almost no comparison."
Queen Charlotte delves more into the king's hobbies of gardening and science, with a focus on astronomy. He's known as Farmer George; the king has an assemblage of scientific equipment and wax lyrical about the constellated wilderness.
A crown too heavy for his head; his head full of stars, the mind of King George III belies more than just "madness".
Still, his mental health is a lightning rod which provides conflict to Queen Charlotte's narrative. There are swaths of text about King George III's manic episodes—he would often repeat himself; his vocabulary became more florid and complex; he shook hands with a tree because he believed it to be the King of Prussia—these and other instances baffled doctors of the time. Ranging from bipolar disorder to porphyria, there wasn't a conclusive diagnosis of the nature of the king's malady.
In Queen Charlotte, the character experiences bouts of lunacy and the show is careful not to define it. Near the end of episode three, taken by mania, George removes his clothing in the silence of his garden. A smattering of stars lights the night sky. Arms raised and eyes bright with awe, George calls out to Venus, "I knew you would come." We do not see what George saw that evening but his frenzy is evident.
In another interview, Mylcreest mentioned that before his scene, he'd listened to the theme song from Succession to get into the role of King George III. Given his familiarity with the HBO drama, how did he find the finale?
"I haven't watched it. I started watching [the series] about a year and a half, two years ago... which is already very late, I know. It was the final episode of season one where [Jeremy Strong's] character (Kendall Roy) had this look of resignation where he realised that he has to return to be under his father's wing. There was an immense sense of claustrophobia; this feeling of being trapped and then this track came on.
"I paused the scene, screenshotted it and taped that image on my character book." Mylcreest picked a notebook off-screen of the Zoom call and brings it into frame. He points to an affixed image of a crestfallen Kendell Roy. "I saw that and I thought that's George or, at least, that's an element of George."
And because Mylcreest's process was to listen to his playlist on repeat when he does his research, he's unable to watch any more episodes of Succession. "It's very important for me that the song didn't remind me of anything else if I was preparing for a scene. I needed to subconsciously make that song be just for that." So, he stepped away from further updating himself on the Roys' shenanigans until recently, after Queen Charlotte wrapped, Mylcreest resumed catching up on Succession. He's halfway through season two if you must know, so no, he doesn't have a take on the finale but he sums up the series in a word: "phenomenal".
In any project that Mylchreest takes on, the result is a collaborative effort. "It takes a village to raise a child and every piece of art is a collective baby. If I feel invalidated for my work, then that's not a great feeling but I don't feel that way at all. I understand that the actors are the face of the show but there are hundreds, if not, thousands of people who work on it—remove a few of them and the entire thing falls apart."
He recounts a piece of advice that his acting teacher imparted: "When you're in a scene, be selfish to be generous". It is an old game of improv, the basic tenets of creation between two parties, where, via generous contribution and its genial acceptances, a scene blossoms.
This give-and-take makes for a stronger scene. To paraphrase a certain quartet of musical scousers—"the love you take is equal to the love you make."
And these exchanges in Queen Charlotte are what gave the series its chewy centre—relationship dynamics worthy of viewers' investments; rapports that even spill over into the cast's personal lives after production has ended.
"I'm so proud of everyone's work in Queen Charlotte and, truly I mean, this from the bottom of my heart, I have friends for life."
It's not every day that you see this level of graciousness. If there was ever a show of congeniality, it was usually virtue signalling. But in interviews and in behind-the-scenes videos, Mylcreest is a mensch. He is effusive about his co-stars and what they bring to the table, he's self-deprecating.
Needless to say, the landscape of Mylcreest's auditioning process has completely changed for him. Queen Charlotte has opened up doors that would have been very firmly shut to him. Mylcreest knows how indebted he is to the show.
As to what is next for Mylcreest? At the time of the interview, he empathically says that he doesn't know. He is, as he calls it, "in a state of unknown" at the moment.
"There are some things in the pipeline that I'm waiting to hear updates on," Mylcreest says. "I'm meeting people for something incredibly exciting." Then he adds this bit that catches me off-guard. "And even if the project moves on without me, the world will have some brilliant pieces of art coming their way."
This period of unknowability is a terrifying prospect but while others see only the damning absence; Mylcreest sees a space of possibilities, as countless as the stars above.
Photographer: Zoe McConnell
Agency: JOON
Photo Assistant: Carissa Harrod
Digi tech: Nick Graham
Stylist: Thea Lewis-Yates
Styling assistant: Jamie Fernandez
Groomer: Stefan Bertin c/o The Wall Group using 111 SKIN
Producer & Casting Director: Even Yu @ APEX Communications
Production Manager: Guoran Yu @ APEX Communications
Production Coordinator (UK): Kate Zhu
Post: Frisian
Location: Lordship Park
Watch: Cartier