Shazad Latif on playing a vengeful Captain Nemo in Nautilus

Ah Captain Nemo! I have lovely memories of watching the old Disney movie, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the Kirk Douglas one with James Mason as Nemo which I chiefly remember for its giant squid.

What was certainly not clear in that film, nor in many adaptations that starred the likes of Michael Caine and Patrick Stewart as Nemo, was that Jules Verne’s famous character was the son of Indian raja, as established in the second book about him, The Mysterious Island (1875).

He’s a man who hates imperialism, having lost family and kingdom in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the rule of the East India Company, which had sovereign power on behalf of the British Empire. Nemo dedicates his life to science and eventually fights against colonialists using his incredible submarine, the Nautilus.

It is therefore very timely for a new series about Nemo that brings this front and centre. Amazon Prime’s NAUTILUS is sure to cause discussion at a time when the issue of Britain’s colonial past is a huge talking point. Sorry Keir Starmer, but you can’t just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it isn’t happening.

NAUTILUS is immense swashbuckling fun for all the family, as well as a resetting of the story, and the hero is played by Shazad Latif, who is about to be going stratospheric, or whatever the underwater equivalent is.

“Nemo’s an Indian prince, that’s his birthright, and we’re going back to tell the story how it should be told,” Shazad tells us, “Usually in the other films, he’s this mysterious character you don’t really get to know. You don’t know the depth of this guy. But now we’re getting in there with this complex fellow.”

He too, wasn’t initially aware of what the character was all about: “I’d seen the old movie, the James Mason one. I knew the comics. I knew the character. But I hadn’t read the book before I started and I wasn’t aware how they were going to do it. Then I had a lunch with one of the producers, Anand Tucker, and he broke down what the plan was and where they’re gonna go with the story. It was quite exciting. You rarely get, like, 15 brown guys on a boat! It was great.”

Shazad is the perfect actor for this new take on Nemo, someone who can carry off the internal strife of a genius consumed with revenge, but also the visceral charisma to lead a ragtag crew, and be a dashing romantic hero to sweep the leading lady off her feet, an action hero to swash some buckles, and a comedian to pull off the gags.

Shazad has already shown in Spooks, Toast of London (Clem Fandango!) and our personal favourite Penny Dreadful in which he played a seductive and slightly two-faced Dr Jekyll, that he can really do it all, and he slots into the leading man position with ease. And this was undoubtedly a huge show to step into.

Shazad says, “The sets were amazing and it everything just makes it easier. You’ve got tank work, a giant submarine that you can walk through and everything’s sort of living. It’s daunting on the first day, but if you’re very well prepped, and you’re excited to go and I felt connected to this character. So it was quite a fun thing to go on set just play around with the other actors.”

Yes one thing that strikes you: the show involves a lot of water. Which, to our eyes, seems like an unbelievable freezing cold nightmare. Not so, he says, “It was in Australia, it was always hot, so that was good. I think they’ve got the second biggest tank or the biggest tank in the Southern Hemisphere there, they’ve done Aquaman and loads of the movies.
The best bit was working with this guy called Nam, who’s a surf instructor. He taught breathing techniques for underwater. We spent some time with him and I ended up doing about 15 takes of one minute, ten seconds underwater. That was really fun.

Kate Winslet’s Avatar record for underwater holding your breath? It was seven minutes wasn’t it? I’m nowhere near that yet, but I can understand how to do it. She’s legit. That’s mad.”

Despite the fun that was had on set (“We were sort of imitating how life on the ship was, you’re generally in the dark for most of the day. And then all the cast, 13 of us, came out in the evening and went out, there were a lot of weekends on the beach, a lot of bonding time, a lot of drinking. ”) he did immense prep on the character, and fundamentally there is an intent to this show that lifts above just standard action fare.

“I think this is a good way to [approach the British Empire issues],” he says, “He’s an Indian prince and it is obviously set during that time, so it just makes sense to go that way. I remember my history lessons at school, and we didn’t really cover all that, it was Mussolini and the Liberal Party in 1912.”

He continues, “It’s adventurous, Pirates of Caribbean-style, but at the heart of it, for Nemo, it’s deadly serious. His wife and child have been killed, and he wants pure revenge.”

You sense with Shazad that, while not operating from a desire for revenge, that there’s a drive in him underneath his appreciation of the fun of the job.

I asked him about his first forays into acting as a kid: “Me and my friend used to play a thing called The Game. I’d be like, ‘I’m Wesley Snipes, and you’re Leonardo DiCaprio. But we’ve got these girlfriends, and then we’re fighting Shao Khan.’

We would mishmash all the movies, you know, Tango and Cash, Big Trouble in Little China, any movie we’d rent, we would just try and re-enact. We would paint our guns gold like Romeo and Juliet. So I ended up doing what I’ve been doing as a seven year old, but like on a big scale, it’s quite funny.”

But the reality was that he grew up London’s Tufnell Park, a world away from the posh upbringings of many actors today. “My mum was on benefits – single, poor, that kind of thing,” he says, “Going into acting was pretty rare, but it was quite artistic around here. Our school had quite a good arts, music and drama scene.”

Nevertheless, it was notable that he was movie-mad first, in that way you dream big when you have little to fall back on: “When I was a teenager, I would watch five movies a day, just all different types. Growing up pretty poor, I realised it could be a way out of your circumstances.”

Eventually he made it into the Bristol Youth Theatre and found an agent and began the years of struggle up the acting ladder, which does require some steel if you don’t look like your typical Eton boy: “Even just theatre is hard to break into, especially for a mixed race Asian actor. I know there are lots of different roles you can do in theatre, but it seems like [success] happens a lot more rarely than in the movies.”

Next up for Shazad is the release of the hotly tipped Magpie, a film he’s starring in opposite Daisy Ridley, which is the film debut of acclaimed theatre director Sam Yates: “We took the film to Sundance and it did really well. I play a sort of pathetic husband who tries to have an affair with someone, but all is not what it seems. It’s not dashing like Nemo, basically.”

No doubt that these two roles are going to make it a big end to the year for Shazad, and it appears all his young movie star dreams are finally coming true.

And a final world on the nautical hero? “I like the fact that he’s so stubborn. He
doesn’t listen, he just says, do this, and then people do it and its mayhem. He’s the weirdest, worst leader, but also brilliant because he takes so many risks.”

NAUTILUS is out on Amazon Prime now.