Connor Swindells Q&A: ‘SAS Rogue Heroes‘ Star Shows His Mettle In Steven Knight’s BBC WW2 Desert Drama
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Sex Education’s Connor Swindells said he felt privileged to land the lead role in the stonking BBC One/Kudos WW2 desert warfare drama SAS Rogue Heroes, and he praised director, Tom Shankland (The Serpent) “for considering me for this, because this isn’t something that comes my way.” The six-part drama, written and created by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight, is based on Ben Macintyre’s 2016 bestselling authorized wartime history of the SAS.
Swindells, proudly working-class, said that he was apprehensive about auditioning for the part of David Archibald Stirling, a Scots Guard officer and scion of a grand Scottish family with bloodlines stretching back on his mother’s side to King Charles II, and son of a WW1-decorated army general. “I hadn’t been in those conversations for these types of roles, and it was really Tom Shankland that championed me so much.
He really fought for me and I’m really grateful to him for that,” the actor told us over cups of tea [it was a rainy evening] in the Soho district of London recently.
Swindells fit Shankland’s idea of the portrayal of Stirling: the man with a taste for extreme adventure who, in the summer of 1941, came up with a plan that broke all the rules.
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