Interview: Tom Blyth on ‘Plainclothes’
Premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Plainclothes tells the story of Lucas, a young undercover cop navigating the tension between his duty to lure and arrest gay men, and his growing feelings for one of his targets. Written and directed by Carmen Emmi in his feature film debut, Plainclothes offers a deeply personal narrative wrapped in a gripping atmosphere of paranoia, all filtered through a distinctive lens. Mixing traditionally filmed scenes with lo-fi VHS footage with no clear narrative structure, like an eclectic collage of sorts, Plainclothes will undoubtedly be a unique viewing experience for audiences who may be going in expecting something more linear or traditional. For star Tom Blyth, however, Plainclothes felt different from the start. “It’s one of those things that kind of came out of nowhere and then just felt like it was meant to be,” he says.
When Blyth first encountered the script, he was in the midst of a freezing Calgary winter, filming season 2 of Epix series Billy the Kid. “I got the email with the script and I read it. Usually, it takes me a couple of days to finish something, but this one I read in under an hour. It felt so personal, so empathetic, and like something I hadn’t seen before,” he recalls. Blyth says he was struck by the story’s depth and originality, made all the more impressive by the fact that it was Emmi’s film debut. “When I found out Carmen was a debut filmmaker, I almost couldn’t believe it. The script felt like it was written by someone who’d been doing this forever. I feel very, very fortunate, grateful and honored that he chose to trust me with it because I think with a script like this, it takes a real active trust to let anyone come on board when it’s something so personal and something that I hope will mean a lot to a lot of people.”
Blyth says his connection with Emmi was instant. “We were like two peas in a pod. Both of us immediately knew we had to make this film together,” he shares. That collaboration started in Calgary when Emmi visited Blyth during filming of Billy the Kid so that they could discuss the film and the character before they started the filming process. “For two days, we talked about Lucas non-stop. By the end of those two days, Lucas felt like a real person inside my head,” Blyth says, crediting Emmi’s honest and generous approach. “But that’s really just a testament to Carmen’s writing,” he explains. “He writes someone who is so alive on the page and it’s not easy, it’s never easy in the script, but when it’s so well-written like that, it already comes to you in such a fully-formed human way. A big part of it was that Carmen was really honest and generous with talking about his own experience, which you could feel in the script with Lucas. Carmen is not a cop but his brother is, and they’ve got shared experiences, and he’s got shared experiences with Lucas. And so, so much of it, even though it’s a fictional story, is based on a lot of real stories, like a mash-up of a lot of people’s real experience. So most of it was just sitting down with Carmen and just talking about Lucas and talking about his experience. And then also, any time you take on a character, it’s an exercise in empathy and trying to get inside the head of the person you’re playing and that’s what makes acting so exciting. At least for me. It makes it feel athletic; finding the similarities between you and someone, but also the differences and then bringing those elements together and working out how to portray that person.”
Blyth is known for playing complex characters, such as as the aforementioned outlaw Billy the Kid and the younger version of iconic The Hunger Games villain President Snow. Lucas is no exception; while he isn’t as villainous as Snow or as reactive as Billy, he takes it upon himself to lure and entrap queer men, placing them on offender lists at best and jailing them at worst. Blyth says what draws him to these roles is the opportunity to humanize these characters. “Even when I was a lot younger, the performances that I liked watching were the ones where you wouldn’t ever do what that character does,” he explains. “You would never see yourself in those shoes. And yet, you can understand why [they do those things] because the actor does a good job of bringing the humanity to it. No matter what the action is, you can see why someone would get themselves in that position. And to me, that’s what the power of this medium is. You get to go to a cinema and experience something that is not your experience. They may not even be the actors’ experience, but when it’s done, it’s an exercise in empathy for both the actors and the filmmakers but also the audience. That is what magical about it. And when it’s done right, it can literally break down barriers – social, religious, sexual, whatever they are.”
And while Blyth has delivered a number of phenomenal performances in his young career, most notably his quietly powerful turn as Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Plainclothes is undoubtedly his best work to date. A haunting, searing performance that will stay with viewers far after the credits roll, Blyth manages to incisively capture his character’s inner turmoil in an incredibly nuanced way, expressing his emotional journey through glances alone, saying more with his physicality than what many actors struggle to convey in full spoken monologues. That’s no easy feat for a character as performative as Lucas, who is constantly transforming and shapeshifting himself depending on his goal or his surroundings. “Lucas feels torn at all times. There’s this tension in him and it turns him into a performative person where he’s either putting on a performance for the police officers he’s around, or a performance for his family,” explains Blyth.
In other words, playing Lucas meant inhabiting a character torn between two worlds, none of which reflect the real him. “It’s like a Venn diagram where all the chaos meets in the middle of his mind,” Blyth says. “On one side is his loud, loving, overbearing family, and on the other is his life in the police force, where he’s expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. He’s living for other people, not for himself.” It’s only when Lucas stumbles upon Andrew, sensitively played by Russell Tovey, that he begins to embrace who he actually is. “When he meets Andrew for the first time, it’s the first and only time in his life where he actually lets his true self come out a little bit,” agrees Blyth. “It’s like this release, but then he has to put the cap back on.”
Preparing for the role also required physical and emotional discipline. “He’s a young cop, so a big part of it was staying in shape,” Blyth explains. “He doesn’t have to be big and bulky because he’s an undercover cop, but I was in the gym five days a week, making sure I was in good shape like he would be. On a physical level, it helps you feel more in control of your body, which feeds into the character.” But beyond the physical, it was the emotional complexity of Lucas that truly gripped Blyth. “There’s this tension in him, this constant pull between the roles he’s trying to fill—cop, son, man—and the person he actually is. That performative aspect was a big part of who Lucas became to me.”
The emotional weight of the role wasn’t lost on Blyth, especially when it came to Lucas’s relationship with his late father. “I lost my dad when I was 14,” Blyth shares. “It was actually one of the things I definitely related to Lucas with. Mine and my dad’s experiences are very different to Lucas and his father’s. But you’re always going to find similarities and through-lines. Something that both Carmen and I talked about is that – I’m 29 now, I’m a very different person to who I was at 14 when I lost my dad and I do a lot to try and make my dad’s memory proud. Sometimes I wish he could see who I am now. It’s like a Venn diagram, like a double-edged sword where you’re like, ‘I think I’m making the memory of my father proud. And also, it would be interesting to hear what he thought of my points of view, and what I think about the world now and see if he agreed.’ And all of that is complicated, really complicated. I lost my dad 15 years ago and so much has happened in those 15 years. I’ve had so many experiences that would not be his experience. And it’s an exercise in imagination to be like, ‘Yeah, what would we talk about now?’ But on the flipside, Carmen still has his mom and dad and they are such a beautiful family. They were really welcoming to all of us. They would bring us home and cook food for us. He’s got a very loving, accepting family but also, you can see in him that he really wants to make them proud, just like Lucas. So it’s really cool when you get to read something on the page and then you get to see in person where the different seeds of a character come from in a writer. I love working with writer-directors because it just feels like you’ve got access to everything. You get to really rally behind someone’s entire vision, which is a uniquely kind of focused experience.”
Ultimately, Plainclothes is a story about identity, repression, and the yearning to live authentically – despite what it may cost. For Blyth, it’s a film that speaks to the power of film to challenge perspectives and build empathy. “The films that stick with me are the ones that challenge how I think, that stay with me for days or weeks after watching them,” he says. “I hope Plainclothes is one of those films for people. I hope it makes them feel something, makes them ask questions, and maybe even see the world a little differently.”
Plainclothes premieres at Sundance on January 26.
