As gay biker phenomenon Pillion builds steady buzz, English actor Harry Melling sits with Man About Town to reflect on reinvention, risk-taking, and the unexpected thrill of leading a very modern ‘dom-com’.
It’s 8 p.m. on a rainy, wet Friday evening in London, and I’m hopping on a Zoom call with English actor Harry Melling – former Harry Potter star and consistent hot topic of a lot of our childhood recollections. He’s overseas in LA, which is equally grey and miserable to our surprise. But we’re not here to chew over climate change, rather to feed a praise kink for Pillion, his latest film triumph courtesy of first-time director Harry Lighton – one winner of the BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Awards 2025.
Charming and discreet, Melling is not at all like his co-star Alexander Skarsgård. Now a certified freak, seven days a week, Skarsgård enjoys playing dress up in a myriad of fetish and BDSM-inspired looks to promote their new film together. He may not be showing off the likes of a Boy Scout ensemble from Olly Shinder SS25, but Melling expresses equal enthusiasm for the part he has played in riling up red-carpet fanfare for his new film.
At its BFI London Film Festival premiere last month, Melling and Skarsgård were joined by members of the Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club for photo ops, at the same time praising their respective roles in what has been coined a gay biker “dom com”. “I thought that was a very neat little play on words there from Mr. Skarsgård,” he tells me with a grin from ear to ear as we acknowledge brewing hype. “That’s what we’re calling it now, it’s a ‘dom-com’. I don’t really keep in touch with the press stuff, but it’s nice to know that it’s doing the rounds.”
Pillion, released in UK cinemas today (Friday 28 November), solidifies a career shift for Melling. It’s been a breakout year for the actor thanks to a transformative leading role that leaves little to the imagination. To date, the fearless film has won Best Screenplay at Cannes and received 10 nominations at the 2025 British Independent Film Awards – including Best Lead Performance for Melling. Consistently superb over the last several years with memorable work in The Queen’s Gambit, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and the similarly sex-positive Please Baby Please, Melling has come a very long way from the impish innocence of Dudley Dursley.
Sensitively written, directed and performed, with penetrating humour, Melling plays Colin: a sheepish, choir-singing traffic warden living at home with his parents, his mother in the final stages of cancer. Colin meets Ray, a confident, leather-clad biker who introduces him to a world of pleasure, pain, desire, and dependence. Boundaries are blurred in this unapologetic mesh of sexual awakening, apprehension, and adventure that gradually blossoms into an unusual, biting romance for the ages.
In a time where conservatism is rearing its ugly head again, tradwife discourse is typical watercooler chat, and transphobic rhetoric is on the rise (looking at you, J.K. Rowling); Melling is proud of the existence of Pillion. It’s a frank picture that is sexy, silly, and serious. It isn’t afraid to turn on its headlights with its engine at full throttle when it comes to the depiction of queer sex and complicated power dynamics on screen.
As he takes promotion efforts across the globe, Harry Melling shares why the film’s unexpectedly warm reception has felt extraordinary, how meaningful it was to build impromptu chemistry with his co-star, and why portraying sub/dom relationships with realism was a guiding principle from the start.
How have audience members, particularly those in the BDSM subculture, responded to seeing their community represented in the film?
The GBMCC, who were the bikers that we worked with, I just wanted to make sure that the story for them was authentic and true. At the London Film Festival when they all came to see it, they seemed over the moon and exhilarated and thrilled by the experience. That was really the icing on the cake in terms of the whole experience, getting their seal of approval.
Have there been any unexpected reactions to the film’s reception so far?
I mean, it’s always wild when you make a film. The more and more I do it, you really have no concept of how it’s gonna land, if people are gonna enjoy it, if they’re not. Of course, you have a feeling making it, and certainly making this movie, I felt that it was special. It wasn’t a giant budget; it was a very small-scale film but had a lot of love laced into it.
The fact that it has been received in this way is just extraordinary, really, and certainly for the queer communities responding to it in a way that feels authentic. It feels like there’s a subculture really being expressed and shown on a platform that feels incredibly accessible. I think that’s what Harry Lighton has done so brilliantly. He’s taken a subculture that isn’t going to be familiar to a lot of people, and he’s made a very relatable movie. I think that’s his genius, to be honest, the calibration of those tones. It does feel familiar, it feels funny, but at times it should feel slightly on the edge of shocking and sort of scary.
Certainly playing Colin was a dream. He’s so open to curiosity and to journeying, and to working out what is going to work for him. That was a lovely thing, to wake up every morning and to try and explore in the movie.
Did you and Harry set out to push back against stereotypes and eliminate any prejudices as you made the film?
We didn’t talk about that, to be honest. Harry’s script felt so true and so detailed and rich that it was really a case of obeying that as much as possible, from an acting perspective.
I tell you what we did talk about, we wanted the sex to feel messy and real, and not the sort of sex that you sometimes might see in a film, you know, the close ups of hand clenching, sheets and sweat beads. We didn’t want that; we wanted something that felt far more real and messy and clumsy and awkward. I thought that was really neat from Harry, how the sex of the movie really takes the story forward. You need every single sex scene in this movie in order to understand what’s going on. I would argue that maybe you don’t always in other movies, but this is very much pushing the narrative forward, and that felt like a very important thing to explore. To explore those kinks within those scenes in a very true way, in a way that wasn’t commenting on it, although some of it is funny.
But for Colin, he’s just trying to do the best possible job he can do, both in terms of sex and in terms of facilitating this man to understand what he wants from a relationship, and specifically a dom/sub relationship that happens to be 24/7 in this movie. It was just about trying to attack it with as much openness and honesty, really.
This sub/dom relationship dynamic especially, between Colin and Ray, translates beautifully in the film. It comes across as earnest, rather than salacious for the sake of arousement.
I agree, I think if we were sort of commenting on it, it would do a disservice. It just felt very clean and simple. Certainly, when we came to those scenes, it felt like we weren’t trying to do something smart or clever, which I think was a good steer.
For those scenes, from wrestling in the living room to an orgy in the woods, Alexander divulged at the BFI London Film Festival that there wasn’t really much rehearsing involved between you two, especially for the wrestling scene. Was there an intimacy coordinator present on the set?
Yeah, so there was this wonderful man called Robbie [Taylor Hunt]. He was incredible, just in terms of taking us through all the choreography of those scenes. This level of choreography has to happen in order for the camera to know what’s going on, but also allows us very much to find the performances within it as well, which is very important.
How did you build a relationship of trust with Alex, if there wasn’t much rehearsing involved during filming?
It’s weird with people, sometimes they just sort of come into your world, and you’re just like, “yep.” You feel like you trust them. I think it’s about generosity, probably, and Alex is an incredibly generous creature, so there wasn’t much trepidation with any of it, which I think you get in the movie. Obviously, with Colin, there’s a sense of nervousness around venturing these sorts of things that he’s not used to doing. But in terms of the making of the film, it was very “let’s try this, let’s try this, what about this?” Which is a space you want to be in when you’re making a movie.
Between takes, it was very chill. Not really talking much about the scenes, he wanted them to happen, just very relaxed. Those are the sets that I love, really. When it’s very relaxed, you can fully do anything. Working with Alex was just a dream. I’m very lucky that I got to share the screen with him in the way that I did.
I see some parallels between Colin and your character in Please Baby Please, Arthur. Not just in terms of aesthetic, both lean into the look of leather BDSM tribesmen. They go through a metamorphosis, as it were, from timid to daring beings. Is this something you were conscious of when approaching Colin?
I think that’s a really astute point, there are definite similarities between those two roles. I would never say that’s a conscious thing, I’m not that kind of actor. I don’t really have a sense of career in the long term, like, “if I do this and I do this, that might mean this.” I don’t really operate like that. It’s sort of a script-by-script basis and I just so happen to love both of these scripts.
In terms of the aesthetic, Please Baby Please is far more stylised as opposed to Pillion, which observes more. Please Baby Please is very much about articulating the mood and visually expressive in a way that Pillion isn’t, maybe.
Would you want to explore similar roles, concerning queer cinema, in future?
I find it very interesting as an actor to explore masculinity and femininity and what that is. Certainly with Arthur, I think that’s his journey, “I’m a man, but I also have these feminine qualities. How do I balance that when I’m supposed to be this thing?” With Colin, it is different, but at the same time it’s about, ‘how do I balance what I want in a world that might not understand it so much? How do I calibrate this way of being with someone that feels right to me?’
The wonderful thing that I learned through researching and talking to people that were in dom/sub relationships, especially submissives, is that to them, it’s the perfect form of balance. The way they articulated it was: it may to the outside seem imbalanced, but to them and who they want to be, and their desire to serve something or someone, an idea to be that person for that other person is their absolute perfect balance. I thought that was a beautiful thing going forward. I guess what both characters are doing is they’re fighting balance, aren’t they? They’re trying to work out, how do I exist in a world that tells me I’m supposed to be something else that I’m not, really?
What was it like for you, as an actor, going through that physical transformation from shy, gentle Colin to this buzz cut biker in leather, latex and chains?
It was great, the thing with when you buzz cut your hair, you’re never quite sure how it’s gonna look. I mean, it could look awful. I got a lot of compliments, actually, so I’m very pleased with that when it happened. It’s always nice when you have an aesthetic thing that happens to you, that kind of changes you. Jumping between shaved head and then long hair, it was a really good thing to be aware of where Colin is in his journey, of starting off this very closed up creature, and then eventually knowing who he is and what he wants. That’s what you want to do as an actor, to take an audience on a journey, and Colin was perfect for that.
Did working on Pillion change the way you view connection or companionship in any way?
I don’t think it necessarily taught me anything new. I think we live in a world now where things are getting very black and white: what’s right, what’s wrong. I love the fact that this movie questions that perception of what you deem right, what you think is the correct way to be, and what you think the correct relationship is. I love that it asks that of an audience, I think that’s really powerful. I don’t think we necessarily went into it thinking that’s what we’re trying to do. But having seen it a few times now, I think in a world that is getting so polarised, having something like this is kind of lovely.
What do you think the film says about the state of gay dating and hookup culture in today’s world?
In terms of meetups, what I love about Colin is that he does it. He goes on that first date, he gets his dog and he walks Hippo to Bromley High Street. I don’t know what that says about dating. But certainly what I admire about Colin is his bravery to say, ‘I’m going to do this’, and Ray actually, who is very specific about what he wants, which is great.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its ability to capture domesticity and everyday power dynamics for kink couples in the home. It’s not something I’ve ever come across before in a story of this magnitude.
Absolutely, and I remember the first time that we screened the movie, the moment where Ray says, “you sleep on the floor”, there was a gasp in the audience. I think that’s kind of wonderful, because, yeah, it’s a lot. But hopefully, without spoiling too much, at the end of the movie there’s a reason why Colin, after having lived such a small life, wants to please and to satisfy, and it’s kind of exciting, right? That’s the thing that I felt when I was acting. It’s kind of exciting that I get to go on the floor, because maybe one day I might get into that bed.
What’s one word to describe your character, Colin?
Optimism. That’s the thing that I had in the back of my head. Actually, if I had two words, stubborn optimism. Although he is this nervous creature, he knows what he wants deep down, and he’s gonna get it.
One moment in the film you can’t wait for audiences to see?
I mean, how amazing that you go from an orgy scene and then the next scene is a roast dinner. That’s Harry Lighton, but that is, in its essence, what excited me so much about the movie. It’s those two things colliding with each other, and you’re asking the audience to say, it’s not that abnormal. It’s not that far removed from your experience of life. When I read it, I found that all quite moving, to be honest. The fact that it felt so close and familiar. This relationship, you’re rooting for it. You want it to work.
The roast dinner scene, I feel like that’s where everything comes together. You have a sense of prejudice from one side, you have people trying to understand the relationship. You have the relationship on the other side, you have the man between it. I just think there’s so much going on in that scene that kind of is the heart of the movie in a strange way.
Certainly, we can all relate to a dinnertime dispute, and especially with Christmas coming up.
Absolutely, right? It’s the perfect Christmas movie, folks!
What’s next for you? Where do you go from making such a bold, distinctive movie like Pillion?
Well, I’ve just wrapped on a movie about two weeks ago called Stuffed, and to answer your question, well, what I’ve done is I’ve seemingly gone to another very bold, distinctive movie. It’s a musical, and it’s about a taxidermist that wants to stuff a human being. I play the human being that wants to be stuffed.
Right now, it’s making sure Pillion gets out into the world in the best way possible. It was a film we shot in Bromley for six weeks, and it sort of feels like it’s already exceeded the audience that sometimes films have, you know? It already feels like it’s reached out to people in a way that I think is kind of incredible. So, I’m hugely proud of that fact alone, really.
Pillion is out now in UK cinemas. Images courtesy of A24.
