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Additional reporting: Sam Davies
2018 is set to be a bumper year for UK creatives in the US. Culturally, our cross-Atlantic ties grow closer, and far from a few decades ago, where it perhaps felt like a one-way conversation, the creative dialogue between the two nations grows richer each year.
Our most well-known export are actors, with La La Land providing a warm welcome for a huge numbers of British thesps since the Golden Age of Hollywood. Musicians too, have an illustrious history Stateside. In the world of celebrity, it’s a marker of pop-cultural success: if you can “break America” then you’ve become a global champion.
So who are the next big names from the UK poised to break America? To find out, I headed to L.A to see who's the talk of the town, eat many burritos, drink too much tequila (in the name of journalism!), and nearly miss my connection falling asleep in Dublin.
(Incidentally, if you’re thinking of travelling to L.A for work, business or pleasure, you really should consider travelling by Aer Lingus like I did. Aside from the millennial-friendly prices — the Dublin to LA leg starts from 210 EUR - and top notch in-flight film selection, they offer this really cool service where you can clear US security and customs at Dublin airport. So when you get off the plane in the States you can just leave the airport immediately, sauntering past all the queues just like when you’re on the guestlist and your frenemies aren’t.)
Here are some of the UK’s next gen of household name stars.
Femi Oguns (Agent)
Femi Oguns boasts clients such as John Boyega (Star Wars) and Letitia Wright (Marvel’s Black Panther) and has been instrumental in the rise of British PoC talent in the UK. Oguns paused his own acting career in 2003 to launch the Identity School of Acting, a drama centre catering especially for ethnic minority actors. Recognising the dominance of public school and traditionally white, middle class theatre makers, Identity allowed non-white actors and creatives to tell their own stories, and quickly became a hub of black brilliance. Now the school has 40 employees, and offers a range of services including representation. Oguns was awarded an OBE in 2014.
Dane Butler And David Lochhead AKA Finlay & Co (design)
Finlay & Co. was founded in 2012 when friends Dane Butler, from Hampshire, and David Lochhead, from Aberdeen, noticed the homogeneity of the sunglasses industry. “Everyone … was wearing essentially the same sunglasses — either wayfarers or aviators,” said David in an interview with the Daily Mail in September. After opening their first pop-up shop in Carnaby Street in 2013, the brand’s collections are now sold in retail outlets around the world, including Paris, Dubai and L.A. Their shades have been worn by David Gandy, Cara Delevigne and most recently, princess-in-waiting Meghan Markle. When Prince Harry’s new squeeze wore Finlay & Co.’s Percy sunglasses at the Invictus Games, it inadvertently caused their website to crash as hundreds rushed to the site to buy their own. Fashion royalty awaits.
Millie Bobby Brown (Actress)
Look, I know Brown is already famous but she is only 13 years old so let’s be real, this is just the beginning. You might only know her by a number, but the young starlet who plays Eleven in Stranger Things is already one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Millie Bobby grew up on the British coast in Bournemouth before her family moved to Florida when she was eight. Apart from winning an Emmy for Stranger Things — the second series of which has just been released on Netflix — Brown has appeared in a music video for The xx, modelled for Calvin Klein and rapped a flawless rendition of Nicki Minaj’s "Monster" verse live on The Tonight Show. She also looks set to star in her first feature film: Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, the sequel to Gareth Edwards’s 2014 remake, is expected for release in 2019.
Plastic Jesus (Street Art)
“STOP MAKING STUPID PEOPLE FAMOUS” reads one of street artist Plastic Jesus’ most famous tags. The London-born street artist’s aversion to fame may go some of the way to explaining why his true identity of is still unknown, but his stencilled pieces have been cropping up around L.A. for around five years now. His work has been featured at the Smithsonian Institute and his ‘False Idol’ sculpture — a statue of a crucified Kanye West — was unveiled on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard earlier this year. His political work has covered a range of subjects, from racism in Hollywood to the refugee crisis to Donald Trump. It’s easy to see why he has become known as the ‘L.A. Banksy’.
Amma Asante (Filmmaker)
UK film and TV is dominated by period drama. The reason? British period dramas are popular in Australia, America, Canada and beyond, and a show with ruffs and corsets is likely to make money several times if it is distributed in various countries. The result of this is, is that there simply aren’t that many roles for non-white actors, but Amma Asante’s groundbreaking second film, Belle managed to do both. An 18th century period drama with a black female lead, Belle was undoubtedly one 2014’s greatest movies while being the breakout number for Gugu Mbatha Raw. Asante’s projects continue to get bigger: last year’s A United Kingdom starred David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike and her new upcoming project stars Hunger Games fan favourite Amandla Stenberg. Big things await this bright filmmaker.