Yahoo Lifestyle Joe Alwyn got yelled at by police after sending neighbors 'threatening' letters covered in fake blood as a kid
The actor says the entire neighborhood was "in tears and screaming" after the scary notes showed up in their mailboxes.
Joe Alwyn has revealed how a prank gone very wrong landed him in hot water with Scotland Yard.
The 33-year-old Brutalist star revealed on Friday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show that he and his older brother Thomas got seriously scolded by police officers as children after they decided to deliver a collection of ominous, fake-blood-soaked letters to everyone in their neighborhood.
"When I was about 8 years old, I thought it would be a fun idea to prank the neighbors, and I wrote some letters," Alwyn explained to host Drew Barrymore. "They were prank-y, but they were of the threatening prank-y kind, and they were dipped in fake blood from a toy store. I can't believe I'm telling this…"
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The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean
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The actor went on to recount how the pair ran up and down their street shoving their bloody notes into everyone's mailboxes.
"My parents got back from a dog walk and the phone rang and it was a neighbor on the phone to them saying, 'Have you got one too?'" he recalled. "And me and my brother thought this was really funny, cause it was working! Success! So we ran upstairs and — I'm not joking, this is true — the street was quickly filled with the entire neighborhood in tears and screaming and worried. And, understandably, they had called the police and Scotland Yard was on its way."
The Alwyn brothers' quickly realized that their funny little lark had turned into something much bigger. "Police cars turned up on the road 'cause they've got a killer to catch," he said. "By this point, I'm thinking I'm going to jail."
The pair later confessed to the crime after three officers stopped by their home. "They stood over me and my brother — and because he's 18 months older, which is why it's great to have an older sibling — he was the one that took the brunt of it," Alwyn said. "I don't remember what the policeman yelled at me, but they… they yelled."
Alwyn also opened up on the show about how he chooses films, having starred in a collection of acclaimed projects including The Brutalist, Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, Lena Dunham's Catherine Called Birdy, and Hulu's television adaptation of Sally Rooney's hit novel Conversations With Friends.
"In this instance, I just hadn't read a script like it before," Alwyn said of The Brutalist. "I read it a while ago now — I think in 2019."
He also praised the three-hour film's decision to include an intermission, saying, "It's fun, I think, and it gives you time to think — and to go to the bathroom — but to have a think about what you've seen. It's a big old-fashioned epic."
Watch Alwyn discuss his gory childhood prank in the clip above.
The Drew Barrymore Show airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings.
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