Yahoo Lifestyle Matthew Broome Opens Up About His Leading Role in ‘My Fault: London’ and the Complexities of His Character
Matthew Broome was mostly oblivious to the magnitude of the “Culpa Mia” franchise. In fact, it was only after he’d already been cast in the lead of “My Fault: London” that his costar, Asha Banks, clued him in to just how popular the books and their films were.
“It started to freak me out a little bit,” he says.
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“Culpa Mia” is a Spanish book trilogy that has become a wildly successful movie franchise, the second film of which was released on Prime this past December. Now, an English-language, London-set movie adaptation is launching, with Banks and Broome set to star as Noah and Nick.
The movie follows an American woman whose mother married a wealthy Englishman, causing her to move to London. Drama ensues as an attraction builds between her and her new stepbrother, just as her dangerous father is released from prison.
Broome, who is still a relatively new face, makes his leading movie role debut in the film.
“That’s been a dream since I was 14,” he says.
His character Nick is a “very complex, complicated individual” that gave Broome plenty to work with.
“At the surface, you’ve got the stereotypical bad boy, but actually when you delve into him, it all stems from, especially the high adrenaline side of his life, all stems from his relationship with his mother and all that pain, how he’s discovering that pain or understanding it is through that. And that was interesting to me,” Broome says. “There’s a whole world beneath it.”
Even one Broome started looking into the success of the Spanish films, “I wasn’t really comprehending it,” he says. “As it’s gone on more and more, seeing how the Spanish movies have been doing and how the responses to our trailers are, it’s just sinking in more and more and more how many fans there are, which is kind of daunting. I didn’t really want to think about it when I found out. I was almost like, ‘Don’t tell me that.’”
Broome began acting at age 14, when he made a last-minute switch to drama for his GCSEs, or General Certificate of Secondary Education. His drama teachers had always complimented his work, but “at the school I went to, it wasn’t exactly the cool thing to do drama,” he says. “And I was sort of preoccupied with, I don’t know, girls and being cool and things like that.”
But right at the deadline to choose a focus, he ran back into the office and made the change from computing to drama.
“From that day on, I was just obsessed with it,” he says.
His first proper job was a Mike Bartlett play called “Scandaltown,” at the Lyric Hammersmith, before landing a role in the period-piece-with-a-twist Apple TV+ series “The Buccaneers,” which just wrapped shooting its second season.
“I’ve never really been a poster on social media or anything like that, so I remember the cast — a lot of the time when you get a job, you Google the cast and stuff — and they couldn’t find anything on me,” he says of joining “The Buccaneers.” “Then when it came out my sister was sending me TikTok edits [of me]. I’m like, ‘what the hell?’ But it was also just so nice to see that people were caring and watching it.”
In the few years he’s been professionally acting, Broome’s life has been filled with no shortage of pinch-me moments. His 23rd birthday took place the day after shooting the movie’s big fight scene, which coincidentally was also his character’s birthday.
“I remember for the first time, I was like, ‘This is one of the most real moments I’ve ever felt doing a scene, because right now I feel like I’m going to have to fight this guy, and I’m all nervous,’” he says. “My defense mechanism is to laugh and smile. So I’m having to be this serious fighter, but also thinking, ‘What the hell is my life?’”
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