‘The Iron Claw’ Star Harris Dickinson Says His Mother Is Puzzled By the Tragic Pattern In His Roles

[This story contains spoilers for The Iron Claw and A Murder at the End of the World.]

Harris Dickinson is having a December to remember. 

The rising English actor has concluded 2023 with two standout roles in Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw and Brit Marling/Zal Batmanglij’s A Murder at the End of the World. In the former, Dickinson plays professional wrestler David Von Erich, the third of Fritz Von Erich’s (Holt McCallany) six sons, and the second out of five to suffer a tragic fate. The role has a lot in common with Dickinson’s other current role as Bill “Fangs” Farrah on A Murder at the End of the World, as both characters’ deaths set their respective stories in motion.

Oddly enough, Dickinson has played the first major domino to fall on two other occasions, starting with 2021’s The King’s Man and then 2022’s Where the Crawdads Sing. Each death is central to their narrative, and in most cases, his characters still manage to maintain a presence in one way or another. However, this fateful pattern has come to irk Dickinson’s biggest fan: his mother.

“It definitely hasn’t been lost on me. It’s a topic of conversation with my mum. She keeps wondering why this is a thing,” Dickinson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’ll probably think carefully before I do another one of those, because I don’t mean for them to keep happening like that. They seem to have lined up, weirdly.”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Dickinson, who’s currently filming A24’s Babygirl with Nicole Kidman, looks back at the most emotional scene he shared with Zac Efron in The Iron Claw, before explaining Bill’s frustration with his partner in true crime, Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), in A Murder at the End of the World.

So where did The Iron Claw fall on your timeline?

I had just finished filming Murder at the End of the World in September of [2022], and then I went straight into Iron Claw. I had around a month before starting.

As Sean and I discussed, biopics have to take creative license. You can’t include every wife and every child or, in this case, every brother. So did you focus mostly on the character details in the script? Or did you also incorporate real-life elements that weren’t scripted?

Yeah, I did a pretty deep dive on David and the [Von Erich] family. I researched it for about three months before, and I tried to keep David’s mannerisms and who he was and how he spoke. I tried to find that pretty intensely. I wanted to do it justice. So, yeah, there were a lot of elements of him that weren’t in the film. I really wanted there to be a moment where we understood how much he loved his horses and the farm, but there wasn’t quite a moment for it.

Fritz had a ranking system for his children, which is totally healthy. 

(Laughs.)

And David overtakes Kevin (Efron) at a certain point. Was his gift of gab the key to that happening? Or were there other factors at play?

He was also a good wrestler. He was an all-arounder. He didn’t have the ripped, God-like physique of Kerry [Jeremy Allen White] or Kevin, but he certainly was a good wrestler. And like you said, he had the gift of gab, and he was confident. He had an ease about him. He was tall. He had a real presence and a real power to him and an aggression. He was good at promos. So that’s what got him through. 

Do you believe this family was cursed? Or did Fritz just drive them all to their breaking points as kids and adults?

I don’t know about the curse, man. I think it was just real unfortunate circumstances and a real tragedy of events. They got pushed, and while things worked out in a way, it was almost like a knock-on effect from that first trauma that happened to them.

How much of a footprint does this brand of professional wrestling have in England?

The WWE was big, man. We had WWE in London a few times. They toured and came to the O2 [Arena], and I went to watch it as a kid. Rey Mysterio, John Cena, Big Show, all of the big stars made it over here, so it was big.

[The next nine questions/answers contain spoilers for The Iron Claw and A Murder at the End of the World.]

In the bathroom scene during the wedding reception, David didn’t know it’d be one of the last times he’d see Kevin, but did you still play it as if it was the last time he’d see him?

No, Sean was like, “Don’t think about that. Just play the scene.” You can’t think about that, because I wouldn’t know. But in a sense, maybe, because we also wanted it to be more tender. Sean wanted it to be a gentle moment between them that we’ve never seen. So maybe we did try and adjust it a little bit in that sense.

So I’ve noticed a trend in Iron Claw, The King’s Man, Where the Crawdads Sing and A Murder at the End of the World. In each story, you play a character whose dramatic death either sets everything in motion or establishes the deciding conflict. I presume this pattern is not lost on you?

It definitely hasn’t been lost on me. It’s a topic of conversation with my mum. She keeps wondering why this is a thing. I’ll probably think carefully before I do another one of those, because I don’t mean for them to keep happening like that. They seem to have lined up, weirdly. 

Shifting to Murder at the End of the World, did you shoot your limited present-day bits in Jersey and/or Iceland, and then reunite with everybody in Utah several months later?

Yeah, I was in and out of Jersey for the whole shoot. I was popping in, popping out. We first shot in Iceland in March, and then at the end, it was just me and Emma on a little road trip in Utah. That was fun.

Bill and Darby (Emma Corrin) began a relationship through a true crime subreddit, and then they took their show on the road to pursue a serial killer. And at a certain point, he got frustrated that she was more interested in the case than their budding romance. But considering that they met through true crime and she was basically raised in a coroner’s office, why was he so surprised by her commitment to the work? What did he really expect?

After a while, he was scared of how intense she got with the case and how in depth it became and how risky she was being in confronting serial killers and stuff. It was way darker and more confronting than he ever thought it would get. So he became aware that she was never going to let him be with her in the close, intimate way that he had hoped for, emotionally. It just wasn’t going to be there. 

Emma told me the other day how when you were shooting at that diner in Utah, Zal Batmanglij told them to imagine Bill’s death during their first in-person meeting. It was motivated by the fact that you shot the death scene first. So prior to shooting your coverage of their first meeting, did Zal also tell you to imagine Bill’s last time seeing Darby as he lay dying on the hotel floor?

No, he said, “Imagine you’ve known this person your whole life, but you’re seeing them for the first time.”

You probably had strong feelings about AI once you wrapped the show, but have those feelings only intensified over the course of the last year, as AI became a major issue in this industry?

Yeah, it’s definitely way more poignant now than it was when we were filming. It’s become a bit more frightening. It’s interesting because I really love technology and I’m interested in the development of it, and that’s why I liked playing Fangs/Bill. He had a deep critique of it with his work, but he was also reliant on it in some ways. He was a computer specialist and a computer hacker, so he was very much in that world of tech. So there’s a real dichotomy of interests, and that’s the same for me. I’m deeply intrigued by it, but I’m also frightened by it. 

When you hear someone sneeze now, do you instantly check to see if there was a change in light nearby?  

(Laughs.) Yes, and I’ve noticed that I actually do sneeze when I hit bright sun, which is scary because it’s a real thing.

So you likely have that very rare condition, whatever it’s called.

Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst.

Wow, you didn’t just memorize your lines; you truly learned them. Impressive. 

(Laughs.)

[Spoilers for The Iron Claw and A Murder at the End of the World have now concluded.]

To close things out with Iron Claw, what day will you likely recall first when you reminisce decades from now?

The day where we all wrestled the Freebirds. We had a three-man tag team match. Zac [Efron], Jeremy [Allen White] and I got to go at it for ten minutes of the match and just do it together. The crowd was roaring, and it felt like a real moment. Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” was playing, and we were really in it. It was really fun.

A Murder at the End of the World also played its needle drops on set, such as Annie Lennox’s “No More ‘I Love You’s’” and Frank Ocean’s “Moon River.” Is it quite helpful when that happens?

Yeah, it’s so helpful. It sets a mood and a tone for the scene and the day. When music and film coincide, they meet in this beautiful place, so it helps.

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The Iron Claw is now playing in movie theaters.