David McKenna was on vacation with his family in Tenerife when they got wind that the BBC was looking to cast a host of young actors – no experience necessary – for an upcoming TV adaptation of William Golding’s dystopian classic Lord of the Flies.
The then 10-year-old McKenna, who had been in a local drama club in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from the age of four, was keen to give the open casting call a go and sent in a tape from the family holiday.
“There were no scenes or anything,” recalls McKenna. “It was just to see a bit of your personality. We had to answer questions like ‘Who would you want to be with if you were stranded on a tropical island?’ and I said, ‘The West End cast of Les Mis.’ I thought nothing of it and went for a nice, wee dinner that night and then a couple of weeks later, Nina Gold’s office called and said I’d got a recall.”
McKenna ultimately stole the hearts of production and powerhouse casting agent Gold, whose credits include Baby Reindeer and Game of Thrones, and was cast in the pivotal role of Piggy for the four-part series from Jack Thorne (Adolescence).
When Deadline speaks with McKenna for his first interview, it’s not hard to see how he made the cut. Speaking via Zoom with his father, Jim, sitting next to him, McKenna is engaging, affable and, frankly, a delight. Now a 13-year-old, he’s back at school in Belfast after a whirlwind few years where his first professional performance as Piggy has earned him rave reviews.
It’s rumored he has also notched up the lead role of Digory in Netflix’s upcoming Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew from Barbie director Greta Gerwig. While the latter hasn’t been officially confirmed, McKenna teases: “All I can say is I’ve wrapped a feature film that will be on IMAX this year.”
McKenna is a self-confessed musical enthusiast and admits he saw a West End show every night during the London rehearsals for Lord of the Flies before production for the series shipped out to Malaysia for three months. “You know, I’m this little mucker from Belfast over here thinking, ‘I’m going out to the big city,’ so I went to see a show every night,” he quips. His favorites were Sister Act with Alexandra Burke, Heathers and Mean Girls.
But those familiar with Golding’s 1954 novel will know that its macabre themes of civilization versus savagery and the nature of evil are a far step away from the West End. The story follows a group of young schoolboys who, after a deadly plane crash, become stranded on a tropical island with no adults and have to fend for themselves. In an attempt to survive and create order, Ralph (Winston Sawyers) is elected leader with Piggy supporting him.
Thorne adapts the series fairly faithfully to the text while Marc Munden directs the four-parter, which is produced by Sony-owned Sex Education outfit Eleven and co-produced by Australia’s Stan. Netflix secured U.S. rights to the series last month in a competitive situation.
David McKenna
McKenna admits that he wasn’t too familiar with the novel before landing the role. “I had heard the name obviously because it’s such an iconic book, but I didn’t know the story or who any of the characters were,” he says. “When you read the script, it starts off as a nice, sweet story but then you get to the end and you’re like, ‘Oh, ok.’”
When pressed on being aware of the sinister elements of the story, which gradually descends into violence, McKenna says: “I don’t think it dawned on me until I properly watched the show. Obviously, you read the script and, even when you film it, you know people are getting murdered. It’s brutal. But it didn’t really click until I watched it.”
In a land of chaos, isolation and fear, Piggy serves as the voice of reason and is arguably the most likeable character. Although he’s physically weaker than the other boys – his eyesight is poor and he has asthma – Piggy’s practicality and respect for order and diplomacy offer a welcome tonic to choirboy leader Jack (Lox Pratt), who becomes obsessed with hunting and power.
“I definitely relate to him a lot,” McKenna says of Piggy. “Even in my friend group of boys, I’m the bossy one. I’m the one who keeps everyone on two feet. But I think I’m not as negative as he is. I think he assumes things will go wrong before they even happen, but I’m not like that.”
McKenna has a six-year-old sister at home and when pressed about the hierarchy in that relationship, he quickly quips: “I can see where you’re going with that and no, she bosses me around.”
He credits his “fabulous” acting coach Tommy Lawrence for helping him craft Piggy into the version viewers see on screen. “He would give me asthma techniques, and we had a whole backstory created for him,” he says. “Piggy does have a lot of obstacles but, from what we hear, it does seem that he had quite a happy childhood. He lives with his aunt and all of her friends, and he was brought up really well.”
McKenna and his castmates had two days of rehearsals in London before flying out to Malaysia to shoot the series in September 2024.
“We played a few games that got us ready for what filming would be like,” he recalls. “We played one game where we had to sit on a chair with everyone else in the room staring at us and to get us used to the idea of being on a film set and everyone looking at you while you’re acting. It was a bit more of a meetup so we could all meet each other and get that chemistry. And then when we flew out, we had four weeks of reading through loads of scenes.”
McKenna and his father came out to Malaysia full time, while his mother and sister came back and forth. The experience, he says, was “wild”. Golding’s novel is set on an unnamed Pacific Island and for the series, location managers opted for the northwest Malaysian archipelago Langkawi to shoot the project. The islands were able to offer the remote rainforest setting needed for the backdrop of the story, but that came with its challenges. McKenna recalls production having to smoke out snakes and scorpions each day before filming began.
“I was definitely aware that it was going to be hard,” he says. “The heat was intense and the scenes with the fire would be really hot and you’d have to step away for a bit. But everything you see is real. There’s no green screen involved. There’s some CGI to be fair, but all the locations were real, which was wild. When you walk on, at the beginning, it was very surreal.”
He adds: “I look back and I’m like, the 11-year-old me didn’t soak in those locations.”
‘Lord of the Flies’
BBC/Eleven/J Redza
While the series sees the ultimate disintegration of a group of young boys, the reality of the experience was far from that, McKenna says. “We all got really close because we were in the same hotel at this big resort. From day one, I would go around to Winston’s hotel room and we’d learn some lines. Thomas [Conner], who plays Roger, and I would have movie nights and all the little things like that. It was really lovely because all of us come from really different backgrounds. Some of them are boys that, if this hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have had the chance to become friends with, so that was really lovely.”
Now that he’s back in Belfast, McKenna is taking it all in. He admits that while he doesn’t get stopped in the streets, his classmates have been complimentary of his performance. “People at school have come up and said they watched the show and loved it, and a few have asked for selfies or when I go to a doctor’s appointment, all the nurses say the same thing.”
As for next steps, he’s enjoying being back at school, but he admits acting in London’s West End is an ambition of his. “So far, my career has led me down the film and TV side of things so I definitely want to continue doing that, but it would be fun to be in the West End.”