JACOB SCIPIO
British-Guyanese actor Jacob Scipio is adamant about leaving his mark in the Bad Boys universe as more than “bad guy number five”, and after years of watching Will Smith on a worn-out VHS tape, it’s no surprise that Scipio’s performance as Will’s son was nothing short of remarkable. Jacob’s acting has always been phenomenal, from his very first appearance in Bambino Mio, making his debut at just nine months old, joking that a ‘very special goo-goo ga-ga voice’ must have impressed at casting to the charm he brought to Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I, captivating the audiences with his soulful performance, along with the humanity and respect he brought to his portrayal of Justin T. Gallegos in The Outpost. Scipio pours his heart and soul into the preparation, looking beyond the screenplay and latching onto lines to trace a character’s history and disposition. It’s no wonder his warmth as Beau in Maintenance Required won hearts, while his turn in Passenger was a thrill to watch, leaving us on the edge of our seats for what’s next to come.
5ELEVEN sat down with the incredibly dedicated and inspiring actor Jacob Scipio to talk all about the fascinating experiences he’s accumulated over the years, from forgetting his lines as the prince to discovering he was auditioning for ‘bad guy number one’ and exploring his softer side as romantic lead Beau in Maintenance Required. Jacob’s grounded and humble approach to his work, marked by meticulous preparation and respect for each role, leaves us with pride and excitement to see what he has in store for us next.
Words by Kristania Gunawan.
Photographed by Edwin S Freyer. Styled by Charly Suggett. Makeup by Xabier Celaya using Armani Beauty and Weleda. Hair by Kei Koshigoe using Hair by Sam McKnight. Jacob appears courtesy of Premier Talents.
You’ve been acting for a huge part of your life, with your first role at just nine months old in Bambino Mio, which I imagine wasn’t entirely your own career decision at such a young age!
No, I knew from nine months old that I wanted to be an actor. As soon as I came out of the womb, I was like, ‘Put me on that movie set.’
How did you actually end up acting that young? Does the acting bug run in the family, or is anyone in your family perhaps already dabbling in the media industry?
My mum's a makeup artist, and both my big brothers used to act when they were younger, I guess I was the only one who was maybe silly enough to carry on. For that role, I was put up by my auntie, who had an after-school drama school that got kind of popular, then turned into a boutique agency. I must have done something impressive in the casting, like a very special goo-goo ga-ga voice.
Then by eight or nine, you’d already made it to the London Palladium playing Prince Chulalongkorn in The King and I, so you quite literally started with royalty! You’ve also said that this experience made you fall in love with acting.
Yeah and it was such an incredible time too. I was about eight or nine years old when that happened, so it was before I truly knew what the job was and all I knew was that it was an excuse to jump into new characters and get out of school, because they’d let me out of school to go and do this play.
Funnily enough, with The King and I, my big brother had played the same role before me. So I’d always go to the shows to pick him up with my mum, and I guess the producers saw me picking him up, so when his role came to an end and I auditioned for it, I kinda got the role. We were the first brothers in the history of the Palladium to play the same role consecutively. Although I did around like 40 shows of that, I like to joke that I did 80 because I had to pick up my brother for 40 of them.
I know that’s a pretty young age and a long time ago, but is there a particular memory from that experience that has stayed with you?
Yeah, forgetting my lines. It was very horrific! I got it right to the end of the run, it was like the 38th of the 40 show. There’s this moment where the king, my father, is dying and he's passing down the crown to his eldest son. It's a very emotional, very sad scene. My character was supposed to give this big speech and I went to stand up to say my lines, and it's just like my mind has gone blank. Absolute brain fog. The other actors on stage were trying to help me, they were whispering out of the sides of their mouths my lines. But the lovely and the forgiving thing about theatre and stage is that the audience don't really know what we have planned for them. As they say, the show must go on. I was so overwhelmed that I just started crying because I forgot all my lines on stage. But I think they just thought I was crying because my dad was dying in the scene. So, you know, it worked out in the end.
You’ve called playing Staff Sgt. Justin T. Gallegos in The Outpost an “honour of a lifetime,” and I was really struck by how the role changed your understanding of soldiers in combat. Did that experience also change the way you viewed acting?
It was the honour of a lifetime for sure. It was also something that was quite surprising to me because I got the role while I was doing another job in the UK, and within the span of a week, I just discovered that I got it and was already on set shooting it. So I was playing catch-up quite a lot there with everything, especially with the other actors, the character, the weapons training, the physical and mental aspect of it all.
But our director Rod was really helpful and supportive, he introduced me to Amanda, who was Justin's widow, and she shared very generously about Justin, what he was like as a person, which had been very helpful. At the same time, there’s a lot of pressure to play a real person, especially someone who’s very sadly no longer with us and had died in such an unfortunate and horrific way, which is war. Being able to play him was such an honour, and I wanted to get it right. And as long as I felt that I did right by him according to his family and the closest people around him, then I felt like I had done an okay job. It was a phenomenal experience.
How did you approach preparing for Justin and making sure you did his story justice?
Because it all happened very quickly, I didn't really have the good fortune of a lot of preparation time. So I just had to learn as much as I could about him, speak to the people closest to him, and hopefully do him justice in the way he carried himself, his physicality and the sacrifice that he made.
The Outpost involved some pretty extensive weapons and physical training, but with your background in boxing and jiu-jitsu, that kind of physicality wasn’t entirely new to you. What was that whole experience like for you?
I'd never held a real gun or shot with it before I did this project. But I knew in my heart that if I had the right amount of training, I would have been able to not make a fool of myself and look quite decent at it.
So as soon as I landed on set, they have this thing called cop college, weapons training, or boot camp and so I got my intensive course through it and one-on-one training with Ray Mendoza, who was our military advisor on that film. He helped me find my way around the weapons that we were using and instilled me with a bit of confidence. And I thought that it turned out really well.
This was also just before Bad Boys for Life, which came along not long after! Looking back, do you think it almost feels like everything had lined up perfectly to prepare you for Armando?
Maybe. Absolutely, I think everything that's truly meant for you will come your way. And when I look back on that time and the mad sequence of events that led up to me booking Bad Boys, undoubtedly every brick that I put in there helped build the foundation of Armando.
You grew up watching Bad Boys on VHS with your older brother, and then suddenly you’re not only joining that world, but playing Mike Lowrey’s son! What did it actually feel like when that became real for you? Was there a moment on set where you thought, “I can’t believe that I am actually here right now?”
Every day was full of those pinch-me moments and I had to kind of stop myself from flying into space with how impressive and incredible everything was, from the set direction to the props, the costumes, the actors, the equipment they were using, the explosions.
In terms of the role and the character, while I was auditioning for it, I thought I was auditioning for, like, bad guy number five or something like that. I had no idea of the extent of the role or how big it was. Because when you do these auditions for big Hollywood movies, you get dummy sides.
So I kind of had to figure out a character knowing pretty much nothing about the role he would play in the movie. I only discovered the extent of the role while I was in the audition room, so I felt it in real time.
Wool blend notch collar jacket by Feng Chen Wang. Striped oxford shirt and striped tie, both by Gant. Robin trousers by NN07
What was the moment like when it hit you, ‘Oh my God, I'm playing Armando’?
It was weird because I like to get into the audition room, start my audition, meet the directors and producers and leave the room when I’m finished. I was supposed to be in my Uber on the way to the airport to go back to London.
But then for some reason, something told me to go back inside. So I did and that's something you're not supposed to do. But I just didn't really feel like I fully left my mark, so I went back in searching for a way to leave my mark. I was looking around the offices, wondering what to do, and luckily, before I did anything too illegal, the producers spotted me wandering around the halls and they invited me into their offices.
We ended up having like a 45-minute chat about my life, my weapons training, my fight training, all that kind of stuff. They're looking at me and then they look at each other and they go, ‘He does kind of look like Will.’
I was just so confused. I was like, ‘First of all, what? Oh yeah, there’s Will Smith. What does that have to do with the character?’ Then, in the room, I figured out that I wasn’t bad guy number five, three or two. I was bad guy number one. And not only that, but I was playing Mike Lowrey’s son. It was a really big revelation to figure out in the moment, but I just tapped back into the character and thought to myself, ‘What would Armando do?’ He'd probably play it cool and not be that excited by it and that's what I tried to do. Afterwards, they brought me back into the room where I met Will for the first time, and we kind of had an impromptu chemistry read right then and there.
But none of that was supposed to happen. I just had a belief back there and it paid off.
I really respect the way you seem to create opportunities for yourself rather than just waiting for them. Even with Bad Boys for Life, you’d finished your callback and could have simply left, but instead you stayed because you felt like you still needed to make your mark. Where does that kind of drive come from?
It was the lack of thought and feeling extremely present and knowing in my heart, that this was one of those fork-in-the-road moments, a real Hollywood story. If I leave now, then my life goes one way. But if I go back in, my life could go another way. So ultimately I backed myself, and I'm very glad that I did.
And you’ve shared how much preparation went into Armando, but because you never formally trained at drama school, I’m curious, how did you even know where to start? I imagine there’s no handbook for suddenly becoming the villain in Bad Boys. Were you figuring out your own process as you went?
I guess the only thing I could do was start at the beginning, trying to figure out who he was from the moment he was born until the moment the movie starts and you're first introduced to him in the screenplay. I latched onto a few things in the script and tried to build the character around it. For example, there was a line in the screenplay about how my mother in the movie, played by Kate del Castillo, was pregnant while in prison and she gave birth to me in prison. So then I thought about that and it led me down a whole path of, ‘What would that look like? How would that happen? What are the legal ramifications?’
And I discovered that in a lot of South American countries, in female prisons, if an inmate has a child in prison, the child can live with them in prison up to like five years old. Discovering that blew my mind because I imagine that was his childhood: spending the first five years of your life in a prison, surrounded amongst these four walls, not ever leaving.
From that I built a character. I try to imagine him being torn away from his mother at five when that's all he knew, and who would have raised him when he was outside of that? What would that look like? Where would his training come from? What would his personality have been like? After I discovered them one by one, it all kind of fell into place and I managed to create a character.
After watching you play soldiers, assassins and generally quite intense characters, Maintenance Required suddenly gives us Jacob Scipio as a romantic lead. Did you enjoy getting to show that completely different side of yourself? When it comes to romance, how much of Beau is actually Jacob?
I honestly really enjoyed it although it was definitely a bit of a U-turn. I wasn't like the biggest rom-com fan, to be honest with you, but it was just an opportunity to work with another great group of actors and explore that side of the work.
I'm a big believer in romance and I think love’s the greatest feeling on Earth. When you love somebody, whether it's a platonic love between friends or romantic love between your partner, your family or whoever, I think it's the most powerful, beautiful emotion, feeling that we can have. So to go through that and yearn a little bit was something I was very much interested in and excited about.
Jasper wool cardigan and Colby regular fit shirt, both by NN07. Stone and pearls brooch by Goossens. Tailored wool pinstripe
trousers by Gant. Mexico 66 trainers, both by Onitsuka Tiger
How different was it portraying such a different character from the usual characters that you play?
This one I wasn't holding a gun for the first time in my career instead I swapped it for a wrench, so it was obviously a change of pace and the stakes were also kind of different because it wasn’t like ‘If I lose the girl, the world blows up,’ but at the same time, going through a heartbreak of losing the girl you love, your own world kinda blows up.
You’ve mentioned that your big brother had worked in a garage and that you sort of grew up around cars. Did having that background help you connect with the character or shape how you approached him? Did that aspect of Beau's world around the garage also feel quite familiar?
Because my brother, who used to work in the garage, would babysit me amongst the gasoline and the oil, so I can still smell it and it felt really cool to put that real-life experience to the test in the movie. Beau’s garage was probably a little bit more high-tech and clean than the garage I used to go to, but definitely there were some similarities. Aside from that, you kinda use anything that you can get in your real life to put into your characters because it just makes them fuller and more 360-degree human beings and more interesting. And each character you play kind of leaves its scars on you. So it's a trade-off.
What was the biggest impression playing Beau left on you?
The biggest impression that it left on me? Oh man, I guess it's, if you're in love, don't leave anything unsaid.
Going from romance into being chased by a supernatural presence in Passenger is quite the 180. How did you find stepping into that kind of role, especially compared to what you’d done before?
I was super excited about doing Passenger. When I read the script, I was like, ‘This is gonna be incredible to shoot and be a part of.’ Especially because all of it was on location, most of it we were shooting nights and we had the opportunity to be out there for months in the wilderness shooting.
Be honest, did any of the jump scares actually get you while you were filming? Were there any scenes where Tyler’s reaction was really just yours?
There were a lot of weird occurrences in the movie that happened while we were shooting. I don't want to go as far to say that it was cursed, the movie set, but there definitely were some weird things that happened while we were out there in the woods shooting that made me believe maybe there's a little bit of juju surrounding this shoot.
And there was this jump scare that really scared me. We were doing a camera test, and they put me and my co-star Lou in front of each other, in front of the camera. They were like, ‘Just be yourselves, be yourselves.’ But I didn't know that these guys were playing a prank on us because, without us knowing, Joseph comes behind us and he kind of does this blood-curdling scream, which you do hear in the movie. Imagine that happening two inches away from your ears, catching you off guard, naturally I ran the other direction about 50 metres. It was a fight-or-flight situation. That was definitely a jump scare.
I was really interested to find out that you’ve also written some of your own work, including Cowboys & Angels, The Writers Group and Cooped Up. How did that come to be and how different does it feel being on the other side of the production?
I’ve always liked creative writing and making my own stories from a little kid. I’ve made cartoon books with my friend helping me when I was in primary school and I’d sell them for like 50p each. It was a total rip-off of Captain Underpants. We called it Sergeant Knickers. It was just absolutely plagiarism. But we didn't care because all we wanted was to create something.
The way those films came about was just frustration of lack of opportunity for what I wanted to do in my acting career. I looked around me, my network and community and I was like, ‘Okay, I can write something and act in it. My friend can direct it. My other friend can do the music. My other friend can act in it. I know a makeup artist.’ So then I started using those who were also super keen to work and help bring a vision into fruition.
It was a big bar to put the money together to shoot it, but ultimately, if the opportunities that you want aren't necessarily coming your way, then you just go out and create those opportunities for yourself. And in a roundabout way, God, the universe, the industry, it’ll reward you for it.
We’ve talked a lot about Jacob the actor, but who is Jacob when you're off the clock? What does a day look like when there are no scripts, stunts and cameras involved?
I guess my ideal day is pretty chill because I try to wake up, do meditation, move my body as much as I can, then I’d try to start creating, whether that is reading, writing, acting, whatever it may be.
There’s this Latin phrase called solvitur ambulando, which means ‘solved by walking’ and anytime I have a mental block or I have to work through a problem, what tends to help me is moving my body. I must look like a nutter, walking down the street having a full-blown conversation with myself out loud, but it just helped me process my thoughts in my brain. And If I haven’t gotten any work, then it's always spending time with people that share the same values and love for each other which are usually my family and very close friends.
Before I let you go, do you have anything you want to say to your fans or what they can expect from you?
Absolutely! Right now I'm shooting a biblical epic which I'm pretty excited about. It should be something very different which you haven't seen from me.
Passenger is now out and available on Paramount+
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