For young actor Anson Boon, playing Johnny Rotten Danny Boyle’s Pistol is a dream come true. But what did punk teach him about himself?
Something is clearly wrong, I realise, as Anson Boon sips peppermint tea in a plant-filled café in east London, relishing one of the last moments of calm before his career blows up. The 22-year-old actor can soon be seen playing the punk icon Johnny Rotten in Pistol, Danny Boyle’s new six-part Sex Pistols biopic on Disney+. It’s the sort of role that will define how he’s seen for years to come: menacing, volatile, a little dangerous. And yet, how to put this? He’s so nice! So un-punkishly pleased to be here. The kind of boy my mum would love, all “Yes mate!” and “I love my pubs!” and “I’m moving up in the world” (in reference to the fact that his tea comes in an actual pot).
“I feel a bit like Hannah Montana sometimes,” he says, a reference to the Disney Channel sitcom in which Miley Cyrus played an ordinary school girl with a popstar alter ego. “Like, I get to do these cool things and go to photoshoots and fly to LA and stuff like that and that’s when I’m Hannah… Then I go back home to Peterborough and I’m back with my mates that I’ve been to school with and they’re all builders and plumbers and stuff and I love it.”
