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67 postsWill Poulter is an English actor, born in London in 1993. During high school he appears in School of Comedy, which debuts at the Edinburgh Festival. The show is picked up by Channel 4 and runs for two season. He has also appeared in the films, Son of Rambow, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of The Dawn Treader, We’re the Millers, and The Maze Runner.
Poulter is cast as Eustace in The Chronics Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Apted on the casting choice:
It was a big piece of casting because if they do the next book in the series, ‘The Silver Chair,’ then he’s the lead in it. We met him early on because he’d done ‘Son of Rambow,’ that was all he’d done, but he’d done that and frankly, as soon as we met him, we knew he was our man.
Poulter appears as Lee Carter in the comedy-drama directed by Garth Jennings. The worst-behaved boy in school, Lee encourages a repressed schoolmate to appear in a home-made film.
It’s our first film and we realised how lucky we were to be working with people like Nick and Garth. We were constantly surrounded by people who were really helpful to us in our first experience of filming.
Thorne develops the show from an earlier script he had written, which was too graphic and expensive for BBC3.
I don’t think I could have written it without having first written the extremely terrible Short Stuff and Weird.
Poulter appears in review shows of the sketch comedy School Of Comedy at the Edinburgh Festival.
I’m playing an IT specialist called Philip who’s the annoying office guy. There’s lots of adult comedy, and it’s not the fact that [our show is] ruder than most adult comedy, it’s the fact that we are kids. The characters we’ve been given are really, really good, so if it comes across that we’re adults, we should be able to get away with it.
Poulter is cast in the role of Lee Carter. He has previously auditioned for parts but has not been accepted. Casting director Susie Figgis:
We knew it was going to be hard. We wanted to find children who were comfortable in themselves, so they’d look as natural as possible. But we avoided drama schools and went through regular drama clubs and schools.
Poulter participates in the School Of Comedy club while attending school, performing at the Tabard Theatre with drama teacher Laura Lawson.
It was through our drama teacher, Laura, really, it was all her idea. She’s just amazing, we all have her to thank for it. It was really good fun right from the start. I was good friends with a couple of people in the group already, and everyone was really welcoming, it was great. It all started from there.
William Jack Poulter is born in Hammersmith, London, the third child of Caroline (nee Barrah), a former nurse, and Neil Poulter, a professor of medicine. He lives with his family in Chiswick, west London, and attends Harrodian School in Barnes. He has dyslexia and dyspraxia, and attends drama class due to academic difficulties. He has an older brother named Ed, an older sister named Jo, and a younger sister named Charlotte.
They’re the most incredibly supportive family. Telling my professor father that I wanted to tread the boards was interesting, but he was very cool about it. Charlotte has gone into medicine as well, and is a fantastic cook and amazingly intelligent and a great sports person. She’s an all rounder. My big sister is another one – she’s a fully qualified nurse. And my brother was a phenomenal sportsman who’s now in finance. Good looking. Built like nothing else. So they’re doing all right.
