The following article contains major spoilers for 28 Years Later.
A far cry from your average blockbuster sequel, 28 Years Later is full of surprises. First and foremost, when was the last time you were left a sobbing wreck by a zombie movie? Hell, forget genre: when has a film ever ended with a kung-fu fighting cult of Power Ranger wannabes who style themselves after, ehm, Jimmy Savile? And yet, the biggest surprise of all is decidedly… well, big.
That would be the gargantuan, quickly-viral manhood slung around by Samson, the hulking leader of an infected pack that roams the post-apocalyptic British mainland. (Be it because their clothes have worn away over the years, or Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are just little freaks, most of the infected in 28 Years Later are naked, but none aside from Samson pack his level of heat.)
He is played by Chi Lewis-Parry, an ex-MMA fighter who stands at a mammoth six-foot nine, to terrifying effect: among his scenes is a sequence in a pitch black tunnel wherein he tears the head off a Swedish NATO soldier like a human-sized prawn, a gnarly fate later suffered by The Young Royals' Edvin Ryder. It's a towering physical performance, and one for which Lewis-Parry deserves all of the plaudits.
Nonetheless, much of the online conversation around Samson — and 28 Years Later, frankly — has returned to the elephant-sized prosthetic in the room. (Owing to child labour laws, with the film led by then 13-year-old newcomer Alfie Williams, the actors playing the infected couldn't actually go full-frontal.) Take pop culture website Vulture, who published a think-piece on Friday titled, “We Need to Talk About the Massively Hung Zombie in 28 Years Later.” And in their review of the film on Instagram, i-D wrote: “I think it's probably the most moving film featuring a seven-foot-tall naked zombie with a gigantic dick I've ever seen.”
Speaking to GQ from his car over Zoom on Tuesday afternoon, Lewis-Parry was relatively upbeat about his fake giga-schlong stealing headlines. “It's very interesting to see that people have taken to that aspect of the… I would say character, but it's broader than that, it's the film,” he said. “I'm here for it, man! No matter how bizarre people's reactions might be, it's all part of the world we've created, and I'm proud of it. So if people want to talk about my willy, they can talk about my willy.”
Below, Lewis-Parry talks all things Samson, Samson's Hampton, that train scene, and whether Samson is still out there, marauding zombified Britain.
GQ: When you were on set, strapping that thing on, did you not ever have a moment to yourself, like… this is going to be something that people really react to?
Chi Lewis-Parry: I can't recall definitively yes, but I think there must have been a time where I was surprised by it, and that would've been when I first saw it… We did a test in makeup, but that was without [it]. I think the first time I actually saw it would've been when we were putting it on. And you go, “Wow. That's a lot. That's gonna be out, just walking around.” And it's more the reactions of the people, there were a lot of crew who never saw me outside of costume.
There was new crew coming in week to week, and they'd just be like, “Oh my gosh.” They didn't know where to look. So it was always a good moment to break the ice, I'm a bit of a prankster like that. I would just call people out. I'd say, “Where were your eyes just then?” But it's done now, and everybody knows that yeah, okay, cool, there's a big monstrous penis flying around everywhere. To be honest, I was so involved in that character, that it wasn't anything I was really thinking about. That big swinging dong just happened to be a byproduct of Samson.
Even still, were you ever curious to ask Danny why, exactly, it had to be that… significant?
Danny is quite poetic in the way that he speaks, and he doesn't do things by accident. He's quite methodical. I find there's an art in that. This is an evolved man who's been infected for the last 28 years, and a natural part of that evolution [is that] if he's growing in size, everything's gonna grow. So it's not surprising that his penis is very large. In a way, I just felt like I was playing myself, mate. [Laughs.]
More generally, how has the reaction been from your family and friends?
I've not had one slightly negative or disappointed comment. I think people are quite blown away. I'm so humbled by that, because… I just love what I do. I love that I've come from a very humble beginning, and the fact that I can sit here and have this conversation with you, about a character in such a monumental film as 28 Years Later, and there's only been praise. People want to talk about his willy, and make jokes, but that's just the culture. That's just what people do. So I'm not thrown off by that, I don't think anything's been lost. I'm just a very happy man.
You mentioned earlier that it would take between two-and-a-half and three hours to take off the Samson costume. Can you talk me through the makeup process to become him?
The times decreased as we got further, as the team would start to figure out shortcuts. It's a long time to either be standing, or kneeling, or laying down, and being poked and prodded — it's a lot. I would usually get to set around quarter past two in the morning, and we wouldn't start until nine, [when] we'd start a full 10 hour day. I wanna say what people wanna hear: “It was so hard! It was gruelling!” Yes, it was difficult, but when you love something the way that I loved this, it's no different to going to the gym...
I know you've talked about inventing your own backstory for Samson, your idea being that he sacrificed himself to save others, and that's how he became infected. Were there any other details you imagined that informed your performance?
I have this little book, it's like Samson's diary. I would write every time I was Samson — everything that happened that day, what scene we shot, the location, and what I was feeling before I got into costume, what I was feeling whilst I was in costume, and what I was feeling after I de-rigged. Was I exhausted? Was I bruised? Was I sore? This allowed me to put myself into the character, what I was going through personally at the time. So there's a lot of me in the way that he behaves.
I know you used a fake body for tearing off the Swedish soldier's head in the tunnel scene. Did that take many attempts?
[He gestures “twice” with his fingers.] Dale [White] was the stunt performer who played Niels, who is the character who gets his head ripped off. In fairness, that was a very scary time for him. When I'm approaching him, you can't tell, but I'm actually sprinting at him from about 25 metres away… The tunnel was a real tunnel, and it was pitch black, so the only light available was on their helmets. So when I approach him, I'm actually saying his name to turn around on time… But I just met the guy, and I'm running at him, screaming.
I couldn't do it with the weight of his body, so it was a slightly lighter prosthetic… But I would bury my elbow into my hip, grab it by the neck under the chin, so the body's weight is resting on my hip. Then I would reach over and pull the head [out]. But the head didn't resist, so to pull it out, I had to act as if it was difficult… The first time I did it, it came out too easy, [because] I thought it would resist. The second time we made the adjustment, and we got the shot.
There's a sequence on a train when a pregnant infected gives birth, and I think it's implied by the look that Samson gives her body, that perhaps the baby is his child. What were the conversations you had around that, and what was your read?
That actual scene, me and Danny discussed on the day. That wasn't [in the script]. Danny wanted a moment on the train before the carnage happens that broke up the scene, to show there's more behind the eyes of this infected, that he isn't just a head-ripping psychopath. There's a much broader and deeper connection between him and the other infected. So we came up with that literally on the day.
I think that's a really important moment on the train, to show the inner workings of this Alpha, and [his] intent. What was his intention before that? His intention was to kill them — or was his intention to retrieve the child? That's open to interpretation, and I think that's what's beautiful about it.
Samson's still around at the end of 28 Years Later. We know that upcoming sequel The Bone Temple was shot back-to-back. Have we seen the last of Samson? Anything you can tease there?
I can tell you this: he's out there, somewhere. He's out there. That's all I'm giving you. [Laughs.]
28 Years Later is now in cinemas.