“When the show came out, the industry was, for all intents and purposes, shut down,” he recalls. “No one was making work. It was maybe August or July, and I was doing a lot of Zooms with producers, execs, casting directors—people who are involved in putting projects together being like, ‘Hey, we can’t do anything, but we can talk.'”

Early in 2021, Garland sent him the script for Men—”one of those top-secret ones” that “spontaneously combust” as soon as you finish reading the PDF. The director had seen some of Essiedu’s stage work, which spans multiple Shakespeare productions (King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet) and the cerebral David Hare play Racing Demon, and pegged him as the emotionally destitute husband to Jessie Buckley’s protagonist, Harper, an even-keeled urbanite who retreats to the English countryside for a solo diversion at an estate managed by a disconcertingly smiley innkeeper (Rory Kinnear). Harper is reeling because Essiedu’s James, seen only in flashbacks, threatened to kill himself after she requested a divorce, unjustly saddling her with responsibility for his actions. James tells Harper the only thing he wants is her love; if she can no longer give it to him, what nightmarish turn of events awaits her?

Essiedu’s role isn’t huge—the movie’s narrative thrust concerns the various men Harper encounters during her stay, most of whom are played by an increasingly demented Kinnear—but it demanded literal and figurative nakedness. His scenes are fragments of one long, volatile argument, the worst day in Harper and James’ relationship. Buckley and Essiedu spent two weeks rehearsing together, which included deep discussions about the couple’s history. The final time we see him, during Men‘s bizarre final act, he is nude, covered in goo (you’ll see why) made from a concoction of crushed bananas, honey, and red dye that took roughly six hours to apply.