Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Free Fall’s Abraham Lewis

From the stage to the screen, Abraham Lewis is a rising young talent who’s quickly making a name for himself in the industry. His past credits include projects like Guerrilla, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and The Liberator.

This winter, he can be seen in the award-winning short Free Fall, which has taken the festival circuit by storm. Inspired by a true story, Tom (Abraham Lewis) is a young trader in a London bank, whose recent performance has put his job on the line. When the first plane hits the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, Tom jumps into the biggest trade of his life.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with this rising star about getting his start, his transition from theater to film and television, Free Fall, and more.

PC: How did you discover your passion for acting and storytelling?
Abraham: My parents are both theater actors in London, so I grew up in and out of theaters, stage doors, and dressing rooms. I was always exposed to it, but I always had a certain disdain for it. You never want to do what your parents want you to do.

I remember it was a combination of things. I watched Cinema Paradiso for the first time. I watched John Mills’ Great Expectations for the first time. Then I was in a school play when I was sixteen. I thought there was something drawing me to this.

I don’t know if it was in my blood or whatever, but I couldn’t really escape from the fact that I felt comfortable doing this. It was probably that I could express myself more freely at that age playing a character or acting or telling stories than I would have been able to otherwise. That’s what initially drew me.

PC: Did your parents share any words of wisdom with you as you embarked on this career?
Abraham: Yeah, don’t do it. [laughs] They’ve been very supportive. My mom has made sure that my attitude is always focused on the work and doing the best work possible and on having a rigorous work ethic and approach to the craft and taking it very seriously. I read something that Kristen Bell said and I thought it was true: “It’s a ridiculous job, but I want to take it as seriously as possible.”

PC: You’ve had a lot of success already in your young career. When you look back, is there a particular moment that stands out so far?
Abraham: I did a play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe when I was at school. That was the moment I decided I wanted to do this with my life. I ended up getting cast in my first job which was How to Talk to Girls at Parties. I remember doing a scene with Nicole Kidman. We shot it a year to the day from when I had been doing the play in Edinburgh. I thought, “Wow, this is crazy. A year ago, I was doing a play for sixteen people in a basement in Edinburgh, and then a year later I was watching her act up close.” That was a “pinch me” moment.

PC: Tell us about Free Fall and your character in the short.
Abraham: I play Tom. He’s a young trader in the city in 2001, pre-9/11. Emmanuel [Tenenbaum], our director, and I talked a lot about how at that time the city of London was an open door. You didn’t need a strong educational background to start working there. You just needed to be able to get your way in, and then as long as you were good you could continue doing it.

My character is in a situation where he was taken on by this Freddy character that we don’t see in the film. He’s allowed onto the trading floor, but he hasn’t had any success whatsoever in doing the actual job. His foundation in the workplace isn’t very stable. He’s about to be fired.

PC: What’s interesting about your character is you’re rooting for him to turn his luck around. When he starts to see success, you find yourself questioning whether you should be celebrating that. What was your initial reaction when you read the script? What was your character development process like?
Abraham: It was really difficult for me to conceptualize a pre-9/11 world. Because it happened when I was so young. It’s an event that’s been ingrained in the public consciousness ever since it happened. So you’re trying to put yourself in the position where you’re watching these events unfold in real-time. It was quite challenging.

It’s an old cliché, but try not to judge Tom as much as possible. He’s in the room. He’s reacting to these situations as quickly as possible. He’s a victim of circumstance really in the sense that he doesn’t consider the ethical implications of the decisions he’s making until after he’s made them.

It’s that thing about being a young person desperate to succeed and to please when you’re in an environment of older, cutthroat White guys. Tom’s very much blinded to the ethical consequence of his actions. He’s eager to please and is confronted by the consequences of his decisions after he makes them.

PC: There’s a powerful moment at the end of the short. You don’t have to give anything away, but as an actor how did you prepare for that scene in particular?
Abraham: That was really difficult because we actually shot it first. I can’t remember why, but that was actually the first scene that we shot. Everything else was shot in sequence as well. I remember asking one of the French crewmates to read out the other end of the phone call. Because the initial plan was to do it with nothing. Then we realized how important it was to listen to what he’s saying on the other end of the phone. It comes back to the matter of trying to conceptualize what those events were like when they were unfolding in real-time and initially not being able to understand or believe something until that realization dawns. We shot it a few times. Hopefully, we did our best with it, but it was a tricky one.

PC: The film has made its way around the festival circuit. It’s been incredibly well received. What do you think is resonating most with audiences? What do you hope they take away after they see it?
Abraham: I was watching a 9/11 documentary on Netflix. It links in with the withdrawal in Afghanistan. That moment has defined modern history to a large extent, and yet nothing much has really changed. People are going to take what they want to take from it. I just hope we’ve given people something to think about in terms of actions and consequences and where our priorities lie as a society, particularly in the Western world.

PC: What’s next for you?
Abraham: I just shot a superhero film for Legendary called The Toxic Avenger with Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood. It’s directed by Macon Blair. It’s a pulpy genre take on the superhero film. It’s based on the Troma comic books, which were these cult comic books in the ’80s. I’m really excited to see how that one turns out. They were fantastic to work for.

To keep up with Abraham, follow him on Instagram.

Photo Credit: Alex Bramall