James McAvoy on ‘California Schemin’’ at TIFF: "I wanted my debut to be Scottish, because we’re underrepresented"

After years of being offered scripts to direct, UK actor James McAvoy took the plunge on Cali­fornia Schemin’, based on the true story of the Dundee rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, who adopted fake US personas to hoodwink the London hip‑hop scene in the early 2000s — until it all came crashing down.

“I’m a very privileged first-time director, being a relatively successful actor after 30 years,” says McAvoy, who has wanted to direct since he was 16. Most screenplays that came his way were set on Scottish housing estates and resonated with his working-class Glaswegian roots. But they lacked hope.

“This came along and I saw an opportunity to tell a story about people with limited horizons, yet still be aspirational and entertaining and comedic,” says McAvoy of the film that makes its world premiere in TIFF’s Special Presentations and has its European premiere closing Zurich Film Festival next month.

“I wanted my debut to be Scottish, because we’re underrepresented,” he continues. “And this film is partly about one of the reasons that you don’t have more Scottish films. The noise that comes out of our mouths alienates people. They think it’s exotic. They think we’re talking about kilts or porridge, but they can’t listen to it for an hour and a half.”

Rhyme and reason

California Schemin’ follows Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, talented performers whose accents provoked laughter from executives at an audition in London. They returned, reinvented as riotous southern Californians with fresh tunes and swagger by the bucketload.

In the film, McAvoy, whose acting credits include Wanted, Atonement, Split and Speak No Evil, plays a snarling producer who signs the Eminem-­loving rappers to his label and launches them on the path to fame. In reality, Bain and Boyd landed a deal with Sony UK and recorded a handful of unreleased albums. After two years of living a lie, combined with excessive drinking and frequent infighting, the facade cracked and that was their exit from the industry.

Four years ago, Edinburgh-based producer Danny Page of Homefront Productions purchased Bain’s autobiography California Schemin’ and life rights. On a recommendation, he hired debut feature screenwriter Archie Thomson, later bringing on Elaine Gracie, who had written for Sky comedy series Romantic Getaway, to add an authentic Scottish voice.

Page had heard McAvoy was looking for something to direct, and sent the script to the actor’s UK agent Ruth Young. An enthusiastic McAvoy shared his vision when the two men met in London in 2022, then worked with the writers for two years while waiting for a window in his acting schedule.

The exploits of Silibil N’ Brains were profiled in Jeanie Finlay’s uproarious 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax, but McAvoy did not want to mimic that film’s hedonistic onslaught. “There are movies that have done that, and they’re called Jackass,” he says.

The story was largely unknown because red-faced record executives had lost a lot of money on the pair. In the film, it is £100,000 (around $135,000) but McAvoy suggests the reality was “vastly more than that”. Yet the Scots loved hearing about the dashing duo’s exploits.

McAvoy wanted to play up the folk hero aspect of two lads who bluffed their way into a music genre renowned for its authenticity. “The fun of the swindle was only part of it,” he says. “The friendship was the most important. You’ve got to like the guys and be scared it’s going to fall apart.”

Page assembled the financing, getting Screen Scotland on board followed by Bankside Films, which joined in the first half of 2024, and began pre-sales in Cannes that year, quickly selling UK and Ireland rights to Studiocanal. UTA Independent Film Group represents US rights. Scottish post house Blazing Griffin is also a producer.

In August last year, a private investor pulled out six weeks into prep. “We were in real danger of the whole thing collapsing,” recalls McAvoy. “But Danny, a first-time feature producer, insisted we would find the money. He was exceptional.”

McAvoy’s US reps at UTA introduced the filmmakers to Michael Mendelsohn of Los Angeles-based production and financing outfit Patriot Pictures, whose credits include Prisoners Of The Ghostland with Nicolas Cage and Hangman with Al Pacino, and he stepped in to complete the financing. The five-week shoot took place in Glasgow, Dundee and Livingston in Scotland in late 2024, before finishing in London in January this year.

Completing the cast

An “exhaustive” audition process in London and Glasgow had delivered Samuel Bottomley almost immediately. “[The role of] Billy was really fucking hard to cast because he’s got a natural, relaxed affability, and that’s hard to play,” McAvoy says of an actor who counts Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex among his screen credits. “Sam just had it.”

Bain was even harder. “Gavin is fragile, but there are more handholds for an actor. Seamus [McLean Ross] came in and I was like, ‘Fuuuck!’” The debut feature actor — a Screen International Rising Stars Scotland 2024 alumnus and the son of Deacon Blue singers Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh — “could freestyle, beatbox… he was perfect”.

McAvoy says Bain and Boyd have seen the film and liked it. He would like to direct again but confesses working with actors is harder than he thought. “There were times where I was thinking, ‘How do you not understand what I’m saying right now?’ Suddenly I saw how directors feel when they’re talking to me.”

• TIFF Special 2025: digital edition