David McKenna

David McKenna's Piggy seems to be responding to the boys around him, rather than waiting to deliver the next important line. In Lord of the Flies (2026), that makes Nicholas “Piggy” a child whose judgement we value without forgetting how exposed he is. McKenna allows uncertainty into a character who supplies much of the good sense, and it keeps him from becoming merely the sensible one. We found the cruelty hard to bear because his shrewdness never made him look safe. The performance gives us someone to worry about.

This was his professional screen debut, directed by Marc Munden and written by Jack Thorne. It is too soon to call this a settled acting style, but the restraint is worth noticing. Munden helped him move from the broader expression of stage acting towards a more understated performance for the screen. That adjustment matters when Munden makes the images more peculiar: McKenna keeps the boy's responses understandable. His acting holds our attention without seeming to ask for it.

He is also part of a convincing group, rather than an isolated good performance. Lox Pratt's Jack Merridew and Winston Sawyers's Ralph share that sense of boys working out their responses, with little sign of children carefully delivering important material. Their uncertainty makes us attend to each reaction instead of simply waiting for the next plot turn. Four episodes stretch the material, and the cast's conviction cannot entirely cure the pacing.

His role as Digory Kirke in Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew (2027) takes him into feature films. A different director should give us a better idea of how much of this restraint belongs to McKenna and how much came from Munden's guidance. We would want to see that before making large claims about his future, or deciding that thoughtful, responsible boys are all he should play. Start with Lord of the Flies, allowing for its leisurely stretches.