Dean-Charles Chapman is good at letting a young man's feelings show. His openness gives 1917 warmth when the camera threatens to distract us, and makes us wish the writing gave him more to do.
Fi1m perspective
In 1917 (2019), Dean-Charles Chapman's Lance Corporal Blake responds more openly to what is happening than George MacKay's watchful Schofield. That difference matters in a film whose moving camera can draw attention away from the soldiers. Chapman helps keep the pair interesting even when the writing has given them little individual detail. We warmed to Blake because Chapman makes his concern easy to read amid all that movement. Sam Mendes needs the actors to make us care while they keep moving, and Chapman does his share.
As Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones from 2014, he was already playing the vulnerable young royal. His Thomas of Lancaster in The King (2019) fits a pattern of period casting, while Matt in Gurinder Chadha's Blinded by the Light (2019) belongs to a coming-of-age story. Mendes's film marked the important step into a co-leading role. It also gave Chapman's earnestness a particular use: keeping us interested in the soldiers within a film so occupied with how to follow them.
His stage work in Billy Elliot the Musical helps explain the physical assurance. For 1917, he undertook research, military training and long rehearsals, preparation that matters when a shot requires the actors to keep performing through sustained action. We value how little that labour seems to demand our attention: Blake can register a feeling rather than simply complete the next piece of movement. His vulnerability remains visible through the physical effort, giving Mendes something worth watching within those carefully organised shots.
The weakness is still the writing: Blake has less individual detail than the performance needs. Chapman's openness helps us forgive that, but it cannot supply everything the script has left out. His later work includes Robert in Catherine Called Birdy (2022), another period role; we would welcome a character that asked more of him than the earnestness that already comes so readily. Start with 1917, accepting that the camera sometimes gets more attention than its cast.
Biography
Dean-Charles Chapman is an English actor. Born on 7 September 1997 in Romford, Essex, he began his career as a child performer, appearing in television commercials from the age of four and making his screen debut in an episode of Casualty in 2007. He joined the West End production of Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005, initially as a Small Boy before progressing to the roles of Michael and, from 2009 to 2011, the title character Billy Elliot.
Chapman is known for his television work as Richard Grey in The White Queen (2013) and as Martyn Lannister and later Tommen Baratheon in Game of Thrones (2013–2016). His film credits include Before I Go to Sleep (2014), Man Up (2015), Breathe (2017), The Commuter (2018), Blinded by the Light (2019), The King (2019) and the lead role of Lance Corporal Tom Blake in 1917 (2019). He has also appeared in Into the Badlands and The Acolyte.
