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SPOILER ALERT: This story reveals major details about Peter Berg’s new real-life World War II film “The Mosquito Bowl.”
When British actor Tom Francis signed with his U.S. agents at CAA, he made his aspirations very
clear.
“One of the first emails I sent to my agents was, ‘This is a list of directors who I want to work with and why,’” Francis tells me. “Pete [Berg] was right at the top of the list because I love ‘Friday Night Lights.’”
Francis can check him off that list because he co-stars in the director’s latest movie, “The Mosquito Bowl,” which tells the true story of four college football stars who served in the Marines during World War II.
Francis plays David Schreiner alongside Nicholas Galitzine as John McLaughry, Ray Nicholson as Tony Butkovich and Bill Skarsgård as Bob Baumann.
“I remember getting the call and to be able to work with Pete, the way his mind works, the way he views the word, I think is incredible,” Francis says. “He’s helped me through some really tough times. He’s very, very open and warm and honest and loving. He welcomes you into a family, and he’ll be there for you whenever you need him.”
Francis comes to the big screen via the West End and Broadway. In “Sunset Boulevard,” he won a Laurence Olivier Award and earned a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut opposite Nicole Scherzinger in the Jamie Lloyd play. His previous stage work includes “Rent,” “& Juliet” and “Hair.” He made his movie debut in Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” and appeared in the fifth and final season of the Netflix series “You.”
While Schreiner wasn’t a singer in real life, Berg decided to show off Francis’ vocal chops in “The Mosquito Bowl,” adding a scene at the last minute that features Francis singing in a bar before the men are shipped off to war. “Pete sent me the song and he was like, ‘Just learn this for tomorrow’ and I was like, ‘OK, cool,’” Francis remembers. “I had no idea what I was going to be doing with it. I thought it was going to be around a campfire. I didn’t realize it was going to be fully staged.”
“The Mosquito Bowl” is brutal in its graphic depiction of the battlefield. It is heartbreaking in that McLaughry is the only one of the four men who survived the war. The film is based on Buzz Bissinger’s book “The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II,” about the Mosquito Bowl football game that the Marines played while preparing for the Battle of Okinawa.
“I remember Jacques [Jouffret, the cinematographer] said to me, ‘Listen, Tom, the thing I don’t want to do it romanticize this,’” Francis says. “He was like, ‘We bought loads and loads of palm trees, but I’m not shooting the palm trees. We’re setting them on fire. We can’t glorify this. It has to be as true to what they went through as possible.’ Obviously, what we did there is no comparison in any way, shape, or form, but in visual terms, trying to replicate it in a visual tone, I think Jacques and Pete did a really visceral and intense job. It’s uncomfortable at points.”
The end credits list the men’s age, all of whom were just 24 during WWII.
“They were so young. They had so much life to live. They had families they left. They had future families to make,” Francis says. “They had friends they left, future friends that they left. They had jobs, promotions, just everything. I have so much respect for that generation and every generation that’s come before them and after them.”
Francis also talked about returning to theater. “I really miss the adrenaline,” he says. “I really want to do a play. I want to do something original. I’ve done a lot of revivals or stepped into things, and especially with this movie, doing something for the first time, you have so much ownership over it. There’s responsibility of just like making sure that you can tell the story that you really want to want to tell. I think there’s something really exciting about that.”
Francis adds with a smile, “I really love being in movies.”
“The Misquito Bowl” is in theaters now. It debuts on Netflix Nov. 25.
