We Spoke To Teen 'Castle On The Hill' Actor About Going To The Pub With Legit Ed Sheeran
What do normal 18 year olds do in their spare time? Volunteer at a local shelter? Likely. Drink White Lightning in the park? Maybe. Watch a lot of MTV? Hopefully. (Please tune in, we need the money.) It’s fair to assume that most 18 year olds definitely don’t spend their spare time in the pub with global megastar Ed Sheeran.
But that’s exactly what Hugo, who played ‘Young Ed’ in the ‘Castle On The Hill’ music video, did. We gaveHugo, who’s in his final year of school, a call to learn more.
ON GOING TO THE PUB WITH ED SHEERAN
“Oddly, after the shoot, my friends and I were at the pub in Fram (Framlingham), and we saw him across the street.
“I walked over to him, and he walked over to me and he gave me a hug. I was like, yeah, that's pretty cool. I was talking to him for about ten minutes and then he said, 'Shall I come in and meet your friends? Because they're all staring at us.'
“We walked over and then my friends and I met all of his friends, some of them from the video, so my friends met whom they were playing in the video. We spoke for a couple hours. It was a good night!”
"They sprung that on us. We were only told we were doing it on the day.
“(Laughs) sadly the car we were in didn't have any heating, so it misted up every five seconds. So we did have to [kiss] quite a lot of times.
“Luckily, the girl, Fish, she’s at school with me and we're friends. Everyone thought it would be really awkward, but actually it was fine. Now we can laugh about it really, which is probably the best way to go about it. But it was quite weird on the day.”
ON MEETING ED SHEERAN FOR THE FIRST TIME
“The shoot lasted for four days, and we didn't see him until the third day. And that was in that morning when he was sitting on all those logs with his real friends, and I was sitting on the logs with my real friends.
“When we first met, we spoke for a bit and switched jumpers for the scene. You'd think it would be odd talking to someone that famous. But coming from here, I don't know why, you just don't realise how famous he is. It just felt like talking to a friend again.
“He's pretty down to Earth. He kept thanking us. He came across as really grateful that we were all doing his video.We couldn't be more grateful to him for coming back to Fram.”
ON GETTING THE PART
“The assistant director came to our school asking for extras in a documentary, saying you could get £100 a day. So everyone went along. She saw our group and really liked it, so we were asked to come along to the pub and hang out naturally, doing what we'd normally do...while they looked at us.
“Then they told us what it's for and what our roles were.”
ON THE REACTION TO THE VIDEO AT SCHOOL
“The teachers do like to take the mickey.
“This morning I was in a cafe and some woman turned around to my face and said, 'it's not really him is it?' - just double checking that it's not Ed. It is a bit weird sometimes. Little kids asking you for high fives just for being in this video. It'll rub off pretty soon, but it is quite funny to witness.”
ON TROUSER MALFUNCTIONS
“On the running scene, on the Boyton Marshes at the start, I was wearing jeans given to me by the stylist. In the first three takes, the jeans were fine, but they were quite tight against my thighs. Eventually, I ripped them from the knee to the waist. The producer had to take his jeans off and give them to me.”
ON ED SHEERAN’S NEW SCAR
“He told me about [the face scar]. It sounded like a pretty funny incident. I've seen him being asked about that quite a few times and he's not disclosed. I’m not sure if I can.”
On This Being His First Acting Experience
“I've never acted in anything before, and I don't do drama. If I got asked to do something else, I probably would do it. I just want to make the most of this one.”
ON WATCHING THE ‘CASTLE ON THE HILL’ VIDEO FOR THE FIRST TIME
“We were all gathered around a computer at school, quite a lot of our friend group were in it. We didn’t expect to feature in it so much, we thought the focus would be on Ed.”
ON LOOKING LIKE ED SHEERAN
“Where I work, it's difficult for me to do a shift without someone mentioning it. I went to Ed's prep school as well, so it's always been quite a prominent aspect...”
ON FOLLOWING IN ED SHEERAN’S FOOTSTEPS
“Yeah, except I can't sing or play the guitar. At all.”
'Thanks to Hugo for his time.'
'Watch our recent interview with Ed Sheeran here.'
'Listen to your favourite tracks no matter where you are with the MTV TRAX music app. No ads, no limits, no monkey business. Download it now for FREE at mtvtrax.com.'
