Archie Madekwe Revels in The Novelty of Playing the ‘Gran Turismo’ Video Game to Prep for the Film

The Big Picture

Gran Turismo tells the story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer turned professional driver.

Archie Madekwe who plays Mardenborough, explains how gaming helped him tap into the character’s mindset.

The movie also stars David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Djimon Hounsou, and Geri Horner, and opens on August 25.

Gran Turismo tells the story of Jann Mardenborough, a teenage gamer living in Cardiff, Wales, who was given the opportunity of a lifetime to take part in the GT Academy, a program run in collaboration with Nissan designed to take a video game player and put them behind the wheel of a real racing car, and become a professional driver.

The story sounds too nonsensical to be true, and yet it is. Archie Madekwe plays Mardenborough, who raced his way into professional driving status, and even went on to be his own stunt double during the making of the film. Naturally for Madekwe, he wanted to live the life of Mardenborough as closely as possible—and that included getting behind the wheel, not just in a car, but on a PlayStation as well, to the envy of his friends and family, as he explained to Collider’s Steve Weintraub, in an interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“Everyone was, number one, very jealous, and number two, everyone wanted to join in and come and help me prepare for work,” said Madekwe with a laugh. “But I was just saying, you know, I wasn’t a gamer growing up because I’ve got quite an obsessive personality, so I just knew I had that thing where you play for hours and hours and hours, and then you think, “What have I done with my entire day?”