It Gets Worse star Dane Williams on playing London's newest TV f*** boy

It can be fun to play a dick. Just ask Dane Williams, the actor and model currently starring as Aaron in Channel 4 and A24’s buzzy new London-set coming-of-age sitcom It Gets Worse.

The show, which also stars Leo Reich, Lena Dunham and Andrew Scott, follows a trio of twentysomething graduates in London who are thrown into disarray after being evicted by their landlord.

Williams’s character Aaron is the mysterious man about town who causes new-found friction within the friendship group.

Or, to put it more pointedly, he’s the f*** boy that comes between them. “He’s charming, earnest, a little pretentious, but ultimately lost and insecure. “I think his internal conflict can make him a bit of a dick to people,” Williams says.

This is what makes Aaron such fun to embody. “[When there’s] something going on internally vs what’s actually being shown on the outside, as an actor, that’s more nuanced and exciting to play because you’re not giving it all away.”

Dane Williams

David Reiss

Having previously appeared in What it Feels Like for a Girl, House of David and Beyond Paradise — as well as shorts such as The Auteurs — Williams has been enjoying having a breadth of work to test out how he approaches different characters.

Prep is key — he creates journals for each character, develops deep, complex backstories and draws comparisons with his own qualities, as well as the people he knows.

“Being mixed race always has conflict about what group you belong to”

He does concede one similarity with Aaron: a former fondness for silly outfits. “I think that mishaps are part of it, and I think that was really key to exploring what my style was,” he laughs.

Originally hailing from Devon, Williams first landed in the Big Smoke when he enrolled at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama — the backdrop for his own coming-of-age story.

“I moved to Brixton… which was so enriching,” explains Williams, who is of Caribbean descent and was one of the only mixed-race children in his neighbourhood growing up. “I felt seen. Being mixed race always has conflict about what group you belong to.”

This was particularly true in the South-West, he notes. “I feel like being mixed race in London is very different compared to growing up in a rural area. They’re two very different experiences which can mean sometimes when you’re trying to enter the communities in London they may not always validate your own blackness. However, I’ve also met so many amazing groups of people of colour and people who just welcome me in.”

Days spent in Brixton and nights spent on the dancefloor of Dalston Superstore helped Williams become who he is. But he’s still not fully certain his coming-of-age story has come to an end yet. “People should try different things to figure out what works for them,” he admits, smiling.