Without it, Egerton delivers another bravura performance in Tetris, as Henk Rogers, the American entrepreneur who went behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s to try to poach the rights to Tetris from under the nose of the late Daily Mirror publisher Robert Maxwell. “Henk is this sort of incredibly appealing, devil-may-care cavalier,” Egerton says of the man who travelled to Cold War Moscow on a tourist visa, then rocked up at the headquarters of the state-owned Elektronorgtechnica, attracting the attention of the KGB. The game had been created by a young Soviet software engineer, Alexey Pajitnov, but the state took ownership of the intellectual property rights. Tetris has been lovingly crafted to tell how, initially, the game spread by hand, as it was copied from floppy disk to floppy disk, before eventually going on to sell more than 100 million copies worldwide.
Egerton’s ebullient, likeable Henk is another example of the actor’s range – already demonstrated in roles that have included Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, in an endearing 2016 biopic of the British ski-jumper, and an all-action Robin of Loxley in an energetic if misfiring remake of Robin Hood, two years later. Yet it is his remarkable performance in Rocketman that truly established his credentials as an actor and singer. The film turned heads with its willingness to take on aspects of Elton John’s life that other biopics wouldn’t dare touch – drug addiction and gay sex. “I just haven’t led a PG-13 rated life,” the flamboyant rock star wrote at the time. While it was a critical and commercial success, it wasn’t a cash cow
on the same mind-boggling scale as Bohemian Rhapsody, which only flirted with the sex life of queer icon Freddie Mercury. “I don’t know if the fact that we did elect to explore those places more was the reason that it didn’t make the same money,” Egerton says, “[but] I wouldn’t change the movie.” He’s stayed in contact with the singer, and caught him on his farewell tour. “It was great, and quite emotional, actually.”
His role as a gay man in Cock showed his continued willingness to take on queer roles. Does he think that he has been accepted as an honorary gay man? “Certainly by Elton,” he laughs. “I grew up in a very liberal town, and a couple of my close friends are gay. I feel an affinity with that community. I don’t particularly feel that there should be a blanket rule about whether straight actors should play gay roles. That’s very easy for me to say as a straight man, but I think that’s possibly a precedent not worth setting.”