Maxance Vincent
Actor Anthony Boyle has been on the upward path lately through breakout roles as Kevin Maxwell in Jon S. Baird’s Tetris, and John Wilkes Booth in Apple TV+’s Manhunt. But his most impressive performance is in the limited series Masters of the Air (coincidentally also an Apple TV+ project) as Major Harry Crosby, who also acts as the narrator for the show set during World War II.
In preparing for the role, Boyle says to Awards Radar during a Zoom press day that he found a ten-minute clip online that showcased his personality, alongside reading his memoir A Wing and a Prayer, which helped him get a sense of who he truly was:
“There’s a ten-minute clip online. He’s about 70 and is in the nose of a B-17. He’s going through some of his memories and seems quite serious. He then thinks the cameras are off. He turns to them and says, “Is that okay? Did I get that? Is that all right?” There’s a little break. There’s a moment where he’s on camera, and then suddenly, it’s him because the artifice of an interview has dropped. I found that really useful.
He also wrote an amazing memoir about his time during the war called A Wing and a Prayer. We think of these war heroes as people who are so stoic, constantly honorable, and honest. But Crosby is so self-deprecating. He’s so funny. You see so much humor in him in this memoir, and it helped me get a glimpse of who he was. You feel as if you get a glimpse into his soul. I wanted to get this self-deprecating nature and his humor into the performance. I worked on that with Louis Greatorex, who plays Bubbles. We asked each other, why are you friends with your best friend? For me and him, it was because we found them funny. So much of my friendships are because I enjoy the person and find them funny. We tried to incorporate that if the scene felt quite heavy.”
Crosby has difficulty being in the air in the show, particularly during the first two episodes. However, Boyle luckily “wasn’t cursed with that affliction,” as he tells us during our interview, but found filming the show’s multiple flight sequences particularly interesting:
“We would be in this replica B-17, hoisted into the air with these electronic gimbals. They were 50 feet in the air, and we had these 360-degree screens called The Volume, where you would see the sun and shadows coming through the window. The technology was amazing. We weren’t looking at a green screen. You saw the Messerschmitt in a very small distance becoming bigger, and it felt like it was right on top of you with the planes rumbling. In some scenes, we were trying to hold on for dear life. It was like being on a roller coaster, getting banged in the planet, you’re firing, the shells are going on your desk, and you have to wipe them off to do some navigation. It was a lot of fun but very involving, and you felt like you were there.”
Preparing for the role also meant undergoing a boot camp process with the other actors of the show, with military veteran Dale Dye, in an attempt to capture what he refers to as “crew glue”:
“We showed up, were in our character names, and could only speak with our accents with the war uniforms. We were marching every day: left, right, left, right. I asked myself, “Why are we marching? We don’t march in the show; we’ve been doing this for hours. This is so boring.”
But on the third day, we stopped shuffling. We were marching in unison, and it was suddenly at that moment that I realized that this was where we’d be on the plane. We need to adopt a groupthink, which Dale Dye called “crew glue.” There are eleven men in these planes. We can’t zig and have one person zag. Otherwise, we’re all dead. So it’s about having this unification of thought, and no one’s more important than another. And that was very helpful for the role.”
During our video interview, seen below, we also talked about a few pivotal moments for Crosby’s story, including his relationship with Sandra Wesgate (Bel Powley) in the sixth episode and the conversation he has besides a fire with Major Rosenthal (Nate Mann), alongside what was the most rewarding aspect for him as an actor to become a part of such an important series.
You can watch my full interview with Anthony below and stream all episodes of Masters of the Air on Apple TV+ today:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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