Meet the Australian Actor Playing Barack Obama in 'Barry'

Late in 1981, a 20-year-old Barack Obama moved from Los Angeles to New York to study at Columbia University. Back then, Obama still went by the nickname “Barry”—a clear attempt by a young black man to fit in with his largely white classmates. This resonated with Devon Terrell, the Australian actor tapped to play the American President in the upcoming biopic Barry. The 23-year-old Terrell is mixed race, born to Anglo-Indian and African-American parents in California before moving to Perth as a kid.

“When I read [the script] for the first time, my first thought was that it was going to feel like a Barack Obama story, but it also felt like my own,” he tells VICE. “I hope people will relate to it too.”

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Terrell is quick to laugh and talks fast. In terms of persona, it’s all very different from the Barack Obama we’ve come to know over the past eight years—the calm, confident leader who speaks in languid sentences, who seems to rarely make a misstep. But the Obama we see in Barry is a world away from this man too. He’s young and unsure of his place or purpose in the world.

“In my research, I thought Barack would come across as, you know, this young, confident guy. But just the fact that he called himself Barry and then finally accepted his name was Barack says so much,” Terrell says. “He was such a normal guy. I always thought of him as a superhero… You know, of course he was going to be the President. But all his classmates say you never would’ve noticed him in class. He was the quiet guy in the corner trying to say something extremely intellectual, trying to figure out everything.”

Terrell’s performance as Obama is quiet, but it captures this intense vulnerability. Watching Barry it makes complete sense that he was cast. But zoom out a little and it seems crazy that a young Australian actor with no screen credits would be tapped to play the President of the United States in a big film timed perfectly for the end of the Obama Administration. The opportunity actually came for the NIDA graduate after a huge disappointment—Terrell had been cast as the lead an HBO show from Steve McQueen, the director behind 12 Years a Slave and Shame. The project was dead before even a single episode aired. Instead, Terrell was handed a script for Barry.

“My agent sent me the script and said it was Barack Obama. I couldn’t stop smiling. He said, ‘Relax bud, just read the script and see what you think of it,’” Terrell recalls. “After I read the script, I instantly called him back and said, ‘I need to do this, I have a connection with it…’ It didn’t feel like it was about Barack Obama, but a story about any young man or woman—a story of identity and trying to find your place.”

From there, the process moved quickly: Terrell Skyped with the film’s co-writer and director Vikram Gandhi, there was an audition, and off that first audition he got the role. This came at the end of an extensive casting process for the film’s producers, they’d looked at scores of actors. “I think it was immediately apparent to everyone involved that Devon was right for the role,” says producer Dana O’Keefe—there was something about him that made people feel okay about making a gamble on a young unknown.

But the challenge of how to build a character who wasn’t merely an imitation remained. Terrell spent weeks researching the role, digging into future President’s history, watching hours of video of Obama’s speeches. Then there was the voice, Obama’s lilting way of speaking. It’s hard to point out exactly what makes it so distinctive, but an audience would know immediately if it wasn’t spot on.

To lose his Australian accent and craft his Obama, Terrell worked with dialect coach Charlotte Fleck who’s consulted on everything from Shame to An Education and Requiem For a Dream. She even helped Meryl Streep develop Julia Child’s distinctive voice for Julie & Julia. “[Charlotte] taught me so much about how to shift your voice into something else,” Terrell says. But can he still turn on the accent?

“Yes, I can,” he replies, dropping into a perfect Barack Obama on demand. “I can do whatever you need. If you want it, you can get it.” In the next moment, he’s back to a broad Australian drawl. “I think I’d freeze up if he ever called me; I know he would ask for my impression. ‘Hey Devon, how you going?’” Terrell laughs. “No, but my friends at home keep asking me and I’m not sick of doing it. I love doing it. I have great memories of the film and it’s definitely in the back pocket if I ever need to bring it out.”

Barry comes at strange time for the Obama legacy. Eight years after he was swept into office on the back of a campaign framed around HOPE, the US has just lived through a protracted election mired in fear on all sides. Many people are scared what a Trump presidency might mean for their country, and for the world at large. If there’s any comfort the film can offer those people, it’s that politics attracts people who have strong ideas about how the world should be, and those ideas are shaped by experience. Barack Obama came of age in an America confused about race, identity, and trust in government—struggles not so different from those facing the country today.

“Barry is a story of ‘who is Barack as a person?’ Rather than the politics. I feel many people often blur the two worlds often… But I think he’s very much an international man. He lead the world, really. It didn’t feel like he was the President in America, I think everyone in the world looked to him and questioned where the world is going,” Terrell says. “He’s resonated around the world so much and—it’s very heated right now—but I think his legacy has effected younger generations to want to make change.”

Barry will be released on Netflix on December 16.

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