Ruari Spooner joins Bill Burr in Irish comedy Bender
The HBO Harry Potter actor will lead a teen gang in the Dublin-set coming-of-age film now filming in Belfast.
By Bianca Rossi · Entertainment Editor
2 min read
Ruari Spooner, set to play Percy Weasley in HBO’s coming Harry Potter series, has booked another very different school-age adventure: the Irish coming-of-age comedy Bender.
Deadline reports that Spooner has joined a cast led by Bill Burr, Chris O’Dowd and Slow Horses actor Ruth Bradley. Newcomer Kitty Graham is also in the film, which is filming in Belfast and is set to shoot in Ireland over the summer.
Bender is being pitched as a blend of Superbad and Derry Girls, according to Deadline. The film is set in Dublin in the late 1970s, during the build-up to a papal visit, with the city caught in a post-punk moment and a grim economic recession pressing down on family life.
The story centers on a suburban Dublin household dealing with mounting money troubles, Deadline reports. Around them, a group of teenage outsiders becomes swept into a very specific, very awkward mission before high school ends.
Burr plays a rough-edged American record shop owner who tells the teen gang that their best shot, and perhaps their only one, at losing their virginity before graduation is at an open-air Mass for the visiting Pope, according to Deadline.
Spooner will play the leader of that teenage group. Deadline describes the gang as hapless but inventive, giving the actor a lead role in the comic chaos.
Graham, making her screen bow in the project, plays a new arrival from the United States who turns heads, Deadline reports. O’Dowd and Bradley’s specific roles were not detailed.
Who is making Bender?
The film is directed by Michael Medico, whose credits include XO, Kitty. Adrian Cunningham wrote the screenplay with Ciaran Bartlett, drawing on Cunningham’s own coming-of-age experiences in late-1970s Dublin, according to Deadline.
Stephen McCormack of Reflektor Media, Craig Verdon and actor Lesley-Ann Brandt are producing. Brandt, known for Presumed Innocent, is producing through The Mal Picture Company, in partnership with Cunningham through Martello Films.
Burr is also involved behind the camera as an executive producer, Deadline reports.
The casting gives Spooner another high-profile screen credit ahead of his turn as Percy Weasley, one of the older Weasley siblings, in HBO’s Harry Potter television adaptation. Deadline reports that Spooner is represented by Gordon and French, while Graham is represented by Mark Jermin Management.
No release date for Bender was announced in the report.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.