Daniel Ings
Laura klonowski | 19/10/2026
There is an art to making a space and storyline feel completely unexpected. For Daniel Ings, it lies in the delicate balance between instinct and intention, humour and humanity and the ability to keep an audience guessing. From his dark, often comedic role as Freddy in The Gentlemen to the fantasy realm of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Daniel Ings has built a reputation for delivering wit, charm, and unexpected depth to his characters. Best known for balancing sharp British humour with more serious undertones, Daniel is drawn to the absurdity of human behaviour and the art of keeping an audience guessing. It’s something he reflects on when looking back at his time working with Guy Ritchie’s and his craftsmanship, while exploring increasingly complex roles, including his role in the upcoming Prime of Face. But for Daniel, it’s the love and emotional demands intertwined in the characters and the difficult stories they inhabit, the importance of surprising an audience and why, for him, the best performance begins with listening to the story itself.
Ok, I ask, please tell me you got to keep that iconic chicken suit? “I asked for it on my very last day, and they said yes, and I took it home with me, and about a week later, they called and said, 'Oh my God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you that. And you know, it means that when it gets to Halloween every year, I’m very resentful because I don’t have a standard costume that I can whip out. But in fairness, it did take up quite a lot of space in the wardrobe”.
For an actor whose performances often dance between comedy and consequence, the secret is knowing when to lean in and when to pull back. Particularly, The Gentlemen acted as a compelling exercise in this balance, as Freddy evolved from a source of comic calamity into something altogether more complicated. Yet, as Ings quickly acknowledges, the magic of a memorable scene rarely belongs to one person alone. From the intricacies of costume design to the precision of editing, music and direction, it is the collective craft behind the camera that transforms an absurd moment into something unforgettable.
“Shout out to Loulou Bontemps, who designed the costumes on it. I’ve just worked with her again. She is incredible. You know, it would have been so easy for that to be a kind of cheap nylon chicken suit that anyone can buy from Amazon Prime, but the amount of care and craft that went into that really is a big part of why that scene works. You know, that is such a great example of the brilliant minds that worked on that show in all of the departments. That chicken scene, it’s the costume, it’s the music, it’s the editing, and the way that it is structured that builds the tension. There are so many things that go into that. I think it is down to a bunch of really clever people”.
For Ings, attention to detail informs his approach to the characters he plays. Rather than imposing a performance from the script alone, Ings begins by considering the audience: what do they need to believe, feel or understand for a story to work? It is a deceptively simple philosophy, one that lets him find charm in the unsettling, and humanity in the flawed. In projects that venture into more troubling territory, this instinct becomes especially important, demanding an honest examination of behaviour without losing sight of the distinction between playing a character and endorsing their actions. “It was a lot of fun. Really, it was a great experience. I’ll always be grateful to have played a part in creating that character. I absolutely loved playing Freddy. When that storyline was presented to me for series two, he was written almost as a completely different character. And part of that was that I think Guy wanted to move away from the humour of it. He sat me down on my first day on the second series and was like, we went too far with the humour; we got to pull it back. So that was part of it was really interesting to kind of thread that needle”.
As a multi-faceted actor for Daniel, it’s his instinct within his roles that helps combine and nurture that tongue-in-cheek humour, whilst serious undertones help create a realism through his characters: “I’m fairly instinctual about things. I will tend to read something and almost try to notice my initial reaction to it, because often that's what I want to get back to. When I read a script, I try to read it as the audience and experience what I, as an audience member, need from these characters. I used to find that very hard. I used to think a lot about how I was going to play this or how I would do it. I try not to do that too much now. It’s almost like I want that first read to feel like I’m just a viewer clicking on Netflix. What do I want from those characters for this story to make sense? So that then, if I’m going to try and imagine myself in one of those roles, then I know what’s needed.
A lot of that comes from conversations with the director. What do they want from a particular character? I mean, Prime of Face is a really good example, which is coming out in November and is about to be at the London Film Festival. That is a film about the impacts of a very serious sexual assault. I was meeting them to potentially play this violent character, and the brief was: let’s try and make him somebody who is not violent in every aspect of his life, who doesn’t walk around covered in red flags. Let’s try and make him somebody who feels very plausible in the real world, who’s very charming and entitled, but funny, and you can see why someone would fall for him before he breaches their trust, and so that felt like a really interesting directive for that character. I guess I try and think of things in terms of what a story needs to make sense and to function. What can I bring to that? Can I bring something to that? Or sometimes I’ll read something and be like, this is great, but you need a different actor in that role”.
As his screen career continues to unfold across comedy, drama and suspense, Ings remains drawn to the possibilities of the unpredictable. He sees his commitment not simply as one to the character, but to the audience itself — to surprise them, challenge their expectations and, above all, give them a reason to keep watching. Behind the camera, Daniel’s aware of the balance and nuance involved when creating boundaries between a character and the reality you live behind the camera.
“Part of your job with a story and character like that is to make choices about how you portray it. To some degree, for me, I would come away with a feeling of almost guilt at the end of the day, because I’ve had to, to some extent, use my imagination to portray something horrific. I didn’t have therapy throughout the process, and I think at the end of it, I probably should have done it, because it is just an uncomfortable space to live in. I personally have never really experienced any sense of keeping a character with me. I mean, maybe I sort of merged with Luke from Lovesick by the end of shooting that show a little bit, but part of that was that the reverse was true as well. By the time we were finishing the third series, the people who were writing it were writing it for me. I think it’s more about living in the filming process where you’re constantly thinking. I filmed a show called The Rachel Incident in the top half of this year, which was an amazing experience and is based on a really brilliant book. The character I play is a man who’s not the main character. But in terms of my involvement in it, he is the guy who’s having an affair and cheating on his wife and is sort of lying to everybody. And so, part of you is going, how would I behave if I was getting called out in this way? For me, I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve come away with: a sense of guilt, almost at having to use my imagination or to think of things that I wouldn’t otherwise.
Throughout every role, Daniel remains eager to give his entirety to the characters. The older I get, and the more opportunities I have to be part of these cool worlds and tell these stories. I think the thing I’ve realised is the people you have a commitment with and the people you have a contract with, is your audience, and so whether they come to it with preconceptions or not, to some extent, you want to be surprising people if they turn up.”
With A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms bringing a new interpretation of Lionel Baratheon to the screen, that philosophy takes on another dimension: familiar stories, after all, can still offer unexpected pleasures. “The audience may know the books; they may know the folklore, but whether they do or they don’t, the one thing I can guarantee is they want to have a good time, and they want this story to be told well. So, there are loads of differences in my portrayal of Lionel Baratheon from the book. In the books, he’s like six foot five, and he’s 22 years old. What I can do is serve up a character that helps tell the story and hopefully is entertaining. So I try to just really focus on the script and the character and what the job is in hand, and see what kind of fun and chaos that can bring”.
For now, however, there is a certain satisfaction in letting Freddy go. After a journey shaped by improvisation, reinvention and a willingness to embrace the chaos, Ings leaves the character somewhere in the British countryside, a little broken and perhaps still mumbling to himself. It is an appropriately unpredictable exit for an actor who understands that the most compelling performances are rarely the ones that play it safe. Daniel isn’t scared of curveballs that come along with delving into roles like Freddy. If anything, the evolution, surprise and challenge is something that he embraces. “In a way, that character really went on a big old journey, and the way that Guy Ritchie works is that he kind of throws the script out on the morning, and so you’re really putting a lot of yourselves as performers into those characters and helping build the momentum of a scene, ad-libbing and improvising and all this kind of stuff. Or he’ll rewrite the script and give you brand new pages.
So that was a constant sort of evolution of surprise because you couldn’t even really rely on the scripts that you were given. They came in sort of two at a time. So we shot the first two episodes of series one with Guy, and then new directors would come in. We’d get these new drafts, and that was a sort of constantly evolving process, and it was a real challenge to find the through-lines with the characters, and particularly for me and Theo, who plays the lead in it, we had this kind of dynamic of a brotherly conflict that we had to really track through all of these evolving plotlines and storylines, and we learned a huge amount. So that was a constant bag of surprises. It was a fun way to kind of cap off the character. You don’t want to keep playing the same game with the audience of this guy kind of comedically messing things up for them. So it was an interesting challenge to take him in a different direction at the end. I thought it was fun”.
But for now it’s goodbye to Freddy, “I’m not in the next one. So that’s a fun sense of closure. I kind of see it as closure for the character in a way; it just ends as this wild, broken, crazy, you know. I don’t know, probably mumbling into the ether somewhere in the British countryside”.
Creative Rogelio Arcos @kiddrog
Photography Rogelio Arcos @kiddrog
Styling Ruby Raine @ruby.dr
Grooming Annie Brønning @annibronningbeauty
Words Laura klonowski