It’s a Sin: Olly Alexander cried so much in one scene that the director paused filming

‘I was a complete mess,’ said actor and Years & Years frontman

Olly Alexander has revealed that he became so emotional during one scene in It’s a Sin that the director decided to pause filming.

The Years & Years frontman stars as Ritchie Tozer in the hit Channel 4 drama that follows a group of young gay men living in London during the Aids crisis.

In episode four, Ritchie and his friends are arrested for protesting the British government’s inaction on Aids. It was during the scene that immediately follows their arrest that Alexander began to cry.

“I was a complete mess after the first take,” he told The New York Times. “I was sobbing.” The report also states that Peter Hoar, the director of It’s a Sin, paused filming.

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Earlier this month, It’s a Sin broke several viewing records for All 4, which had its highest number of monthly views ever in January 2021, nearly doubling the figure from one year previously.

The five-part series has already accumulated 6.5 million views on All 4, becoming the service’s biggest ever instant box set.

Series creator Russell T Davies recently revealed that he almost didn’t write a key part of the storyline surrounding Callum Scott Howells’s character Colin, as he was “worried” about how it would come across.