Gabriel Adewusi is taking up room in our heads at the moment and deservedly so. The actor is one of the leads of the short film Room Taken, a darling of the festival circuit since its debut in late 2023 at the Cork International Film Festival. Since then its screened from DIFF to KIFF, been awarded internationally at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Manhattan Short Film Festival. After winning best short at Cleveland and a gold medal for best film at the Manhattan, Room Taken hit the longlist for the Academy Awards, and the film discovers this week if it will be among the nominees for Best Short Film at this year’s Academy Awards. No matter the outcome, Gabriel is buzzing at the film’s success.
Gabriel plays Isaac in the film, a newly arrived immigrant in Ireland who becomes part of the homeless population. Isolated and unsupported, when he encounters Victoria, an elderly blind woman played by Bríd Brennan, Isaac makes a desperate decision: he hides in her home, knowing she can’t see him. Isaac starts performing small tasks around the house, while Victoria deals with the decline in her sight and grieves the recent loss of her husband.
It could be the premise of a horror movie, but the tender story in Michael Whelan’s script successfully tugs at the heartstrings, TJ O’Grady-Peyton’s sure but subtle hand in directing keeps it on point, and the performances by Brennan and Adewusi provide a sweet and stirring bond, making it no surprise that the short has been a hit with the audiences that have seen it. That includes Colin Farrell, who came aboard the short last November as an executive producer, boosting its profile while award season started to hit full swing.
Film In Dublin caught up with Gabriel this week, to get the actor’s perspective on his performance, the film’s rise, and his ongoing reaction as it finds its audience.
The production of this film goes back a couple of years, to 2023, but can you talk us through your memories of when you were first cast as Isaac?
It’s not a crazy complex story, honestly! I got the request from my agent and I read it and immediately it was very clear to me that this was something that I really wanted to be involved in. A lot of projects come in and you do them because they’re fun or you get to play a cool character – this one I read and thought I really enjoy what this is trying to say to me, this is really meaningful and I really feel an instant connection to this piece. I don’t wanna say I prepared for this more than any other thing because you do the work for everything. But sometimes I don’t know, maybe intrinsically, it just means more, and maybe that shows.
TJ always says he really enjoys the fact that I showed up to my call back audition with my own sleeping bag, dressed for the part. I was just really invested in it, and I wanted to see how much of myself I could put into it even just for that moment.
Do you think that helped give you the edge in the end, the sleeping bag?
It’s entirely possible that it might have been! The friend I borrowed the sleeping bag from references it quite regularly and for good reason.
Because of the story, much of your performance in the film is physical, and Isaac’s character comes through in your body language and your facial expressions. What was that experience like for you as an actor?
It absolutely drew me to the role, I was really excited and really fascinated by the opportunity to do something where I wouldn’t speak. We communicate in so many different ways, right? I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s a relatively small percentage of our communication is actually verbal, everything else is physical, and the challenge of any actor is not communicating, it’s expressing, right? It’s experiencing something in the moment, and a lot of that is not cerebral, it’s in the body, so just being in front of something and physically responding can be a really pure expression of the craft, so it seemed like a really fun thing to get to do.
In a lot of ways, sometimes the words can be a distraction. You can get really bogged down in what you’re saying and you forget that you just have to be a person. For a lot of that film, I really focused on what I have, the tasks that I have to accomplish, the stakes that are there for me, needing to get from point A to point B. All those things are still there, even when there’s no dialogue.
Like all short films. It’s just, you know, it’s just a chunk, it’s a snapshot of a moment. The funny thing about Isaac, and an interesting thing that that I found to think about, is that the snapshot of him that we see in the film, is him in a state survival. When you’re in a state of survival, a lot of the things that you’re doing are quite instinctual, it’s not super considered. You move in the direction that you feel is safety, is comfort, is survival.
I think that pairs well with the expectation that I was given, not to think or talk too much, rather just to respond to things that are happening, to the sounds that I’m hearing, the sounds of someone opening a door, watching TV, comforting myself with the presence of human voices. And the reverse for Brid too. That was really fun for us to do.
Brid is a very experienced performer in her own right. I’m curious if you both had a process off camera, for developing your chemistry and movement on-screen? Did you guys work very closely together when the cameras weren’t rolling also?
Yes and no, I suppose it depends on your definition of work. Were we directly discussing how we were going to do everything off camera? Not necessarily. But it wasn’t a chemistry that we really had to work for, because Brid is just an exceptionally sound woman. She’s terrific craic, she’s very interesting and I was quite instantly drawn to her, so we had lots of engaging conversations, and we were very comfortable with each other. When it came to things like blocking and figuring out what was going to happen while we were performing, there was a process of figuring it out with TJ. It sort of becomes kind of dance almost, because it’s a very contained piece. The entire thing of my character is avoiding this other character, so there was an element of choreography to it, that lends it a nice literal sense of movement and of something always happening always pushing forward visually on the screen. It wasn’t as worked out as you might think but we did play with it.
I imagine it helps because you have a very clear sense of what the film is trying to do and what you want to do with it, and it seems like that’s the same with TJ as well. What was it like for you working with him as a director?
TJ is terrific, I had such a good time with him. He’s really focused, really intense. He absolutely knows what he wants to do, but at the same time, he’s so openly collaborative he’s eager to hear what you have to say. He wants to hear what you think about something, what your experiences on something, what you think would make sense to approach a particular moment with.
Something you might not know about him, he’s a really good actor as well! While I was being cast I learned that he had done a short film or two a couple years ago and I just went looking. I watched it and thought, holy shit, this guy knows what he’s doing! Maybe that’s part of it, I reckon directors who have exprienced acting probably know what to ask for and how to relate to other actors.
What has it been like for you, having finished this project, to experience the journey that it’s been on subsequently, from festivals and award nominations?
It’s been surreal. Honestly, we shot this about two years ago in February 2023, and then I just, get to minding my own business and doing other things. Intermittently, I’d hear from TJ who I’d be chatting with the whole time, or Colmán Mac Cionnaith the producer, talking about it going to this or that festival, and that’s cool but that’s all par for the course for a short film, much less a thankfully good short film that people seem to like and enjoy. Then it reaches a certain point where it’s like hang on, what?

When we won Cleveland, for example, or Manhattan shorts, you know, those were crazy festivals to win. And when we received the audience awards as well, that’s making it clear that it’s not just a matter of critical approval only, people are watching it and really connecting to it, and this thing is taking a life of its own. In the last couple months, the journey obviously intensifies as more people start paying attention to it, and we were fortunate enough to get Colin Farrell on board, which is crazy. It’s insane, but it’s gratifying.
It’s great for somebody like Farrell to use his profile to get more eyes on the film, but also the affection and the regard and the esteem that he has for this short, is that something that you also take as a big endorsement of the performances in the film, personally?
Dude, of fucking course!
Colin came on in the interview and was so generous in his time, and his attention, but then also his praise. When he directly said he enjoyed my performance, I said holy shit, Colmán I’m gonna need you to send me a copy of that clip of that ASAP.
I imagine every group chat is getting sent that clip, family, friends…
Oh yeah, ohhhhh yeah. People around me were losing their minds for a little while because it is crazy. And he had been one of the performers that I had really enjoyed in that last year, not just for Penguin and Batman, or whatever. But also Sugar on Apple TV, which is terrific.
I do have so much respect for him as a performer, so yes, it’s absolutely a given and you can completely take it for granted that I was dead chuffed that he was so complimentary towards the film and. To our performances.
When it comes to awards, the main benefit of those and the main intention of those is to get more people to watch the short. For the people that do Room Taken in the months ahead, what is the main takeaway you hope viewers get from it?
That’s a tough question to answer, because you never want to prescribe these things for people. You have to watch or read or experience whatever piece of art, however you experience it, and take what you’re going to take away from it. I can only say what it means to me, and where it hits me, which is close to home. Both in performing and then in watching it later on.
Very succinctly, I said this also in an interview that we did recently with the wonderful Misan Harriman, who directed the Oscar nominated The After. It’s an understanding that loneliness can be really dehumanizing, but togetherness is really validating. Having a presence in the room, that validates your own presence, your existence as a human being, but also validates the needs that you have the concerns you have, the fears you have, the comfort that you might need, and that exists in different forms for the two characters. It’s there for Victoria recently experiencing loss and who is going through quite a lot of grief and for Isaac in a different way where he’s moved to a completely different world and is isolated and at odds and has no one to sort of lean on. So for me it’s understanding the impact of loneliness and how much better life can be when there’s just another safe body around.
That’s almost the power of film in general, in a way, creating that environment where you have a shared experience, and you have a shared presence with the people around you and the characters on screen.
Absolutely. And that’s just one of a million things that are happening in that story, just one of a million themes in just a really small, grounded story. I feel very lucky to have been part of it.