Harry Styles has found himself grappling with a complicated tangle of emotions — and no, we aren’t talking about anything that has to do with the Don’t Worry Darling drama (for once). The first official trailer for Styles’ upcoming film My Policeman dropped Wednesday, showing the singer and aspiring actor caught in a fraught love triangle.
Directed by Michael Grandage, My Policeman is based on Bethan Roberts’ novel of the same name. Set primarily in the British sea town of Brighton in the 1950s, Styles stars as Tom, a young policeman who marries a school teacher named Marion (Emma Corrin) while maintaining a secret relationship with Patrick (David Dawson), a museum curator.
“This love is all-consuming, I pity people who don’t know what it feels like to be this in love,” Patrick tells Styles’ Tom. “Come with me, just you and I.”
But Marion doesn’t want to let go of her husband so easily. “He’s trying to destroy our marriage,” she asserts.
The trailer offers a glimpse of both Tom’s relationship with his wife, and with Patrick, including plenty of secret rendezvous, impassioned conversations — and the dramatic and long-last impact the affair has on everyone involved. But the trailer (along with the last teaser) fails to touch on the film’s second half, which picks up with Tom, Marion, and Patrick 40 years later.
Along with Styles, Corrin, and Dawson, My Policeman stars Linus Roache, Gina McKee, and Rupert Everett as Tom, Marion, and Patrick in the 1990s.
Styles previously opened up to Rolling Stone about landing the role, revealing that he was so moved after reading the script that he reached out to director Michael Grandage and request a meeting.
“It’s obviously pretty unfathomable now to think, ‘Oh, you couldn’t be gay. That was illegal,’ ” Styles said of the film. “I think everyone, including myself, has your own journey with figuring out sexuality and getting more comfortable with it.” To him, My Policeman is a very human story. “It’s not like ‘This is a gay story about these guys being gay.’ It’s about love and about wasted time to me.”
My Policeman is one of two films Styles is set to star in this year, along with Don’t Worry Darling, a psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde and out Sept. 23, which has captured the nation’s attention with its never-ending off-camera drama.