For Kevin Lewis, the making of THE KID has been a bitter sweet experience. The now happily married 39-year-old father of two says that it was probably the bedroom set which had one of the most devastating effects on him.

“Russell had done it so well I was really taken aback,” said Kevin. “He’d obviously really studied the way I’d described it in my book, although, to be honest, it was probably slightly worse in real life, but the thing was, I just happened to be on set that day and I walked into the gymnasium and I had no idea that the bedroom set was there. It brought the memories right back. I had to leave. The other really shocking moment for me was my very first day on set. They were filming a fight at my school. It was just so real that I was again very relieved to leave.”

Kevin originally wrote THE KID book for his wife Jackie. “For years I kept my past to myself, ashamed of what happened, desperate to block it out of my memory, until I decided to explain my life to the one person I love more than anything else. I wanted her to understand what happened to me in the past”, he explains. “Once the book was written I decided to try to get it published in the hope that others would understand what it’s like for a child to have no hope, to undergo years of physical and mental torture as well as suffering the constant ache of hunger. I hope I can give a little more insight into why some kids go so badly wrong, so that we can find ways to help them feel less frightened, abandoned and alone in the world.”

Kevin is full of admiration for the three actors who portray him at different stages in his life. “They’d noted how I speak and even how I walk.” he says, ‘“I think it was watching William that got to me most because of his age. When you are older you can fight back, and seeing William reminded me of a time when I couldn’t.”

It was always an aim of Kevin, director Nick Moran and the production team, to focus on the uplifting aspects of Kevin’s story and not to gratuitously film violence against a child, which is as highly sensitive and topical an issue today as it ever was. In keeping with that aim, computer generated technology was used to bring Kevin’s bedroom drawings to life in order not only to demonstrate the scope of his imagination from an early age, but also to represent with graphics some of the abuse that he suffered.

“This film is about hope”, says producer Judith. “The books Kevin wrote are a hard read, and I was really in tears by the time I had finished them, which is not something that often happens to me. But the movie is about the good that can come out of something as awful as what happened to Kevin. He is a man who by definition broke the chain, and that is pretty amazing.”

THE BOOK

Based on the No.1 bestselling book by Kevin Lewis - OUT NOW

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'Gripping, harrowing. A true triumph over tragedy'
Mail on Sunday

'Devastating... Essential to go on reading'
Evening Standard

'Harrowing, chilling... [with] passage of heartbreaking frankness. By the end, your heart is overwhelmed'
Daily Telegraph

'Devastating... every parent must read'
Daily Mail

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