James McAvoy’s Directorial Debut Pulls Back the Curtain on a Forgotten Hip-Hop Hoax

James McAvoy’s first film as a director, California Schemin, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2025 and quietly became one of the program’s sharper curiosities. The film unpacks the story of Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, two friends from Dundee who, in the early 2000s, reinvented themselves as American rappers and landed a major record deal before the whole thing collapsed. It’s a story that never quite lodged in music history the way it should have, and McAvoy’s film seems intent on fixing that.

Séamus McLean Ross, known for TV work in Outlander: Blood of My Blood and Rebus, plays a central role in the film. In a recent conversation with Clash, he spoke about the unusual dynamic of being directed by McAvoy, who also appears on screen. Working with a first-time director who is simultaneously a scene partner brought a specific kind of focus, McLean Ross suggested, without the comfortable distance of a traditional set.

The real weight of the film, though, lies in what it surfaces. Bain and Boyd’s scheme involved fake American accents, a fabricated backstory, and a lot of nerve. For a brief moment, they slipped into a London hip-hop world that never suspected them. California Schemin captures that era of Scottish and London culture, but more than that, it asks how easy it was to game an industry built on image. The film hasn’t set a wide release date yet, but the festival response has already started a conversation worth paying attention to.