Taron Egerton on ‘Sing’ and his love of David Bowie

In his first leading role, in 2014’s “Kingsman,” Taron Egerton played a rough English hooligan-turned-suave and dashing spy. In this year’s “Sing,” an animated musical about a koala (Matthew McConaughey) who tries to save his failing theater by hosting a singing contest, the English actor, 27, plays a reluctant English hooligan (and gorilla) who dreams of becoming a singer instead of following in his crooked father’s pawsteps. In 2017, Egerton will appear in the “Kingsman” sequel, which stars Julianne Moore as a villain, a turn that Egerton claims will leave all of us beguiled.

Your character in “Sing” performs a Zombies song. I was in a theater full of children, and I was easily the most excited for The Zombies. Are you a Zombies fan?
Oh, that’s wonderful. And yeah, as much as anyone is. I mean, I don’t own their stuff on vinyl or anything.

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Did you have a say in what songs you got to sing?
No, no. I think the song choices were all pretty much set up before they even auditioned us. I didn’t get any say in the songs I sang.

Well, if you could pick any song in the world to do, what song would you want?
Oh, man, I don’t know. I love the songs I sing in the movie. They’re all so wonderful. But I’m a huge David Bowie fan, so maybe something by Bowie would’ve been great. Maybe one of his more mainstream popular tracks, like “Heroes” or something. But the songs in “Sing” are all perfect, just great choices for the character.

Now that you mentioned Bowie I’m thinking about an animated animal singing David Bowie.
I think it would’ve been perfectly possible that we could’ve had a David Bowie song in there, and I would’ve loved to sing it. David’s estate would’ve been — look at me, calling him “David” as if I knew him — but I think a lot of time was spent finding the perfect songs to go with the characters, and none of his songs fit.

There is “Under Pressure,” which is kind of a Bowie song. I want there to be a Bowie and Iggy Pop duet in the sequel. That would be awesome.
Yeah, that’d be cool. I don’t mind saying that I would love a “Sing 2.” Who knows what’ll happen in the future. This one needs to make money. We need to make this one a hit, man.

You have the second “Kingsman” coming up, and you get to go face-to-face with Julianne Moore.
Yeah, just when you think we can’t top the great villain from the first one, we get someone like Julianne. She’s so, so great in the movie. She’s terr-i-fying. So great. Such a sweet lady, and it was really, really great fun to spend time with her. I mean she’s just [laughs] horrible in the film, in the best possible way.

We don’t get to see her be truly wicked very often. Did you get to fight her? Not many people can say they got to have a fist-fight with Julianne Moore.
I don’t want to give it away, but she doesn’t do much of her own fighting. She has people who do that for her.