Tom Manders
In our AW26 collection
In Good Company
Friend of Moss Tom Manders is an actor and content creator. We spoke to him about friendship, character traits and what good company means to him.
Tom, what does good company mean to you?
I think good company is mostly about how it makes you feel. It's about feeling like yourself.
What qualities turn a friend into a best friend?
I think it's similar to good company. It's one of those things where it's the moment you stop pretending to be someone else. It's when they get the gory parts of you, the bits that you don't present to the world, when they have them and accept them and still love you just as much. That's when they’re a best friend.
How do you make friends in your thirties?
I think making friends in your thirties is about finding the things that you're passionate about and the hobbies that work for you and really give you passion and energy. And the connections will build naturally. When you're a child, you're kind of forced into making friends and you connect with people however you can at school and Uni and whatever. But when you're an adult, you can find people that share your passions. I think that's the best.
Where do you feel most like yourself?
I think there are two answers to this. One is at the cinema. It's that moment when you can really just feel the emotions that are projected on to you by the film. Secondly, it's when I'm creating something, it doesn't matter what it is. It could be mucking about with friends. It could be writing something. It could be filming something. It's when you have that freedom of creation. That's when I feel most like myself.
What's the best thing you said 'yes' to at the very last minute?
I went on a lads holiday when I was twenty-one, twenty-two. We were discussing it on the Friday night, booked it the Saturday morning and were gone by Saturday afternoon. And genuinely, the memories we built together as a group are the bulk of our adult stories – talking about the silly things we got up to as five lads really drunk. Yeah, one hundred percent.
What's something worth queuing for?
Food. There are two places in Italy that I went to very recently. A pizza place in Pisa. And a gelato place in Florence. I queued for both of them the second time I went, over an hour. Had I not been the first time and there was no queue, I wouldn't have queued. I queued genuinely with such passion for over an hour for both of these things the second time round, and I would do it again. It's delicious.
What was your first job and what did it teach you?
I worked for my dad very briefly in the summers when I was a teenager, and I think it taught me patience more than anything, because it was working in a family business. I learned, you know, what the boss says goes. And I think that's quite a useful lesson to learn.
What's a trait you wish you had?
I wish I was more determined. There have been times in my life when I've been really close to achieving something, without realising I was allowing other things to get in the way. I was too happy to people please, or whatever the thing was, and I didn't let myself be determined enough to achieve something for me.
Have you ever changed your mind because of one conversation?
Definitely. When you're ignorant to something and you get to hear someone's personal experience – that can affect you emotionally – it can just change how you see things. Learning a real human thing. And it's very hard to do that for specific things unless someone tells you, you know, the reality of it and are generous enough to give you that time.
What do you want to teach the next generation?
I think that's a tricky one because the world is changing so quickly. And the lessons I was taught by the generation before me are so lacking in applicability now. You know, how is my dad, who didn't have a computer until the nineties, going to tell me about a job where most of it is using a computer? So I think the things I would try and teach are the human things: love, care, relationships, the things that are foundational to humanity, not the specifics of daily life.
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