Interview: Russell Tovey by Shrai Popat
Illustration by Sam Russell Walker
Shrai Popat is a writer and producer from London. He writes about the arts, culture and social justice issues. He is currently based in Washington DC.
In the middle of discussing his podcast “Talk Art” – which began as a passion project and is now in its fourth season with an ardent following, critical praise, and a profile in the New York Times – actor Russell Tovey pulls out a blue Moleskine notebook. It’s scrawled, cover to cover, with research notes, the names of prospective guests, upcoming art events, and segment ideas.
“I’m going to be really upset if I lose this,” he says. An earnest smile crosses his face as he flicks through the pages at his dining table. Tovey is nothing if not dedicated. He has temporarily moved from London to New York’s West Village for his latest show, the Broadway production of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (which opens in April). He’s taking his turn to play the ambitious young professor, Nick.
But in between rehearsals he’s often on the phone with his co-host, friend, and gallerist, Robert Diament — the focal point is still the podcast, an hour of unscripted conversation and interviews with luminaries and collectors (both professional and amateur) from the art world, pooled from Tovey’s and Diament’s contacts.
The duo started the podcast at the behest of their respective mothers, who overheard their passionate conversations. They’ve used the podcast to talk about family life with Tracy Emin, watercolors with Lena Dunham, and with Grayson Perry about his alter ego “Claire.”
“I’m a total geek. Outside of acting, that is my absolute passion,” Tovey says. “It’s so rewarding.” The podcast is decidedly non-academic (“it’s gossipy”), and Tovey has no formal art history training. This is not to say that he’s untrained. He earned his education as an obsessive art collector who treated it as a hobby, learning about pieces as he came across them.
The rapid success of “Talk Art” isn’t necessarily at odds with Tovey’s career. While “Talk Art,” which only began in October 2018, is enjoying its moment in the sun, Tovey earned his stripes as a formidable British acting talent unafraid to portray the subtleties of gay life over the years — long before these roles were common choices for actors.
“Acting was a slow burn but this [Talk Art] was something we thought would be nice to do and it’s just taken off,” he says, with a mixture of incredulity and giddiness. “We created that and now we’re in the fucking New York Times.”
Yet, Tovey wasn’t always so patient about the trajectory of his acting career. As a young actor, Tovey would dread the Christmas holidays, three weeks of the year during which his agent was unavailable. He often grew frustrated with his inability to spend all his time working.
He is quick to admit that this blind ambition meant he didn’t always realize that he wasn’t ready for these parts. “I couldn’t do what I’m doing now with these roles,” he says.
Tovey, now 38, is playing roles he was desperate to play when he was in his twenties. He credits some of his progression to learning the fine art of work-life balance. Now, he makes time for more conversations with his boyfriend and loved ones about the scope, length, and travel locations of his work.
Work-life balance also means taking breaks between projects. Tovey recently finished filming the limited series, “Because the Night” (due to air later this year). The long hours and a role that required him to enact multiple panic attacks in a day of filming meant Tovey was hard at work for the nine weeks of production. He compares the exhaustion to what he felt when he played Joe Pitt (a Mormon lawyer struggling with his sexuality) for Marianne Elliot’s London production of “Angels in America” in 2017.
“I took that guy home every night,” he says. “It fucking killed me.” A younger Tovey may have leaped at the chance to reprise his performance for the Broadway transfer of “Angels,” but when the opportunity arose, he chose his health.
These choices to put himself first have brought a new assuredness to Tovey. For “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” Tovey’s sharing the stage with theatrical juggernauts, Rupert Everett and Laurie Metcalf, but this is by no means his first rodeo. In fact, this is Tovey’s third Broadway engagement. He’s casually dressed in earth-tone sweats during our chat, his French bulldog Rocky drifts in and out of sleep nearby, and you can’t help but notice something solid about Tovey. There is a sturdiness to him: no fidgeting, a focused gaze, and considered responses.
It’s important not to mistake this assuredness for complacency. He is anything but. Tovey’s art collection is just another dimension of his lifelong work as an innate curator. Similarly, his roles also complement one another. As a whole, they show range, but can also be appreciated in isolation.
There’s the underestimated dolt (see “The History Boys” and “Him and Her”), the intellectual introvert (“Being Human” and “Sherlock”), the action star (“Quantico”), and a roster of ambitious queer roles (“Looking” on HBO, “The Pass,” and “Angels in America”). The latter category has cemented Tovey’s position in the canon of LGBTQ theatre and film.
“I just want to make people feel the way I felt when I watched Robin Williams in ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ as a kid,” he says. “That’s what you strive for.”
His role as Kevin Matherson in “Looking,” the capricious video game executive who begins an affair with his employee, Patrick (played by Jonathan Groff), was a concerted choice. On the show, the pair’s romantic trajectory goes from furtive glances to a secret tryst within episodes. They navigate their mutual infidelity and address many of the modern conundrums facing queer couples. As the series draws to a close, Kevin and Patrick (having left their respective partners to be together in earnest) argue about opening up their relationship.
Tovey is still proud of his work in “Looking.” Throughout the mid to late noughties, as a younger actor, gay roles were more of a consideration for Tovey. At the time there was still a general hum of reluctance among actors, for fear of siloing themselves. But when Andrew Haigh (the mastermind of the critically extolled “Weekend” and “45 Years”) came to him with a script that chronicled the everyday lives of a group of gay men in San Francisco, he knew it was the moment to commit.
“I’m topping, bottoming, I’m doing it all,” he says of his time on the show. His ever-supportive parents watched it, and while his Dad didn’t make it past the first few episodes, his Mum stuck it out. Including certain episodes that Tovey advised her against.
“I asked her, ‘did you watch that?’” Tovey recalls. “Yes…I saw your little bum going up and down,” he says, mimicking his mother by transposing his Billericay accent up an octave.
“That’s the final frontier,” he adds. “If your Mum’s seen you getting bottomed on TV, there’s nothing to hide.”
“Looking” is arguably one of the most progressive shows about gay life to grace cable television. But, though critics lauded its nuanced dialogue and quiet profundity, they also deemed it boring. The show’s astute realism became, in a peculiar way, its Achilles heel.
In some ways, “Looking” may have been too subtle for its time. It wasn’t as campy as “Will and Grace,” nor as ribald as “Queer as Folk.” But the show was unique in the way it interrogated internalized homophobia, millennial AIDS-panic, and the very concept of monogamy: never contrived, but artfully subtle.
In one episode, Kevin and Patrick, very much in the throngs of their affair, decide to develop a side project: a video game that visualizes various gay archetypes (“the drag mother” and “the jock”) and have players battle it out. The idea proves ill-fated and they are accused of perpetuating LGBTQ stereotypes when they take their idea to the gay gaming convention, GaymerX.
Tovey is among the many who feel that the show was ahead of the curve. “The audience was not prepared for a show that was so quiet,” he says, reflecting on the landscape of queer entertainment in 2014. He’s now seen a quasi-revival of the show (it ran for two seasons and was rounded off with a TV movie). “When people come up to me and say ‘I love Looking,’ I’m like me too,” he adds.
Tovey describes his time on the set of “Looking” as “heaven,” and says he’s still in touch with his castmates (“I saw Groff the other day”). But while the show has left an indelible mark on the ever-growing body of LGBTQ television, there wasn’t any pressure to do so during filming. The plan was to make something “true and honest and right,” he says. “Let’s just make something for us.”
The authenticity of the show’s mission is part of the reason why Tovey believes people still love it today, and why it still represents the next frontier for LGBTQ representation on screen. The existence of queer characters living blissfully ordinary lives can prove to be as transgressive as airing your kinks on television. He feels his character in Russell T. Davies’ “Years and Years” was a good example of this. In the television epic, Tovey’s character, Daniel, is gay but is also allowed to be flawed (he cheats on his husband).
For Tovey, shifting the needle doesn’t always have to be explicitly radical. It also comes from being an out, gay man in life and from the roles he takes on. “I’m not looking at everything as having this responsibility,” he says. “What I’m still in it for, is the acting.”
UPDATE: At the time this piece was published, Tovey is now back in the UK. The broadway production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" has been postponed following the COVID-19 outbreak.
Sam Russell Walker is an illustrator based in Glasgow. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2015 and his work is inspired by film, pop culture, the human form, plants and fashion. His process is also heavily influenced by the act of mark making and creating textures through this process.
