It didn’t take much for Russell Tovey to connect with “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbird’ star Tom Blyth. The actors first met on Zoom before filming writer-director Carmen Emmi’s gay indie drama “Plainclothes.”
“Instantly I was just like, ‘This guy’s the real deal,’” Tovey says on this week’s “Just for Variety” podcast. “He’s a Brit and I’m a Brit and we’re both out there doing our thing. I was so charmed and excited to work with him and he is a real actor, and he’s got an absolute passion for independent film. He is all about honesty and authenticity in telling the story, and that’s what I’m for. The relationship between those two and their connection and their chemistry is fundamental to this story working.”
Those two in “Plainclothes” are Lucas (Blyth), an undercover cop in 1990s Syracuse, New York who is assigned to a sting operation going after gay men cruising in a mall bathroom, and Andrew (Tovey), the target who Lucas falls in love with.
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“He’s full of stardust,” Tovey says of Blyth. “He is so committed and so wonderful in the role and such a team player. I got there and everybody in the crew was in love with Tom. And I was like, ‘OK, hang on.’ So I turned the charm up and I was like, ‘You’re going to love me as well.’ [Laughs] We both sort of went out there being our most charming selves.”
I spoke to Tovey ahead of the Jan. 26 premiere of “Plainclothes” at the Sundance Film Festival. This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full conversation on the “Just for Variety” podcast.
Tell me about the script coming to you. How did it come about for you?
Carmen said that when he was writing this script, he’d watched “Looking,” but he’d been to see “Angels in America” on Broadway and then went back and watched the National Theatre live one, and saw me playing my Joe Pitt. And he said that after that moment, when he was writing Andrew, he had my face in his mind’s eye.
Why is this an important story to tell?
I think it’s that period in history. I think what’s really important and beautiful and unique about this film is that you see the responsibility that Andrew feels towards Lucas where he talks about San Francisco and he talks about protection. He understands this is an intergenerational connection, sexual connection, that he has a responsibility towards Lucas. And I think that’s a really beautiful dynamic for them. It’s Lucas’s coming of age story, he’s come across someone that yes, there are complications of Andrew, but he’s come across someone who is generous of spirits, of queer spirits, almost like an elder imparting on him, even though it’s incredibly complicated and he is a very controlled individual. It felt like a really unique story to tell. I think for myself now to get to 43 and then younger generations and having conversations with them about the importance of remembering and importance of telling them stories and inherited trauma and as a community, what we stand for, what we can lose.
Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey in “Plainclothes.”
What do you like about Andrew?
I like his calmness. I wanted to find in Andrew this real self-assured confidence in the scenarios that he’s built for himself. He’s very contained. He’s given himself so many rules and he sticks to them, and this one is breaking his rules. This one is really challenging those, which is why for both of them, it’s such a huge emotional upheaval. It’s like playing Joe Pitt in “Angels in America.” He was a very troubled soul who was very edited, very controlled of what he put out, so terrified on the inside. And I think with Andrew, I feel like there’s definite elements of Joe Pitt in Andrew in the fact that he’s highly closeted. I’m drawn to these troubled souls, but I want you as an audience or I want people to feel for them and not think that they’re a baddie or not see them as something negative but just a product of society.
Why are you drawn to troubled souls?
Because I’m an actor. Isn’t that what we want? Isn’t that what we want to have, the nuances and emotional challenges in the characters we play? I have my own anxieties, my own stuff that I work through. And when you can work through your own stuff through another character, it’s such a privilege. All we can do as actors is cherry-pick from our own life experiences and then transfer that into what the character will be going through. I find as I get older, the more challenging the role, the more satisfied I feel going home at night, because I feel like I’m able to exercise things in me or understand things in myself through playing these characters. The more I act, the older I get, I want to make myself even more vulnerable on screen, because I feel like that is the biggest act of generosity you can do as an actor is to be vulnerable. I’m learning to do that more and more.
I have to ask you about starring in the “Doctor Who” spin-off, “The War Between the Land and the Sea.” How much fun was it?
It has been one of the most joyful jobs I’ve ever done. Every day was just brilliant. I love the character I play. I love the cast and crew. I think what we have a responsibility as actors, yes to the role, yes to the script, yes to that, but we have responsibility when we get walk on set to be kind and to be honest and to be vulnerable. And I think as I get older and every single project I do, I make sure that when I walk onto set, I am kind and that’s all I can do. I was number one on this show, and from day one I was like, “It’s not a struggle for me to be kind.” I know the ripples that come from being a really good number one and being a really good team player and being kind on set. We’ve all worked with people who aren’t as generous with their kindness or their good energy, and it makes for a really uncomfortable, unsatisfying and sometimes upsetting experience. It makes it harder for you to be vulnerable because it makes you anxious. But this project was just beautiful. Russell T Davies is just the best person because he will text, he will watch the dailies every day, and he will text everybody, all the head of apartments, all the actors. “That was great. Wow, I love that, the way you did this line,” every single person. And he says he never repeats the same text as someone else in case people have sat next to each other and they suddenly see that he’s just copy and pasting the same text. But that is galvanizing for a cast and crew. Is that your head man? The head honcho is so on top of everything and watching and complimentary.
What should the diehard “Doctor Who” fans know about this show?
Oh, God, what should the diehard “Doctor Who” fans know about? Well, the story of these creatures has appeared in “Doctor Who” episodes, it might have been the ‘60s and maybe again, but this has been a refresh of that. You’ve got members of UNIT in there. Jemma Redgrave is so brilliant. She’s the same character [Kate Lethbridge-Stewart] in this, but it’s so elevated. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is in prosthetics and phenomenal. I don’t know how she does it. I think it’s got everything for the “Doctor Who” world, but it also feels completely fresh. What Dylan Holmes Williams, “Who’s” director, feels like an indie film. I wanted it to feel gritty and indie and dynamic in that way. And they were like, “Absolutely.”
Are you in prosthetics also?
No.
Did you want to be?
No, no, no, no, no, no. I played George the werewolf for many years and every episode, once every two weeks, I would be getting up at three in the morning and covered in latex and running around the woods, which sounds like a fetish, but it’s not. It wasn’t. After a while, it was like, “Fuck it now, come on.” So I’m not rushing back into prosthetics.
You don’t have fun with them? You don’t have fun running around in the woods.
No, because it’s always the middle of winter. I’m always stark bollock naked and then I’m running around and there’d be someone walking their dog and there’s me running past screaming.
That sounds like a fetish, Russell.
Not my fetish. I’m very vanilla. That is certainly not something on my radar, and I experienced it and I never want to do it again. So it’s definitely not a fetish.
Is there a genre that you’re dying to do that you haven’t done yet?
That’s a good question. I mean, I love doing “Little Dorrit” years ago. I love a Dickensian costume drama.
It’s your fetish.
It’s my first the Dickensian London fetish costume, your cosplay, the Dickensian cosplay. Yes, that is my fetish. I’d like to do that as a genre. It’d be quite cool to do an indie film that was Dickensian costume drama. Do you know what I mean? That’d be quite fascinating. That isn’t big budget. That’s really kind of like you’re playing these roles almost like Mike Leigh, “Vera Drake” territory. That sort of thing would feel really exciting, but I want to just do more indie film. That’s where these really unique, brilliant, powerful, important stories are being told, and art is being made and the most beautiful storytelling is being explored.
Do you want to direct?
Unsure at the moment. I do so many other things. Everyone’s going to be like, “Just stay in your lane, Russell.” Let’s say yes at some point. I don’t want to shut that down.
