The Party's Luke Evans: 'There were times in my early life when the water was just about to take me'

Luke Evans has played several characters whose lives couldn't be further from his own: a Delta Force operative in Apple TV's Echo 3, chief deity Zeus in Immortals, dragon-slayer Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit films, and Gaston in the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast.

But in ITV's The Party, adapted from Elizabeth Day's 2017 novel of the same name, Evans could see part of himself in Martin Gilmour, a political journalist who finds himself at the centre of the story when he's caught up in a shooting.

Martin is a guest at an opulent birthday bash for his close friend of several decades, Conservative MP Ben Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen), when a shot rings out.

"Where were you at the time of the shooting?" a detective quizzes Martin, whose shirt is covered in blood, as devastating secrets from his and Ben's shared past threaten to spill into the open.

But for all of their shared secrets, Martin and Ben come from very different worlds.

Unlike Ben, who is part of the landed gentry, Martin was a scholarship boy raised in South Wales (a change from the book, in which he's English) by his religious mother, a nurse. His father, a carpenter, died when he was ten.

Evans, too, was born in the south of Wales – Pontypool, to be exact. He grew up in the village of Aberbargoed to a housewife and part-time cleaner mother and a bricklayer father, who raised him as a Jehovah's Witness.

When asked if he related to Martin's ascent from humble beginnings to mixing with the elite, Evans told Radio Times: "Well, more than I realised.

"Those early transitions from being an only child and a religious upbringing, and then a small village in Wales, and then going to the big city for me, him going to private school and getting a scholarship, and being dropped into a world that you don't know, with people speaking in a different way than you.

"I remember going into college for the first time in London and everybody seemed to know what to do. I was like, 'How does everybody know how to do this?' 'How does everybody know what first position is in ballet?'

"I just seemed to be so far behind. I remember for the first few months feeling like I was playing catch-up, like I had missed something. And of course Martin feels the same when he goes to school. He doesn't have the money. He certainly doesn't arrive with a beautiful Louis Vuitton case.

"He comes with a little suitcase. But he survives, and I relate to that as well."

Read more:

• Luke Evans reveals how growing up gay in a small Welsh village helped prepare him for The Party role
• The Party author Elizabeth Day: "Thank goodness Luke Evans is gay, otherwise I would have to leave my husband for him"

"He survived it," added Evans, underscoring how determinedly he fights to secure his place in Ben's world.

"That's something I admire in Martin. If you get an opportunity, and you're clever, you don't turn your nose up at it. You go, 'This may never come around again.' Especially if you're working class.

"So he stays a bit quiet, he observes, and finally finds his feet. And obviously, Ben takes him under his wing and opens his eyes to a bigger world."

Another commonality between Evans and Martin is they are both gay and grew up in environments and eras that left little to no room for them to be so.

Evans has spoken at length in interviews and in his memoir, Boy from the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, about being bullied at school because of his sexuality and religion.

"There are times in my early life when the water was just about to take me, and you just come back up and you kick a little harder," he continued.

"As a kid, I couldn't talk about it because I was a Jehovah's Witness, so that was impossible and I had to leave home at 16 to be myself."

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But as Evans acknowledged, "Martin spends most of his adult life suppressing who he is. He's married [to a woman], with four children. So it's very complicated."

"That's where the parallels die for me and Martin," added Evans, who came out to his parents when he was 19, and chose to be open about his sexuality early in his career, despite the challenges.

"Finding contentment in your true identity is something I cherish, and I'm very happy that I am in that place," he said. “I feel very sorry for Martin, that his life and the choices he's made has led him down this very difficult place to a very difficult juncture in his life. It's painful."

There's an intimate and haunting scene in The Party when Ben's sister tells Martin, who is in love with her brother: "Denying who you are, kills you in the end."

Does Evans hope that Martin's suppression of his authentic self will encourage viewers in similar situations to embrace who they are?

"I did it at quite a young age and I did find my people, I found new friends and family," he said. "But some people don't do it at that young age... and it can damage you. It's not necessarily going to kill you, but it can definitely damage you.

"Unhappiness festers and becomes a much darker thing, so I just would like everyone to find their true self, whatever that is. And we're not just talking about your sexuality. To just be fulfilled and to feel content in your own skin and to feel strong within your own voice.

"I've just played Dr Frank-N-Furter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show [on Broadway] and his famous line is, 'Don't dream it, be it.' Don't dream about what you want, become what you want.

"Life is short, and you don't get it back."

The Party is on ITV1 at 9pm on Sunday 11 October 2026 and will be available to stream on ITVX.

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