‘I feel for Martin'

Sometimes, when an actor is asked how much they relate to the character they’re playing, the question gets lip service. Not so Luke Evans and Martin Gilmour, the character he plays in The Party.

“I feel for Martin,” the star of The Hobbit and Beauty and the Beast explains. “There’s a lot in the script that was informed by me and my upbringing as an only child in a small Welsh village, wanting to do grand things but having a religion that suppressed all of that, my sexuality being an issue, going to London and having the blinkers torn off. Martin has so much of that going on, I could bring an authenticity because I’ve been through similar things.”

It is small wonder that, when he read Elizabeth Day’s source novel – “I read to find roles for myself,” he laughs, “and if, by page 10, there isn’t an interesting charismatic male lead, the book goes to Oxfam” – the actor and executive producer instantly saw the potential of both character and story.

Filming was not, Evans stresses, a cathartic process. Therapy and his 2024 memoir Boy from the Valleys got all that out of his system, and he is now content in life and work in a way Martin is not.

The series will hold surprises aplenty even for fans of the book – not least in the recalibration of Martin and Ben Fitzmaurice (Tom Cullen), the aristocratic scion with whom Martin has a seemingly unrequited, toxic obsession. They have been transposed from arts critic to political hack and hopeful MP to aspiring leader of the Conservative Party, respectively. The stakes have been raised.

“Yeah, it adds an interesting side to the story,” nods Evans. “Because we’ve had so many prime ministers recently, we’re very aware of what kind of people run our country. My uncle Gavin was a miner. When the Tories closed the mines, I remember he went from coming home covered in coal dust and playing rugby with his mining buddies to working in a factory on a production line. Seeing the anger of these Welsh men against what they saw as English, conservative, people making decisions for us in the valleys, that made a real impression on me.”

Although he’ll admit to liking Andy Burnham’s energy (“He seems to come over as a sincere fellow”), Evans is political with a small “p”, preferring to use his profile to promote good causes and otherwise send a message by simply living his life as an out, gay man; he lives between London, Lisbon and Ibiza with his partner, architect Fran Tomas.

This happiness was, he says, hard won. “I hated school – as a Jehovah’s Witness, a closeted gay kid, I had no friends, couldn’t talk to anybody and was bullied really badly,” he recalls. At 16, his singing teacher put him up for eisteddfods (Welsh poetry and music competitions). “I wasn’t good at sport, didn’t have any competitive spirit and I’d never won anything, but I was winning all my categories,” he says.

He then won a bursary to musical theatre school in London. “I got in on my voice,” he says. “I had no idea about acting or dancing. The first six months were hard. I didn’t fit in as I felt so behind. But I threw myself into it and that’s how I’ve taken on every challenge since. Through time and routine and regular visits to a therapist, you work through things.”

Evans threw himself into a decade of West End shows including Taboo, Miss Saigon and Rent, only to find industry snobbery against musical theatre counting against him. Only in 2008, when Peter Gill’s intense four-hander Small Change allowed him to showcase his dramatic chops, did Evans attract the attention of talent agents.

Film stardom, top 20 albums and a menswear brand have followed, but it could have been very different: Evans auditioned for two boy bands and applied for Pop Idol, all in vain. “It was a bit like the lottery,” he guffaws. “More fun dreaming about what it would have been like than the reality of winning it.”

Stardom with the imprimatur of Simon Cowell would have been exposing at best, and Evans has a sneaking admiration for “these famous people that have their success and then just disappear. They’re probably living the most authentic lives they can, just living for themselves.”

Would he ever retire? “I think about it, because you sacrifice so much in this business. I’ve missed weddings, birthdays, funerals of important people in my life, for two decades. If you have kids, which I don’t plan to for a while, what do you do? Maybe I could step back. It’s just that terrible fear: if you disappear, they’ll never have you back...”

Fat chance. While the romantic leads and action heroes may not be behind him, the parts are getting richer and more interesting. Having just completed seven months as Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, the 47-year-old couldn’t be happier.

“By your 40s, you stop worrying so much about what people think of you and sit back a little more in life. I feel more comfortable in my skin than I’ve ever done. I know I’m a nice person. Life is not an easy journey, but sometimes you’ve got to think, ‘This is painful s**t I’m going through.’ But I can change the way I am or where I am in my life – I can make myself happier – which is a powerful thing.”