Russell Tovey reveals his Doctor Who secret: ‘I make scary scenes a little bit funny’
Russell Tovey speaks to CityAM The Magazine about returning to Doctor Who and his love for his London local. This piece is published in CityAM The Magazine, Winter edition, distributed at major Tube stations and available to pick up from The Royal Exchange
There are lots of lovely things you could say about Russell Tovey, but perhaps the most striking is how relatable he seems. Not that it always comes across in his roles: in his breakthrough as Rudge in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, he showed a bluntness and confidence beyond his years; then came the guardedly complex Kevin from Looking, followed by a plethora of sci-fi roles (three with Russell T Davies), including his beguiling career high as werewolf George Sands in Being Human. So it’s testament to Tovey that, despite how established he has become, his cheeky-chappy, guy-next-door friendliness precedes his work.
I get a dose of it when we meet in an Old Street cafe near his apartment. When I arrive, Tovey has already ordered two smoothies, one with kale and the other fruit; I pick the kale. “Oooooh, look at you,” he says flirtatiously as he slides it across the table. It feels like meeting an old friend rather than a storied star of stage and screen.
Despite being built like the kind of man who knows his way around a kale smoothie, Tovey says he loves the local boozers, pointing to The Eagle around the corner, which he explains is featured in the nursery rhyme Pop Goes the Weasel, before singing me the tune. “Up and down the City road, in and out The Eagle, that’s the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel!” He clicks his fingers to illustrate cash disappearing on pints. “Pop. Gone. You just think, wow! The rhyme that we all know. It came from that pub! There’s history on the doorstep here, everywhere you go.”
He goes on to say that a quirk of east London life is that he’s stopped by fans far more often when he wears light blue. “I’m like, what the fuck’s different today? I wonder why people are looking at me and I’m wearing fucking blue again.” Then a dose of that cheeky-chappy energy: “So if I’m having a bad day, I’ll put blue on, ‘cause I’d like an ego boost!”
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Born in Billericay, Essex, in 1981 to parents Carole and George, his brother Daniel now runs the family coach company based out of Romford. He jokingly put paid to the idea of a career in transport in 2013, saying: “I’m not going to do my bus licence so you can ring me up at 4am because someone’s broken down.” Aged 12, Tovey was scouted by a talent agent and cast in adverts. After pursuing acting at local clubs, he eschewed a formal drama school education to enrol in a performing arts course at Barking College.
Talk about his personal life and most things are delivered with a shade of farce – and that big, warm, sharky grin. When he talks about his work he dials it down a bit. We’re meeting to discuss buzzy indie film Plainclothes as well as new Disney drama The War Between the Land and the Sea, both out this Christmas. The former is a beautifully shot rumination on the cruising scene in New York in 1997, the latter a big budget family drama by Russell T Davies, showcasing the Doctor Who showrunner’s talent for smushing together worthwhile drama with stonkingly entertaining telly.
In The War Between the Land and the Sea Tovey plays Barclay, an ordinary Londoner propelled into a diplomatic position to help save Earth from destruction. The story follows an alien race that lives under the sea and wages war with humans over plastic pollution. If it sounds on the nose, it’s actually deeply human and terrifically bingeable. “I watched it,” says Tovey. “If I’m in it and I can watch it, that’s a good barometer test for me.” It’s the third time he’s worked with Russell T Davies, following Doctor Who and Years & Years.
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Davies admires how well Tovey can juxtapose comedy with emotion, which is the compliment to end all compliments for Tovey, given his teenage inspiration was Robin Williams. “I crack the joke to break the pain,” he says. “I deflect into that. Russell writes characters where even at their most scared, they find humour.” More than once during our conversation Tovey uses the word angry when relating to the show’s climate change narrative. He wants viewers “to be angry and do something. That’s what good drama does. To realise we can – and we have to. We learned about Mr Bates and the Post Office scandal through drama. Isn’t that amazing? Is it actually making a difference? Yes, because of that drama we now understand it.”
The History Boys – the tale of a group of bright but troublesome boys at a 1980s grammar school – broke his career back in 2006, starring alongside James Corden and Dominic West. He says he’d love to work on another project with Alan Bennett, the author of the play the film was based on who turned 90 recently, and Nicholas Hytner, the director of the film and subsequent National Theatre play, in which Tovey also starred. Talking Heads, Bennett’s series of dramatic monologues, could have been that opportunity, given it was revived in 2020, but Martin Freeman “brilliantly” played the only role he could realistically have been cast for. Tovey would have loved to do it but “I can’t begrudge him for that.” Is there any way to tell people you’d really like to work with them? “It’s difficult. You’d hope they would know that you want to do it. When I like someone’s work I say to them I’d love to work with you, just put it out there.”
Russell Tovey is perhaps most known for 2009’s Being Human, BBC Three’s biggest hit at the time, as well as the dystopian 2019 family drama Years & Years. He speaks particularly proudly of Looking, the HBO show that broke him in America back in 2014, following the lives of a group of gay men in San Francisco. More recently, his lead role in 2022’s American Horror Story – taking the AIDS pandemic as its backdrop – further established him Stateside, though people close to Tovey say there’s still work to do in entrenching his career over there. As for how he chooses his roles, he says: “I just find a character and go, ‘I’m desperate to play that.’” He had avoided queer work until 2014 out of an “anxiety about making sure I could get straight roles”, he told IN Magazine in 2018, so Looking felt like a watershed moment. “I remember going, ‘This is a big deal’. The parts I’ve played that have been queer have changed my life. I’ve grown myself but also my career has enhanced every time I’ve taken on these roles.”
I’m very malleable… I don’t come onto a set fully formed with exactly what I’m going to do
In Plainclothes, Tovey plays Andrew, a closeted man in his mid-forties. Married with two children, he spends his free time cruising public toilets. There he finds Lucas, played by Tom Blyth, a closeted police officer sent on sting operations to catch men like Andrew. It’s an intergenerational story and for Tovey, playing the older man of the two was a big deal. “The 90s was a big decade for me: growing up, working out who I was. To go back to that period and play someone who is the age I am now was really interesting.”
Writer-director Carmen Emmi’s film is so slow and methodical that it feels almost hypnotic. It examines the point between fear and eroticism, and it’s a sadly contemporary tale: this year 200 men have been arrested for cruising in New York’s Penn Station, with a significant proportion of them sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. At the heart of the movie is an attempt to destigmatise cruising. As a whole, the piece is a testament to the power of TV to educate. “Isn’t it great that there are so many stories that not everybody knows about,” says Tovey. “That’s the generosity of art, there are still so many things to be mined. So many areas of humanity to be explored.” He likens it to a scene in which a female character has her period in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, which became a real pandemic-era telly talking point. “Isn’t it fascinating that this is still so radical, shocking, and unseen? You think, wow, we’ve got so far to go.”
Stylistically Plainclothes fascinated Tovey because it gave him the rare opportunity to experiment with silence and stillness. “Most often it’s ‘pick up the pace guys, we need this scene done quick,’” he says. “There were moments just to stare at each other, take each other in and be soft, which they’re denied everywhere else in their lives. That’s one of the most beautiful things people are receiving from this film, just those moments of quiet.”
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He says he relishes the opportunity to try new things on set, and describes himself as “very malleable… I don’t come onto a set fully formed with exactly what I’m going to do.”
I ask how he feels about being a pin-up. There are stories about Tovey logging onto the Grindr app and half of London rushing to Old Street to message him. Tovey laughs and says that exercise got him kicked off the platform because Grindr assumed he was a fraud pretending to be Russell Tovey. “I did try that for a bit but the universe wouldn’t allow it. It’s IRL for me, every time. It’s so much more exciting.”
And with that he slurps the dregs of his smoothie, flashes me one last cheeky grin, and disappears into the night, off to celebrate with Rusty and, perhaps, make a few quid disappear over at The Eagle.
Russell Tovey stars in The War Between the Land and the Sea on BBC and Disney+ from 7 December; Plainclothes is in Curzon cinemas now