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Neil Hancock: 00:00:11           
Hello, everyone.  I’m Neil On Wheels, and this is my new podcast.  I can’t walk the walk, but I can talk the talk.  I’m a wheelchair actor who wasn’t able to work during the pandemic.  Rather than sitting around doing nothing, I thought I’d sit around doing something.  In this series, I’ll be chatting to people in the theatre, TV, and film industry about the challenges they’ve overcome in order to achieve great things in life.  He has played Brett Aspinall in BBC’s Waterloo Road, George Best in the ITV Drama Best: His Mother's Son, Paul “Jesus” Rovia in AMC’s The Walking Dead, and profiler Malcolm Bright in Prodigal Son.  The actor I’m talking about is none other than Tom Payne.  Tom, hello!

Tom Payne: 00:00:54   
Hello!  Happy to be here.

 Neil Hancock: 00:00:55                       
And how are you today?  Are you all right?

Tom Payne: 00:00:58   
I’m very well.  Thank you very much.  Yeah, having a, a rare day off (laughter) in New York, but I’m, but I’m enjoying it, yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:01:04                       
Now, I know Tom because I know Tom’s brother, Will, who is also an actor and a very, very nice guy.  He’s one of my best friends.  So, thank you very much for coming on the show, Tom.  And it, it’s good to talk to you.  And it’s finally good to hear a voice to the name I’ve heard so much about.

Tom Payne: 00:01:22   
(Laughter)  Yeah, nice to connect finally.

Neil Hancock: 00:01:25                       
Now, Tom, you’ve had an incredible varied career to date.  Where does your love of acting come from?

Tom Payne: 00:01:33   
Well, I think growing up, it was just enjoying showing off a bit, really, and getting applause for it.  And I was quite boisterous, and, and active.  And I just really enjoyed it.  I really enjoyed…first of all, I enjoyed singing in the school choir.  And, and then one of my teachers put me in the school play basically.  And, and I just really enjoyed it and carried on doing it.  And in my youthful naivety, I thought, ‘Well, this is what I really enjoy.  And so, this is what I want to do for my career.’  And, and it’s still kind of a linear path to do that to go to drama school, and then hopefully get an agent and carry on through.  And it, and it seems to have worked out.  But, but mostly, first of all, just started out from enjoying being in plays at school.  And, and that was…and then also just kind of having my own thing, and that was my thing that I did.  Yeah, so I just had a great enjoyment for, for it.

Neil Hancock: 00:02:28                       
And, and do you still sing?  You say started singing.  Do, do you still do that?

Tom Payne: 00:02:33   
Yeah, I love singing.  I’m not particularly well-trained.  So, if I had to do it in a show or anything, I definitely need to, to brush up on my training.  But I do.  I really enjoy singing, yeah.  And I can be heard singing every other day wherever I am.  But it’s an entirely different discipline obviously, and so requires work in a, in a different direction.  Yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:02:56            
And you…at school, you were heavily involved with the drama department.  What sort of productions did you do there?

Tom Payne: 00:03:04   
We did…the first production that I did when I was seven, must have been seven or eight, was Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I played and elf in that.  (Laughter)  And…oh, actually, that wasn’t the first one.  That was the second one.  The first one I did was called the Going-down of Orpheus Hawkins, and I played an elf in that one.  (Laughter)  And then in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I played the white queen’s like right-hand man.  And then we did Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  And then I did a play called Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew.  And that was all I was in junior school.

Neil Hancock: 00:03:38           
Very, very good.  Voyage of the Dawn Treader, that’s part of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, isn’t it?

Tom Payne: 00:03:44   
Yes, exactly.  Yeah.  That was very fun actually.  And then, and then when I went into senior school, we did lots of different things.  And we…I finished in senior school doing Guys and Dolls, which was really fun.  And that…which was a musical actually.  It showed me that…why I really needed to…if I was going to do a musical at any point, then I really need to work on my voice and, and keep it going.  But we did a bunch of stuff in the senior school.  I did The Tempest where I played Ariel as well, which was fun.  That was really my first Shakespeare I think.  Yeah, that was my first Shakespeare when I…we did The Tempest at school.

Neil Hancock: 00:04:17                        
And when did you finally decide to step it up a gear and go professional?

Tom Payne: 00:04:23   
I think when, you know, when your school is saying, okay, you need to choose the right subjects that you will need to progress to university and stuff, that’s when you really start thinking about what subjects you might need to go and do whatever it is you want to do.  And I had it in my mind I think…I mean, I always…I, I don’t know.  When I really started to take it seriously, I’m like, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do.’  I guess I must have been in my mid-teens when you have to narrow down GCSEs, and then moving into A Levels.  So, yeah, then really.  And actually, there was only one drama school that I applied to that needed A Levels.  All the other ones didn’t…you didn’t need any qualifications past to GCSEs to go.  And then one…I, I needed two A Levels I think in order to apply to…I think it was Guildhall that needed it.  And so, I…in the end, I only ended up doing two A Levels.  Because in my mind…I, I mean, I really narrowed down my possibilities when I was at school.  Then I had my parents who didn’t try and talk me out of it.  But definitely, we, we had a long discussion about, ‘Okay.  Well, if you drop an A Level, then you can’t go to university, and you can only go to drama school.’  And, and I was very adamant that that’s what I wanted to do, and, and that was how it was going to work.  And so, my parents had to sign a letter to the school to say we agree that Tom doesn’t have to do three A Levels.  And, and the school tried to dissuade me from doing it, and that was a whole thing.  But I, I was very, very sure of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.  And, and I…so, I kind of backed myself into a corner with it then in the sixth form in my last two years at school where I said, ‘Well, this is it.  This is all, all my eggs in one basket.  I’m going to go to drama school.’  And then actually, I didn’t get in the first year.  I got close.  I got waiting list at Guildhall I think.  And I got to the final round at Central.  And then the second year I applied, I got into Central.  And I think got wait–…no, I got, I got a recall at Guildhall the first year, and I got waiting list second year.  But Central was the one that I really wanted to go to.  So, it, it kind of all figured out how I wanted it to figure out.  There was a lot of what people would call positive thinking I guess.  But for me, it was just I kind of thought, well, that’s what’s going to happen.  I’m going to leave school, I’m going to go to drama school, and then I’m going to start working.  And it, it, it worked out.  And I, I do think there’s a lot in there of, of visualising and all that…all those kinds of things.  I do think it, it works.

Neil Hancock: 00:06:45                       
So, what two A Levels did you do?  I mean, were they drama-based?  Or did you do other things?  Did you…?

Tom Payne: 00:06:52   
I did (laughter) I chose English and Theatre Studies like straightaway going into the sixth form.  I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do.’  And then I had to do the third one, so I just chose Business Studies because, ‘Oh, that might be useful in the future.’  But, but it turns out, you know, I just didn’t care about it, really.  I was so doggedly determined that…of what I wanted to do that I just didn’t really try or care about anything that I didn’t think would help me.  So, actually, Business Studies, I always did terrible.  And, and I got terrible marks.  And I, yeah, I was just…because I just wasn’t interested, you know?  I didn’t…I knew that that wasn’t going to be what I, what I wanted to do with my life.  So, yeah.  I mean, I really brought my options down to nothing at the end.  But I, I think…I, I…there’s a lot of…and it’s continued throughout my career, like if you put all your eggs in one basket, then that’s what you’ve got, and that’s what you’ve got to make a success out of then.  My dad was always very big on, ‘No, you should have some kind of backup career.  You should learn to be a chef or you should learn to be something else.’  And…but I just feel like if you do that, then that’s what you’ll end up doing because the job is so hard, like acting…making a success of acting is really hard.  And if you can do anything else, you should probably do it.  (Laughter)  And so, to give yourself that option I think gives you a way out.  And if you don’t have a way out, then you have to make a success of, of the career.

Neil Hancock: 00:08:17                       
And you said that Central School of Speech and Drama was the drama school you wanted to go to.  What was it about that school in particular that attracted you to it?

Tom Payne: 00:08:28   
I’ve, I’ve always been a very gut-driven person.  And I think that’s helped me in my career.  And I just had a feeling about it.  I just…I, I (laughter) I auditioned for RADA twice and didn’t get any where either time.  And I had actually been on one of their summer schools like the year before.  And, and there was a teacher there who was very encouraging to me and was, you know, thought that I was going to go to RADA, but actually never got anywhere with them.  And Guildhall was more my pace.  But then, Central, I, I don’t know.  It just felt right.  And actually, at that time, I only applied for those three.  Because at that time in 2001 this was, 2001, 2002, I thought those were the best ones.  In retrospect, I would probably have applied to a couple more at that time.  LAMDA was probably doing really well at that time.  I would have applied there.  But I was in the same way that when I was in school, I was like, oh, you should do…you should go here, and then you should, you know, carry on in, into the industry.  You want to give yourself the best chance.  And I didn’t just want to go to drama school.  I wanted to go to a drama school that would, would facilitate a career.  And so, if you go to one that isn’t one of the top ones, you don’t necessarily get all of the industry coming to watch your shows at the end.  And at the end of the day, that’s what you want, is you want to have a career.  You want to get out there and get an agent and, and start working.  So, I only really looked at what I considered to be the top ones or the ones that the industry was really looking at because I wanted a job afterwards.  I wasn’t just there for the training.  I was there to be able to work soon afterwards.  So, I always had my…I mean, I’ve always been very looking forward to the future kind of person.  And I always had my eye on what does this lead to?  And Central definitely at that time was one of the top drama schools that have had some very successful people come out of it, and, and was continuing to do so.  So, I was very happy with ending up there.

 Neil Hancock: 00:10:24             
And what did you enjoy most about your time there?

Tom Payne: 00:10:27   
The freedom.  I, I mean, just…I was just so happy and so excited to be just doing acting, and things, things related to acting.  And not having to write anything down or do any exams in the, in the normal sense that we had different assignments that we had to pass and stuff.  But everything that was enjoyable, it was…I just…I loved everything about it actually.  And I was very…I went in very wide-eyed.  And I know a lot of people…the one thing that really surprised me that I was like, oh, I’m going to go to drama school, and everyone’s going to be like me, and it’s going to be amazing!  And everyone’s going to really want to do all of these drama things.  It didn’t quite turn out like that, like not everyone was as wide-eyed as me or is kind of open as me.  I was a very open, honest, creative mind, and just wanted to do that.  And, and I discovered that not everyone is, is quite the same in that, in that way.  But, but I just…I, I really…I really truthfully enjoyed the whole thing.  There were some assignments and stuff that I maybe didn’t enjoy as much.  But I just…I, I just loved that my whole life was based around doing what I loved.  I mean, that was just so amazing.  And, and also, drama school is, is you’re in this cocoon, and you’re not really engaging with the outside world.  So, it is this, this bubble of creativity that you’re allowed to play in really.  And I know that some people don’t have a good time with it.  But I think it’s…I think people look for different things in it.  And I think some people go to drama school thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to come, and this is going to make me…this is going to give me everything.  And, and it’s going to show me exactly the way to do it, so that I become the best actor ever.’  But really, certainly at Central and drama schools like that, they, they throw everything at you, and you pick what you like and what you enjoy, and, and kind of make your own experience.  And I think some people go in thinking it’s going to be one thing and ends up being something else.  Or…but, but I loved it and had a, had a great time with all of it.  I was actually just looking back at some pictures the other day where I looked very (laughter) very wide-eyed and young.  So, I was, I was only 19 when I went as well.  And, and I think maybe I was a bit young.  But actually, I mean, it’s worked out for me, but, but I do think it helps to have a little bit more life experience. Because then, I think you’ll get more out of it.  But, but I had a great time.  It was awesome.

Neil Hancock: 00:12:54                        
And were there any particular aspects of your training that you struggled with?  And if so, what were they?

Tom Payne: 00:13:02   
There was one assignment that I actually failed twice, which the teachers were really upset with me.  But I, I know why.  I know why it was.  And I know…it was an assignment…I can’t remember what it was called.  Interestingly, it was a movement assignment, but it was affectionately referred to as your passion talk.  So, you would get up…and it was a seemingly very, very easy assignment.  So, you would get up and talk about something you’re passionate about.  And I…first of all, acting had been my entire life, and there weren’t that many things that I was super passionate about outside of acting.  But I’ve understood about myself in, in my…in this assignment that it was really about showing like being completely naked in front of everyone, completely emotionally naked.  And in a way, it was about kind of tricking people to be emotionally naked.  And I just didn’t want to do it basically.  I didn’t…I, I didn’t…and I would…I think I was also very emotionally raw at that time.  And, and I, I just…I don’t know.  There was a side of myself that I didn’t want to show.  And so, and, and basically so, I just refused.  I, I like made up a, an ass–…you know, I, I gave my talk on something that wasn’t really deep, deep.  It was something that I cared about, but nothing that, that I was really like deeply passionate about.  And I basically just refused to do the assignment twice because I didn’t want to…I mean, as, as actors, you do show yourself, and you are naked in front of the camera.  But it’s, it’s always through a prism, you know.  It’s, it’s always through another…and through a character and through a situation that isn’t your life.  And I was very comfortable with that, and I’m very emotionally naked in a lot of my performances.  But to be…to just be purely me was not something that I was comfortable with.  And it’s actually why I found clowning difficult as well.  We, we did clowning, and I didn’t like that either.  I, I don’t like, like doing stand-up or anything like that.  It would…I think it would be very hard for me because I just…there’s something about like, ‘Okay, this is me,’ which I find quite hard, which is strange because I love doing interviews, and I like talking about all this kind of stuff.  But to really just stand there and, and be emotionally naked, it’s like a therapy session.  And that’s not really why I do the job.  So, yeah, that was about it.  But every other assignment, I did really well in.  (Laughter)  It was just this one that, that I didn’t go, didn’t go so well.

Neil Hancock: 00:15:34                       
But, but you say in your work now, and I, I’ve seen it in your work.  There is a great deal of vulnerability.  So, how did you overcome the problem of initially not being vulnerable…

Tom Payne: 00:15:44   
Yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:15:45                        

…to now being vulnerable?

 Tom Payne: 00:15:48   
Well, it, it…I, I always was vul–…but that’s the thing, that’s what I’m saying, is that it’s through the prism of the character.  So, I don’t have any problem with showing emotion or, or doing those kinds of things.  But I, I…it was just…that’s, that’s…it, it…it comes from me, and I, I don’t think, you know, all emotion has to come from somewhere real.  So, it absolutely comes from you, but it’s, it’s through the prism of a character.  So, I don’t…and I don’t know.  It was just something about that assignment that was like I didn’t want to…I don’t know.  I didn’t want to give that to them.  It’s so weird.  Like I, I was like, if you want me to stand here and cry for 30 minutes, then, then I’ll do that.  But…and, and I think just at that time, I wasn’t, I wasn’t in control of it as much as I am now as well.  Like a lot of drama school and a lot of becoming an actor and becoming a good actor I think is finding your emotional centre and understanding your emotional centre, and having some kind of control over it.  And so, now, I’m able to access my emotions through a character like very easily and efficiently.  But I think…well, I mean, I was 20 years old, like, you know, you’re, you’re just not…I wasn’t as stable basically emotionally as I am now.  And I think I was maybe just a bit afraid, like if I, if I went there with it, then it just brings up all this other stuff.  And, I mean, looking back, I think I was just very emotionally unstable and was a bit afraid.  Because you can get…even then, I could give it through a character because there will be some kind of control there.  But if I was to, you know, talk about my own personal life, there’s no control.  And then I just…it just all floods out.  And I think that’s probably what I was, what I was afraid of. 

Neil Hancock: 00:17:34             
Are there bits of the training that you continue to use in your professional life?  And equally, are there bits of the training you’ve thrown out that you think I don’t need that.  And if so, what are they?

Tom Payne: 00:17:47   
I think there’s lots of really useful physicality things that you learn.  I mean, ultimately, everyday at drama school is about relaxation.  So, when you’re…this is another thing where I thought I was a little bit too young because you don’t necessarily understand everything or take it on in the right way.  But, but just through repetition.  So, in drama school, we spend a lot of time like massaging each other and doing warm-ups and vocal exercises.  And, and so, now, if I have a problem with something on set like I do an American accent on the show, and sometimes I’ll have trouble with, with a certain sentence or a word, so then I’ll just use some vocal warm-ups and go through warming my face, and doing tongue exercises and jaw exercises, and using a bone prop sometimes.  Like all these, these things, which I know, they’re like shortcuts basically that….  And sometimes, I find it frustrating because I know…I, I know what other actors need to do. But if they haven’t been to drama school, then it’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to explain this.’  And I also don’t want to say, ‘Oh, you’re doing it wrong,’ or whatever.  But sometimes, I can see like, ‘Oh, I could give you this quick fix.’  But also, it wouldn’t…might not be received in the, in the right way or in the same way because they haven’t, you know, been to drama school.  Or not just drama school, but had the same training as me.  But, so, it does create like a bunch of shortcuts, a bunch of different, different ways that you can still use…that I definitely still use.  And I love, I loved being shown all the different techniques.  I’m a big fan of Meisner.  But like I, I would never say that I’ll go completely into one technique or completely into another technique.  But there’s definitely bits and pieces from everywhere that have helped me, and, and that I have taken from drama school.  And I wouldn’t say that there’s anything that I’ve thrown away at all actually.  I think, I think it was all useful.  Some things, and you’ll notice with different actors as well, like some things come easier to people than others, and some things are more useful than others.  But I think I found something useful in honestly most things that we did at drama school.  And it’s all about understanding what works best for you, and, and what you need to be able to prepare for a certain role or to help you in a certain scene.  What’s, what’s most frustrating actually is not being able to break down scenes in the same way.  I miss, I miss working on scenes in the way that we would at drama school.  Because basically, you never…when you’re in drama school, you work on probably the best material you’ll work on in your life.  Or, you know, in, in…for a certain time, definitely.  So, most time, most of the time, you’ll end up doing TV.  And no disrespect to TV, there are some great TV out there, but it’s not often that you can get a scene and break it down in the way that you would break down Shakespeare or Chekhov or, or any of these wonderful plays that you’ve worked on in drama school because they’re just not written in the same way.  And then they’re not poured over in the same…with the same amount of detail.  So, I would love to sit down and, and, and beat out a script again.  That would be (laughter) that would be great.  And I…and actually, what I’ve discovered, I’ve had to tell the writers on my TV show that I’m doing now, like, guys, if you put a comma in there or a dot-dot-dot, I am programmed — and literally, I realised this about myself — I am programmed to take dot-dot-dots a certain way, and to take a full stop a certain way.  And so, punctuation, because we were taught like punctuation is where everything lies.  And, and I know…I understand language in a different way.  And I understand where the emotion is held in a sentence or in a word, and how to use language.  And if the writing isn’t good or if it’s written incorrectly, it screws up the whole thing.  And it screws it up in my mind for my flow.  So, that’s…it’s kind of frustrating sometimes.  You learn all these things about language.  And then when you re–…when you read something that doesn’t quite work, it, it’s helpful because you can figure out why it doesn’t work.  And…but sometimes, you’re learning lines really quickly, and they go in a certain way, and you’ll get stuck in a scene.  You’re like, ‘Why am I stuck in a scene?’  It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, because I learnt this.  And on the page, it said dot-dot-dot.’  And so, I’m leaving this gap in, you know, but there are…there’s no space for gaps.  And I’ve literally had to tell the writers, ‘Don’t put a dot-dot-dot in unless you want me to pause, because I will.’  I’m just hard-wired that way.  And I don’t want to disrespect the writing either.  I definitely want to…don’t, don’t want to get to a place where I throw the writing out and do whatever I want to do because I want to respect it.  So, yeah, that was (laughter) that was definitely a lesson that I’ve recently learnt actually because I’ve had so much dialogue on this new show, and I…which I haven’t had before.  Yeah.  And I, I learn so much all the time.

Neil Hancock: 00:22:34                       
And it’s also about respecting the writing, but also finding what intuitively feels right to you, the actor, isn’t it?

Tom Payne: 00:22:42   
Yeah, exactly, exactly.  Yeah.  And, and there should be, you know, a, a combination of the two that makes the scene, yeah. 

Neil Hancock: 00:22:48           
So, you were…were you at Central before or after it merged with Webber Douglas?

Tom Payne: 00:22:54   
I left just before that happened.  But I had friends who, who were there for all of that time.  And that was around Kit Harington’s time.  Kit was there when all that happened.

 Neil Hancock: 00:23:06                       
In your third year at, at Central, you do shows in front of agents and casting directors.  What was the best show you did there?

Tom Payne: 00:23:15   
We did a show, which actually I was talking to Will about this the other day.  We did a show called Class Enemy.  And I think the writer was Nigel Williams?  And, I mean, it’s just…it was a perfect showcase really that I think there were six parts, six or seven parts.  And it’s about a bunch of kids in the ’70s who are after, you know, after-school detention.  And the teacher who’s meant to be there doesn’t turn up.  And so…and each of the students ends up giving their own lesson. So, each of the students has a monologue basically in front of all the other students.  I mean, it’s just a perfect drama school showcase.  And I played this like punk kid, and like we spiked my hair up.  And he was this young kid who was racist, and he had this speech about, about black people.  And, and it, and it…but it was obviously he was just very wounded and came from an awful background.  And, and…I mean, it was, it was a great speech in the middle of this play.  And you just know, like you get given this part, and you’re like, ‘Oh, if I don’t get signed off of this, then I’m never going to (laughter) I’m never going to work.’  So, it was, it was that.  And then we had a couple of…oh, I did a showcase.  My showcase, my first showcase piece was with another actor called David Hartley.  And we did Beautiful People.  No, not Beautiful People.  Beautiful Thing, the Jonathan Harvey play.

Neil Hancock: 00:24:41                       
Yes.

Tom Payne: 00:24:41   
And then I since worked with Jonathan Harvey on his show, Beautiful People.  But that…and that was because I understood as well that…so, the, the play Class Enemy was my, like kind of acting thing.  And then Beautiful Thing was really just very simple, like me and Dave like going to bed.  It’s like this very sweet scene between these two characters who have a romantic feel–…have feelings for each other.  And it’s just very quiet and…because I just…I knew that like the industry and act–…you know, the agents and the casting directors, they just want to see you as well.  And I knew that at that time, one of the biggest things that I was telling was that I was…my youth, and that I looked young, and that was it.  And that’s all they want to see.  And at, and at the end of the day, that’s what you’re going to play when you leave drama school, that you’re not, you know, you’re just going to play young guy number one.  And that’s what I did, you know.  That’s what, that’s what ends up happening.  And so, I was lucky in that we did this play, and I could really show some acting in that play.  But ultimately, the showcase, you know, you, you get like two minutes, like four minutes.  And you…I have watched many showcases since then and, and before then.  And you don’t want the actors to come out and scream at you or just burst into tears, like you just want simple acting, so you can see how this person moves and how they interact.  And, you know, it’s just basic.  And that’s any…that’s the advice that I would give to anyone for any showcase, like you, you just need to give you, like what you, you…if you can figure that out or have someone else help you figure it out, what are your greatest qualities that you hold naturally?  Because ultimately when you leave drama school, you will be cast as a version of yourself.  You’re not going to go out there and play King Lear tomorrow.  You know, you’re just…I mean, some people... Nonso Anozie did.  But like you’re, you’re generally not going to come out and be given these amazing opportunities to play these amazing parts.  I mean, I’m only really now in my career getting to play parts which require something of me.  Like I…even when I was on The Walking Dead, like that was so easy, like I wasn’t…I didn’t feel like I was being stretched at all.  And I haven’t very often in my career felt like I’ve been given a role that, ‘Oh, this requires a lot of me,’ because they’re just, they’re just…they don’t (laughter) exist that much really, the great parts.  And you will just get cast as something that comes very easily to you, which is great, you know?  I mean, if you can make money doing this job, that’s fantastic.  But if you go out there thinking, ‘Oh, I’m this great actor, and I’m going to get given all these great things,’ I think you’re only going to get disappointed.  But, yeah, if you can figure out what it is that makes you sellable and work with that, then, then you’ve got yourself off to a good start I think.

Neil Hancock: 00:27:29                       
So, was it through watching one of these shows that you were in that you were signed by your agent?

Tom Payne: 00:27:34   
Yeah, yeah.  I am…actually, I got…I think my agent who I still have saw my headshot.  Oh no, no, she didn’t see my headshot.  She saw me watching another one of the plays, and asked someone else about me.  And then she came to see a play, and then came to see…I think I guess came to see the first play, but it was a terrible…it was The Balcony by Jean Genet, which is a great play, but like not the best showcase material.  So, that wasn’t the best.  But then, it was my first showcase, which was great.  And then we got that.  So, I think I…I think I got signed in my second term I think.  So, yeah, from, from the, from the showcase, isn’t from me…from the play.  And then I started auditioning for stuff, which was also basically the next training that you get if you’re lucky enough to get an agent who puts you up for lots of stuff.  Then you learn and you have to learn very quickly about auditions, and how they work.  And, and I was fortunate in that I got thrown at loads of auditions even while I was still at drama school, which really helped me develop as well.  I mean, drama school doesn’t really teach you anything about the industry, which is unfortunate.  And I don’t…and I…but I’m not sure how you could do that.  But…and there was one actor in, in our year who got the most interest out of anyone, but went into his meetings with the attitude of convince me to employ you as my agent, which just put every single agent off, and was like, ‘Well, who the hell does this guy think he is?’  Because at the beginning, you’re, you know, you’re nobody. You’re just another actor out of thousands of actors that come out of drama school every year.  And like I was saying previously, you just have to get your foot in the door.  And so, understand what it is that makes you sellable, and get your foot in the door any which way you can.  And don’t turn down auditions.  Like whenever I heard of young actors coming out of drama school and saying, ‘Oh yeah, I’m not going to go in for that,’ or like whatever, I’m like, ‘What…who the hell do you think you are?  Like go in for everything and meet every casting director.  Because this week, they might be casting this.  But next week, they’ll casting something else that you really want to get in for, but you told them you didn’t want to see them last time.  So, they’re not going to get you in again.’  And also, casting directors will get you in for things that you’re not right for, just so that they can meet you and see, you know, see who you are and how you work.  Like any opportunity at the beginning, you have to go for it and have to take it because there’s just too much competition to let things slide.  And you, you know, you have to build yourself up and, and get yourself a reputation because you’re just another kid from drama school at the beginning.

Neil Hancock: 00:30:12                        
And then, you graduated from Central in 2005.  And very soon after, you got the role of Raleigh in R.C. Sherriff’s play Journey’s End set in the First World…well, set in the trenches of the First World War.  How did that part come about? 

Tom Payne: 00:30:30   
That was an audition.  So, that was…well, I think like the fifth cast in the West End that was one of those shows like the history boys became, you know, where…which it was just like a rotating cast.  And Journey’s End, that was…that had been a very famous production that David Grindley had done.  And then in same ways, The History Boys, it became like a staple in the West End.  And, and different casts would, would come through.  So, I think…I, I’m not sure if I’ve done it since, but I think we might have in the last cast had ended up doing it at the New Ambassadors.  But that was an audition.  And that was wonderful.  Oh, I mean, a really wonderful start to my career because we did five months in the West End as a group of young actors.  There was a bunch of... Ben who played stand-up had just come out of drama school.  And we were all pretty young.  And then, and…but then, there were also like older actors within that cast as well. So, it was a nice apprenticeship in a way.  And actually, Michael Siberry who played Osborne in that production just came and guested on Prodigal Son last season, which was such an amazing full circle thing.  It was really, really nice to have him on.  But that was just wonderful.  I mean, to be…I’d love to be…well, I’m on a different part of my life now, and I’m not, I’m not partying quite as much.  But to be in the West End in a show with a bunch of young guys, I mean, we would go out every night.  You get memberships to the members’ clubs and stuff.  So, we would go out after the show every night.  It was really, really fun, really fun time.  Yeah, I actually am…and I hear Broadway is the same.  I’ve never done Broadway, but there’s just a nice atmosphere of all of the shows.  And you end up knowing actors from other shows and hanging out together.  And, yeah, that was, that was a really fun experience and a great first step in my career.

Neil Hancock: 00:32:16                       
And, and of course, the character of Raleigh is very…almost very similar to where you were at currently at that point in your career because he’s essentially…it’s his first time in, in the trenches, is it not?  And it was our first job since leaving drama school.

Tom Payne: 00:32:34   
Yeah.  I mean, basically exactly that.  It was…and also (laughter) also, a lot of about — we called him…we referred to him as Raleigh (Pronounced Rawleigh)  in our production — a lot about Raleigh is, is his youth.  And so, basically, I’ve said it since, like my job in that was just a walk on stage and look incredibly young.  Like even thought I was 21 at that time, I mean, he’s meant to be 18 I think.  And it was remarked on in some of the reviews, like, oh my God, like Tom Payne walks on stage and he just looks so incredibly young.  And so then, a lot of the work is done for you.  So, I just need to, you know, serve the part and say the lines.  But the…just by virtue of how young I looked, you already felt for the character and understood the situation that Stanhope was in, just looking at this young boy who’s joined him on the front lines, and is talking about what a ripping good time he’s going to have.  I mean, it’s really horrific like all these young guys did go off to war thinking it was just a jaunt.  But, yeah, it was, it was a great parallel with my first, first bit role.  And, yeah, and Raleigh’s, Raleigh’s joining the army, yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:33:40
And obviously in a theatre run, every show is different.  What was the one special moment you took away from that production that you will always remember?

Tom Payne: 00:33:51   
(Laughter)  Actually, probably the, the one that I will always remember is that one of the actors, one of the other actors in the week before press night had a bit of a breakdown on stage.  He got massive stage fright, and just was a deer in the headlights.  And it was me and him and Michael Siberry on stage together.  And it was a scene that I couldn’t do…I wasn’t the one who could have helped because I was just the young ingénue in the scene who, you know, I, I couldn’t have done anything to help this one actor who was just completely lost.  And Michael helped to turn the scene around and, and rescue him a bit, but it….  And, and, and at the end of it, I had a friend in that night, and, and they told me that, oh, that we didn’t notice anything.  But for me, it was like, you know, you’re on stage, and I…you could…you can’t see a way out of this situation.  And it, and it was in that moment that I really realised that, you know, you, you can.  You know, you, you can do it.  You can, you can be completely lost.  But if you fall into, you know, your other actors, then you can help each other and get out of a scene.  And it’s true that my theatre training and, and those types of situations that I really…and I bring this into my TV and film acting as well, like I really trust in the other actors and use the other actors, and, and want them to use me in a scene.  And, and it…oh, I find it frustrating when I meet actors who kind of act in a box kind of.  And it hasn’t like really happened to me that often, but who are selfish actors.  Because I really think that it’s a team sport.  And, and yeah, I will (laughter) I’ll never forget being on stage and thinking that, ‘Oh my God, this is all falling apart.  I don’t know, I don’t know how we’re going to rescue this.’  But we got through it.  And, and we carried on for five months.  And, and, and of course, there are many moments…I mean, actually myself even in that play, those terrible moments where you go, ‘I can’t remember my next line.  I can’t remember my next line.’  And then the, the prompt comes from the other actor, and it just comes out of you, like those moments are (laughter) incredibly scary, but, but at the same time amazing.  I mean, that’s what you, that’s what you do it for, is to have that…those moments.

Neil Hancock: 00:36:07                        
And the audience reaction to the show was very good by all accounts, was it not?

Tom Payne: 00:36:13   
Yeah, yeah.  That was…I mean, that, that play was also being studied in school as well.  So, we get lots of school groups.  But that production was very, very good.  They…their…the production design of the set re–…I mean, it really felt like you were in a trench.  And the sound design was amazing.  And the end of that play is huge bombing and the destruction of everything.  And, and it really…I mean, if you weren’t crying at the end of that play, there was kind of something wrong with you because it was really incredibly well done.  Yeah.  And I think, I think they did bring that production back recently actually.  But it was, yeah, it was a very visceral, visceral, visceral play, and very hard not to feel for all those young men who died in the First World War.

Neil Hancock: 00:36:59                        
And of course, it…although it’s set in the First World War, it’s a bit like the theatre version of Saving Private Ryan, isn’t it, to a degree?

Tom Payne: 00:37:07   
It was.  And that, yeah, it definitely was, yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:37:09                       
And so, what I wanted then to move on is, then you did a show called Shrieks of Laughter at the Soho Theatre.  And how, how did that…doing that show…

Tom Payne: 00:37:21   
Yeah.

 Neil Hancock: 00:37:21           
…differ from the demands of doing a production like Journey’s End?

Tom Payne: 00:37:26   
Well, that was much smaller.  That was at the Soho obviously.  But that was…we had Imogen Stubbs who played my mother in that.  That was, that was really fun as well, just to, just to play on one of the smallest spaces in the West End.  The play was…and the play was only just over an hour long.  So, it was amazing.  It was, you know, so simple to just turn up, do a play for an hour, and you, you have to be in theatre before 9:00 and able to go out afterwards.  That was playing another young kind of quite damaged young guy whose mother had died.  So, that was the same kind of emotional, emotional play, but, but in a different way to Raleigh because he was very held emotionally.  But this character was, was not.  So, that was fine.  It was nice to do something very contemporary afterwards.  And to be in a very contemporary theatre, the Soho Theatre, was, was a really cool place to be at that time.

Neil Hancock: 00:38:18                       
And since those two productions, you haven’t done any theatre.  Did you choose to focus on film and TV before you did more theatre?  Was that the reason?

Tom Payne: 00:38:29   
Basically, yeah.  I, I got into…I did theatre.  I mean, I love theatre, but I did it then because my agent was like if you don’t do theatre now, it will be really hard to do it again because casting directors can be quite snooty, and they won’t see you basically.  And so, I, I was made sure to do some theatre then.  But then, yeah, I got into TV.  I started doing Waterloo Road then.  And, yeah, I mean, that was to, to get…to then get.  Because theatre, I had done at drama school for three years as well.  I had not done any TV and film.  So, my agent was then also, like we, we need to get you a lot of filming experience.  So, to get on a television show as a regular was a gift.  Because then, you just have so much experience in front of the camera, then you learn so much in doing that every week.  And then you just get trapped in, well, there’s more money in TV and film, and I can afford to live a little bit, a little bit better.  And theatre, the, the…just the money just isn’t there.  So, if you have rent to pay and, and bills, it’s, it’s not the best.  Well, it’s not the best way to live.  And I mean, even now, like where I am in my career, I’m just about feeling like, ‘Oh yeah, I could go and do six months in a play now and not be worried that I’d have to, you know, worry about money, and, and circumstances.’  But for a long time, it was like, ‘Well, I can’t….’  I mean, that’s, that’s not to say I didn’t audition for theatre.  I did.  I auditioned for Royal Court and, and a bunch of different places.  I actually workshopped That Face.  After Shrieks of Laughter, they brought me into workshop That Face, which Matt Smith ended up doing, the Polly Stenham play.  And that was probably the last kind of…oh, and I workshopped something, David Grindley workshopped something else and he brought me in for it.  But, yeah, I hadn’t appeared on stage since.  And then I think having done so much TV and film now as well, and kind of out of the loop.  So now, it would have to be maybe a bit more of, ‘And Tom Payne is starring as,’ rather than just, you know, auditioning for any kind of play in a normal way.  It would…might be have to be something that I really wanted to put on and, and help to produce.  But…and I would be fine with that.  (Laughter)  But I would like to get back to theatre.  We just had Alan Cumming on the show, and he’s just so awesome.  And, and we were talking about Cabaret and all the theatre he does and everything.  And, and I, and I do miss it.  And it, and it’s really…it’s the actor’s medium.  And as much as I love TV and film, you’re not really…it’s not really in your hands as much.  And as an actor, you have that immediate connection with the audience in theatre that, that I think I do miss in a way, and I would love to get back to at some point.

Neil Hancock: 00:41:16                       
And if you did some in the future, what parts would you love to play?

Tom Payne: 00:41:22   
Well, it’s funny that actually, I was talking to Alan the other day because I always thought that I’d like to do Cabaret and something kind of fun like that or Rocky Horror or something, something big and ballsy.  Like I’ve, I’ve…I definitely…I know about myself that I like taking risks.  And, and like in Prodigal Son, like we’re all over the place, like we’re horror one minute and comedy the next, and, and we, we’re taking big swings.  And I enjoy that.  And I always want to be pushing, pushing the boundaries a bit.  And so, I’d like it to be something, something big and boisterous and ambitious.  And so, I’m not sure.  I don’t like to set targets for myself with parts because I just think you’ll always be disappointed.  And then in my, in my experience, like you’re looking at one thing, and something else comes from around the corner, the corner that you were expecting.  And so, yeah, something, something big and boisterous, but I don’t know what it is yet.

Neil Hancock: 00:42:18                        
And that concludes the first part of my chat with Tom Payne.  The second part is available to listen to now.  If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please follow me on Twitter @neilonwheelspod or Instagram, theneilonwheelspodcast.  Until next time.

[00.42.55]

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Duration 42 minutes and 55 seconds