Tom Cullen, The Five interview: ‘Arts funding cuts mean there isn’t a theatre where I grew up’

The star of Harlan Coben’s new mystery drama and Downton Abbey talks TV twists and why acting is ‘too posh’
Mystery man: Tom Cullen stars in Harlan Coben's new thriller The Five
Sky / Justin Downing
Rosamund Urwin19 April 2016

Tom Cullen is trying to persuade me that he isn't a heart-throb. "Oh, I doubt it," he says when I suggest he must have legions of female fans.

The star of Downton Abbey and Sky 1's new drama The Five then attempts deflection: "I think OT [Fagbenle, his co-star in The Five] is more likely to get the female fans. I have such a crush on him and Lee [Ingleby, another The Five actor]. God: sexy guys." He may protest but the internet thinks the same of Cullen. Stick his name into Twitter and you'll find proclamations of love and perving. I reel off a couple. "Oh God, don't read them! Twitter's wild!" He turns a fetching shade of puce.

I've met the 30-year-old at Aqua Nueva on Regent Street. He's Welsh but there's little trace of an accent. "I'm originally from Mid-Wales, and a lot of people sound like me. I moved to Cardiff when I was 12 and it's quite an aggressive accent, quite twangy. I remember my first day at school and this girl saying to me 'Arh, so you'a te nu boy, a' you?' I couldn't understand her."

He looks embarrassed again. "I was obsessed with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and wanted to be Nick Moran, so I adopted this Cockney accent and it stuck... but when I'm drunk or angry I get Cardiff." Given the recent outcry about acting becoming the preserve of the privileged, Cullen seems a welcome anomaly. The son of two former actors (they performed in "small, regional stuff") who separated before he was born, Cullen went to a "rough" school in Cardiff: Llanishen High. When he was cast in Downton, Julian Fellowes took him for lunch at the House of Lords to prepare him for playing Lord Gillingham (Cullen copied Fellowes on which cutlery to use when).

So does he think acting is too posh? "Yeah. It's becoming harder for people from poorer communities to have access to the arts. Our Arts Council funding has been cut, and in the area I grew up there isn't a theatre for us any more. It isn't part of the vocabulary." Nor was acting seen as "a viable career choice" at his school. "No one was ever told they would amount to anything, let alone become an actor. We were lucky if anyone was thinking about going to Oxbridge. So it's as much about education as it is about money."

Cullen did go to drama school, though. While there he was cast in Hot Fuzz — as a black-cloaked figure. The third assistant director was “such a bully”, she made him wear a stocking over his face, even when not filming. "I was basically bodydoubling Timothy Dalton. I was sitting next to him and David Threlfall, and they were talking about Wales. I was so starstruck I couldn't move. And I had this stocking over my face, and I was like ergh-“ he pretends to suffocate. “I couldn’t even pull it up to breathe.”

A decade later, he's the lead. In The Five, Cullen plays Mark, whose younger brother disappeared when they were children. "It's fascinating what that does to somebody's life. In school, you're constantly that kid, and everyone's whispering behind your back. Not only did he lose his brother, he lost his normality... For Mark, the grief is mixed in with the fact that maybe he hates his brother — for the fact that he ruined his life. Does he even want to find him?"

The series — best-selling novelist Harlan Coben's TV debut — is a thriller with countless twists. I've seen the first five episodes and tell Cullen I have some theories. "They're wrong! Mine were." I name one. "Maybe. Maybe not." I propose another. "I can't remember," he grins, wickedly. He has the perfect poker face; this is not a game to play with an actor.

The series will be shown in two episode blocks and was shot the same way but over eight months, so the cast were desperate to know the ending too. "It was excruciating. We were all theorising. You start to doubt everyone: yourself, your friends, your parents."

Sky / Ben Blackall

Every morning, Mark runs the route where he lost his brother. Cullen could relate to this: "I actually lost somebody [his friend James] the week before we started filming, and I decided I was going to run a lot. It's meditative. Everything else stops and you're able to think... For Mark, the running is a way of coping with guilt and grief." Whether there'll be a second series will depend on how The Five performs, but if there is, it could have different characters, True Detective-style.

Not that that means Cullen will have any gaps in his work schedule. He recently finished shooting Mine, a two-hander with Armie Hammer about marines lost in the desert ("I'm 6ft 2in and I looked like a midget next to him"). There's also Desert Dancers, in which he plays an Iranian dancer, and an improvised comedy, Black Mountain Poets: "It's about funny, talented women, a film that passes the Bechdel test by miles. It's a riot."

Cullen is also promoting The Other Half, made with his other half, Tatiana Maslany. The film's budget was so small that Cullen wrote the score, including parts on a ukulele that Maslany had bought him. She is best known as the star of Orphan Black, in which she plays a series of clones: "Every one is its own fully rounded person. It's a tour de force of acting. How she hasn't won all the awards, I don't know."

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They've been together for four-and-a-half years, although Cullen lives in Brixton and Maslany in Toronto — after meeting on the set of The World Without End. "We were in Budapest for six months. It was an ensemble so we had loads of time off and ended up riding bikes around Budapest together. It was sick."

In The Other Half they play a couple. Did he feel vulnerable doing that? He nods: "At the premiere we're in this theatre with about 700 people. It was the most horrifying experience of watching myself ever, because it was so exposing."

He loved working with Maslany, though. "To work with someone like Tat, who I think is one of the best actors of her generation, was so thrilling... Working with someone you are in a relationship with, you get to bypass all the niceties. We have a shorthand and a trust with each other that meant we could go in deep and really hard —" He breaks off, blushing again. "Oh, that sounded bad."

Sky / Ben Blackall

Would he like to work with her again? "I'd love to work with her just because she's so good. It's fun to work with people who are better than you. She's also my best mate so I get to hang out with her. Maybe that's the only way we get to spend time together." They're a pretty political couple too, and recently, Maslany met Bernie Sanders. "I'm so envious." Does he feel the Bern too, then? "I'm more Bernie than Hillary — he's more socially conscious."

Cullen is also a proud feminist and a supporter of marriage equality. The first film he made after drama school was Weekend, which was banned by the Vatican for its depiction of homosexuality and drugs. Even now, do straight actors sometimes hesitate before playing gay characters? "It wasn't anything I really thought about. It's about two normal people who collide. They could be male or female. It was a beautiful love story. I love stories that are about the normal man because I believe we're all..." he trails off, not wanting to say "just people" or "the same". "Oh, it's such a f***ing wanky cliché, isn't it?"

He goes on: "Isn't someone's sexuality the least interesting thing about them? The character I played was fascinating. He and I were both in our mid-twenties, and I think we all go through some turmoil at that stage, trying to work out where we fit into the world."

Sky / Ben Blackall

He was certainly a good fit for Downton. He adored the cast and would mess around on the app Vine with Maggie Smith. Lord Gillingham was one of Mary's suitors and When he was cast fans tweeted to him: "Please look after Mary, she's really fragile right now." "Give me a f***ing break!" He was seen as the "Matthew replacement" but revelled in playing a character some loved, others hated. "I'd get tweets ranging from 'I want to have your babies' to 'You are the devil incarnate, I want you to die'."

Cullen has previously said he'd like to see a Downton film. But wouldn't Smith's character be around 120? "She must be about 120 now! You couldn't have Downton without Maggie — it wouldn't be worth watching." Perhaps she's immortal? "That's the twist of the film. It's actually a vampire movie. That's why none of them ages."

Next, he's shooting an action film, Henry. "I've never done action before. I have to get really buff and run around shooting." That would be good preparation for another film needing a new actor: Bond.

How about it? "I don't think I'll be getting the call, but they know where to find me. Maybe Idris Elba will decide he only wants to do one, and then I can take over." He laughs: "That works for me."

Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin

The Five continues on Sky 1 this Friday at 9pm

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