Matthew Rhys has at all times been drawn to enjoying males on the fringes of society.
Prior to now yr, he’s delivered two genre-bending performances that present simply how seamlessly he can slip into the pores and skin of an outsider. In Netflix’s The Beast in Me, he brings equal elements allure and menace to Nile Jarvis, an actual property mogul accused of murdering his first spouse who takes a perverse curiosity in his next-door neighbor, grieving creator Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes). And in Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay, Rhys delightfully toes the road between horror and comedy as Tom Loftis, a beleaguered mayor desperately attempting to spice up tourism to a New England island — regardless of the residents’ long-standing perception that the land is cursed.
Though his method to appearing hasn’t modified, Rhys admits that, over time, the best way he chooses his roles has. “You spend your 20s going, ‘Oh my God, what will people think?’ And then in your 30s and 40s, you go, ‘Oh, actually, no one fucking cares what you do or think,’ ” says Rhys, 51. “So I’m like, ‘Learn more. Try an accent. Make a fool of yourself.’ The massive performances Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman did, they’re huge swings — and I’m like, ‘I should start doing that because time’s operating out.’ “
Rhys takes a very huge swing in The Beast in Me, tapping right into a darker facet of himself that he has not often proven onscreen. Danes, who helped develop the restricted collection along with her Homeland showrunner Howard Gordon, says Nile was at all times probably the most troublesome character to make sense of. “The actor needed this sense of menace while remaining engaging and charming; you want to feel drawn to him and also mildly repelled by and terrified of him,” Danes tells THR. “That’s a lot of competing forces at play, and not very many people could manage that as deftly as Matthew did.”
Kate O’Flynn, Rhys and Stephen Root seek out a haunting spirit in Widow’s Bay.
Apple TV+
For Rhys, the cat-and-mouse dynamic between Aggie and Nile was “very concretely” established within the pilot, when they’re pressured to confront their preconceptions of one another throughout a public lunch. “This unlikely friendship forms between the two of them whereby they’ve both been outed a bit by society and they’re both loners. They’re like a shadow self of each other, but they’re also deeply intrigued by each other,” Rhys says. Nile personally enjoys goading Aggie: “He likes how reactionary she is to him. He enjoys that barely perversely as a result of she’s attempting to current as one thing, and he’s like, ‘I see you, and that’s not you.’ “
Over eight episodes, Rhys paints a compelling psychological portrait of a person whose “originating wound” was his domineering father (Jonathan Banks) blaming him for his mom dying in childbirth. Carrying that guilt for many years has manifested in a quietly simmering rage that comes out in crimes of ardour, together with killing his spouse. “It’s a self- fulfilling prophecy that the way the rage was created makes him do something that then magnifies that rage again,” Rhys notes.
Rhys wished Nile’s propensity for sustaining an unsettling sense of calm — whilst his world comes crashing down round him amid Aggie’s investigation into his troubled previous — to resemble Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. Along with the writers, the actor discovered little non-public moments to disclose Nile’s true nature. As an illustration, in a very memorable chicken-eating scene in episode two, “there’s this moment where impulse takes over, where he’s enjoying something so much, where he can’t help himself — which I think happens to Nile a lot,” Rhys says. What Nile does at all times “becomes something slightly more uncontrolled.”
Nile inevitably will get his comeuppance when his second spouse, Nina (Brittany Snow), information him confessing to his homicidal tendencies. However whilst stress ratcheted up between the 2, Snow marveled at Rhys’ potential to slide out and in of character at a second’s discover. “Before we would enter a bedroom scene where he would have to scream at me, or we would be getting in a fight, or we would be slapping each other, we would be laughing so hard that I was crying,” Snow says.
Rhys’ pure wit is quickly obvious in Widow’s Bay, which pays homage to Jaws, Stephen King and John Carpenter. Rhys had by no means learn something fairly like creator Katie Dippold’s pilot and, just like the viewers, “wanted to know what happened to these people.”
With Claire Danes in The Beast in Me.
Courtesy of Netflix
Missing formal comedic coaching, Rhys initially was apprehensive concerning the present’s tone, however he felt relieved when Dippold and producing director Hiro Murai instructed him to simply “play the reality” of each state of affairs. “They said, ‘The comedy of the horror should be character- and situation-driven, and if we play it for real, it should evolve from that,’ ” he recollects. “That was an ideal liberation, after which I used to be like, ‘I’m simply going to do that as a drama, and I’ll be wonderful.’ “
A lot of the primary season’s comedy is derived from Tom residing in fixed denial that the city the place he would spend summers along with his divorced fisherman father is haunted. Tom’s insistence on discovering semi-plausible, scientific explanations for the island’s paranormal exercise — particularly the notorious Sea Hag in episode three — finally comes from a well-meaning, albeit misguided, place. “He’s trying to raise his son as a single parent, and he thinks, ‘OK, I’m going to make the best of this situation. I’m going to turn this town into something prosperous where my son can flourish,’ ” Rhys says. However, naturally, he can’t keep “blinkered” for lengthy.
Whereas awaiting the inexperienced mild for a possible second season of Widow’s Bay, Rhys just lately wrapped manufacturing on the brand new season of Apple TV’s authorized anthology Presumed Harmless, and he’s already busy making ready for the brand new BBC drama Dragon Slayers, by which he’ll play legendary investigative journalist Harry Evans. Rhys is also hoping to deliver his one-man Richard Burton present to New York Metropolis subsequent yr.
However the actor will at all times maintain out hope for a continuation of Brothers & Sisters, by which he and Luke Macfarlane performed one of many first main homosexual {couples} on community TV. Rhys even confirms that Tom sounding much like his B&S character, Kevin, was by design: “I wanted a slightly higher [vocal] register because Kevin was always slightly annoyed and pleading with people in the same way Tom is.”
After ABC abruptly cancelled the drama in 2011 following a management change, Rhys reveals he, co-star Dave Annable, and producing director Ken Olin unsuccessfully pitched the brand new brass a two-hour vacation particular to wrap up the story. However with Disney just lately reviving each Scrubs and Malcolm within the Center, Rhys doesn’t see why that dialog can’t be revisited, particularly with Oscar and Emmy winner Sally Discipline on the helm. “One of the reasons we did it was because people still come up and say, ‘I really love Brothers & Sisters,’” he says, “which is why we were like, ‘People would still watch it!’”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone challenge of The Hollywood Reporter journal. To obtain the journal, click here to subscribe.
