Sam Reid

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0:43Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. The last person I was mistaken for was literally at the airport by all of these autograph hunters. And I felt terrible. I was like, it was Hayden Christensen. And they had all of these pictures of Hayden Christensen. They're like, hang on, and I was like, and they were smashing on the car window, like pulling over. And I was like, oh, this is so embarrassing.

1:12I was like, I'm not, should I just warn the thing? I was like, I'm not Hayden Christensen. And I was like, it felt so bad for Hayden Christensen. Like that was extreme. Star Wars fans. Yeah. Intense. That was horrendous. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now.

1:31Hey guys, it's Josh. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Today on the show, first time guest, Sam Reid. That's right. The Vampire Lestat is in the house. This is a great conversation about this amazing show, his fantastic career, and a rare deep dive with Sam talking all things Vampire Lestat. Thanks guys, as always, for checking out the podcast. Remember to hit that subscribe button on YouTube, on Spotify, however you're enjoying it. I appreciate you guys before we get to sam today uh quick reminders as always check out our patreon patreon.com slash happy sad confused you get early access you get bonus content you get access to our live events we've got some good ones coming up in june including matt smith is coming up he's always a delight he's going to be at the 92nd street y with me we have another very very very big one coming up a young lady who's never done the podcast before and i cannot say who it is but you will want to be there for that one.

2:25On Patreon, you'll get the first dibs on that and discount codes and all that kind of fun stuff. Okay. So main event today is Sam Reid. If you have watched Interview with a Vampire, you know why I desperately wanted to have Sam on the show. He is so fantastic. He owns this role as Lestat. The new season, the third season, has a title change because they are now adapting Anne Rice's classic book, The Vampire Lestat. And if you know that book, you know this is a different kind of list that he is in rocker mode and Sam more than delivers. He is performing throughout the season. Um, I've seen six episodes.

3:01It's fantastic. As we tape this, he was about to perform live at the show's premiere in New York city. Um, a man of many talents. And like I said, this, he really hasn't done many of these kinds of long form conversations. So this was a fun excuse to do a deep dive into his background, the near misses that came before interview with a vampire his collaboration with all the folks at the show including of course jacob anderson louis on the show um if you love the show i think you're gonna dig this conversation with sam so without any further ado please enjoy me and sam reed sam you're doing the podcast i am you ready yeah i'm ready it's good to see you man yeah you too great good i've been doing a lot of traveling that's good it's been yeah it's been a minute since you wrapped what last october what start like uh um we wrapped when did we wrap yeah wrapped filming in october but then i went to uh i stayed around and did a lot of adr first because there's a lot of um voiceovers i stuck so i stuck around and then we went went to um la to finish the album that's not something it's not the sentence you usually say when you're doing the series then we have to finish the album yeah crazy yeah it was a crazy experience um yeah yeah so i didn't really finish until Christmas time.

4:16Amazing. Okay, so we're gonna dig into all of it. Obviously folks know your work and and the new season now dubbed the Vampire Lestat. Very appropriate that you're front and center with me today. We've talked before, we've never done the one-on-one thing. No, yeah. I've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah, not for this long. Yeah, and you don't, you know, I did my research. You don't do a ton of this kind of thing, do you? No, no, I don't. Thank you for the trust in advance. Are you one of these like annoyingly like charismatic people that's also shy at the same time i mean shy is like a strong i say shy i mean i i think i think also i'm just like i i don't i don't like being the center of attention because i don't i feel like i'm often the center of attention at work but that's because that's like there's a you know a structure around it but uh yeah i get a bit sick of that talking about myself or you know hopefully about 45 minutes is your cap and then you can vomit or do whatever you need to do were you a shy kid i did it yeah i was a very quiet kid yeah I have very very always very quiet but um but I had like this other other side of me which was like acting and like this big outlet and I was very really into that so I'd be very quiet and shy um shy I'd be quiet yeah um but not but then you know very loud when I wanted to be right so I kept you know I guess that's the kind of thing is you can kind of balance it out um where you know i i probably do have a lot of like that feeling where you know i get exhausted by talking to multiple people right for a long time so i sometimes need to just go home and like stare at a wall to like come down from that no i get i mean i tend to see you at these comic cons right it's anio comic con i don't know about you i mean we're kind of like flip sides of the same coin right like i'm moderating things you're in the middle of the craziness i always am like so spent after that just like emotionally exhausted it's like because like for me i don't know you know for i don't know about for you but like it's it's kind of like 20 extra of me when i'm doing this when i'm doing anything and then i need to kind of like go back into yeah i mean the comic con is its own like beast i mean it's insanity it's it is kind of fun i think i do really enjoy the comic cons i i find them to be like such a wild vibe and like a really intense energy but uh yeah You do need the time to come down.

6:32Yeah. Have you ever had anything akin to stage fright? I mean, you've obviously done theater, done a lot of TV and film. You're now a rock god. Does stage fright ever kind of like you? Yeah. Yeah, I have stage fright. But I don't have, like, incapacitating stage fright. I think that stage fright is sort of normal. But the thing is, like, doing live, I don't get stage fright when I'm filming. Like, I'm actively, like, I'm a bit disturbed if I feel nervous. because or at least if the character feels nervous and I feel nervous and I'm like okay well that's that's kind of useful but if you feel nervous like when you're filming and that doesn't really relate to the scene that you're doing it's like why would this character feel nervous it's a bit discombobulating so I actively like don't and I don't really know how I can avoid it mind over matter just like I'm acting like I'm relaxed so I'll be relaxed yeah I mean I was definitely in my first film I remember being like terrified and and a couple of times I remember like filming things you know where i was like working with a director who i really admired and just being so terrified and that wasn't very valuable to me or the director as it turns out but um but doing live things yeah there's like an element to which you don't really know how it's gonna go yeah um which is which is scary but it's also you kind of feed off those energy those nerves i think yeah so that okay that segues well into we've kind of hinted at this so like this season is fantastic.

7:57I was telling you before, I've seen this for six episodes. This is something that people have been very anxious probably since Interview with the Vampire was greenlit as a series, hoping it would go there. It has gone there. I guess my first question is like when you signed on way back when, like I guess four or five years ago, was this talked about as eventually we'll hopefully get to Vampire Will Stop? Yeah. Well, we were supposed to do this book season two. And then really just before we started, like a couple of weeks before we started shooting season one Roland was like we can't do it based on the budget and stuff we're going to have to split it in two so I was like okay that's fine so we'll split the season in two and I thought it was much better for it because we got so much more depth and all the stuff in Paris like you got to explore Armand in so much more detail I thought it was a much better decision but yeah we were always going to go down this route with Lestat and we were always going to he was gonna have he was always gonna be a music guy i think early on roland was more interested in him being more of a classical musician oh interesting but um that did develop into a you know a rock star not not right away but you know maybe a year in yeah so they obviously when they were auditioning you i mean you had a background you'd done musicals there's no conversation about me singing or anything like that really no no that's kind of a big leap then like oh let's check the resume he can sing to be honest i think it's more about daniel hart than it was about me i think it was always going to be daniel hart was going to be you know writing these songs and and he i remember in season one he was like can you send me a recording of you singing like on your just on your phone can you just send me like anything and i can't remember what i sang i sang some random song but i was like trying to to show him like my range like where we could like sing um you know and then when i got to new orleans like because i was gonna do because of the the scene where lestart kills the opera singer like you know and i had to learn this opera song the first thing i did for this show was opera classes so they put me in opera classes so like i had always been singing so i don't think anyone would be like he can't he really can't do it so you might have to so that but uh but it was never really a conversation i don't think they were expecting it to be this many songs yeah yeah so what was your what was your musical theater background growing up were you always doing musical theater were you seeing shows like what was your interest yeah musical theater i mean um or rock concerts or anything yeah i mean like i i mean i loved going to festivals we had a festival in australia called big day out which was like the one that we went to as teenagers um and then yeah like you know i would i would go to a lot of music gigs all my friends are musicians in australia okay or growing up they were you know and so um i was always the actor which was kind of like the lame the lame creative choice where everyone was like cool rock star and we're called cool musicians with tattoos and yeah and i was like no i must preserve myself for the potential to be anything um so yeah i i had a lot of experience with music and my you know i've got my cousin is a musician and yeah there's been a lot of music around me um and i did start singing lessons when i was about 16 okay um uh just to add to the repertoire like i'm not really sure why i i'm not really sure why i did that to be all fully honest with you i think i liked singing and i thought maybe my mom thought it'd be a good idea i'm not really sure um and uh and then when i went to drama school we did a lot of musical theater we did a lot of music we did like lots of sundheim projects and all of that kind of stuff got it um and then and then i never really touched it again until i did um a girl from the north country with sheila uh who's who's our kasha which is amazing um yeah and that's when i did that and and uh and then that was sort of like my big experience of yeah of singing for a year because it was like we did that show for a year that's intense yeah so favorites in the musical so you said you did some sondheim back in school i mean like one of my favorites yeah gosh um hmm i mean i don't know if i have that many favorite musicals like do you go see a movie musical like have you do you see like the wickeds and the mama me is first i saw first wicked okay um uh i don't really i don't really actively seek them out i like the old musicals i like the old Hollywood musicals, you know, like Kiss Me Kate.

12:37Sure. I love that one. I'm a sucker for, like, Guys and Dolls. Yeah. Like, the old, like, Brando. Yeah. Not a great singer, but still with Brando. I did Guys and Dolls at drama school. Did you? You were obviously... No. No? I was not Sky Madison. No? You were Nathan? No, I was... You were not sit down, you're rocking the boat guy. You were not... I was Abernathy. I was Abernathy at my college. play in college in a in um camp there you go so we basically have the same yeah yeah there you go follow the fold yeah that was it follow the fold and and uh keep your strong arms whatever the song is that one yeah uh which i really milked every time yeah i had came out like this is my song i really milked it which i thought was a little bit inappropriate because i turned into this like a love song which sort of felt it doesn't feel right didn't feel right but i just went there because i thought this is the only song that i get in the show yeah um at the time but yeah it'd be a strange one for Lestat to do, Follow the Fold.

13:34It has different meanings this time around. I feel like he could do anything if he wanted to. We'll be right back with more Happy Sad Confused.

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17:11Okay, so talk to me a little bit about approaching this. I mean, there's so many layers to this we could dig into because you're not just singing, you're singing in character. You're singing in this character that you know and love and have embraced. There's the physicality, there's the actual singing. I don't know, where do you begin? What's the starting point? It's a good question, and that's where I thought as well. I was like, how do you begin this? What's he supposed to sound like? and Daniel set me up with Matthew Santos who continued to work throughout the whole show who's the vocal coach who's an incredible singer himself a musician and so Matthew started working with me very early on sort of looks like running the songs and like we've you know because it's hard to it's really hard to practice I'm learning this singing alone because it's very hard to find an actual private space in fact in Toronto So in the hotel I was staying at, there were so many complaints because I was like belting in the hotel room.

18:14Not about the quality of the scene, just sheer volume. And there were so many complaints, but production hid it from me until right until I'd finished the last song. And they were like, by the way, Sam. Everyone here hates you. Everybody on the floor. There's been constant complaints. And we have just kind of like dampened out and blocked you from knowing that. I was so mortified, mortified, mortified, but it hasn't, it has been really hard for me to like practice. I mean, I still practice at home and, um, even my neighbor the other day was like, you're getting so much better. I was like, you're padding the walls of your closet.

18:48This is so bad. This is so embarrassing. So anyway, it's great to be able to like practice with someone and I'd go into a studio with him in LA. Um, uh, but really it was like trying to find like, what does Lestat sound like? Like, what does he sing like? and daniel and matthew was like just sing like you do like you sing like i don't know how i even sing like how how to do this um and it just evolved i think over time yeah it was really hard to find the context of the songs because i didn't know them at that time so like i was just learning the songs and they all felt really crazy to me because i didn't know what i was like what is going on in this scene like in this um but as the context came in um it started to make more sense and it definitely just it just became an extension of him like doing a monologue or something yeah so i i i crowdsourced because obviously you have a lot of fans this show has a lot of fans and um some happy second fuse listeners sent some questions and this is from azara who wants to know to the rock star aspect changed the way you inhabited him physically this season i mean yes i know because like he he's always like a performer in a way so it kind of like felt more like let's start because i was like oh cool and i've always tried to like put that rock star kind of performer yeah into him from the beginning um but actually i sort of like no i think but probably more what happened is that i i it's like you got to do the list art performance yeah and so then i got to like take it away because now like i was like you know providing that bit that we kind of really needed to see about let's start so that i could do less of that outside of the right the concerts yeah so it kind of did change the way i did him but not necessarily on stage is it is it possible i mean i guess it's possible for any character like to be to go too big in a character but it's kind of one of like the luxuries of like was thought is you can go pretty big i mean i'm always feeling like i've gone too big like i'm always calling roland like i'm like hey i i'm a little bit worried about this scene he was like no no that's It's like, it makes sense.

20:53I always give an option where it's much more pulled back. Like I do. I do have shades to future casting directors. I have, I contain multitudes. And I always do. I mean, I was like, but like, this is the extreme version. This is maybe the instinct. And then this is the one pulled back. And Roland always goes for like the opera version, which is. It's the nature of the material. Yeah. Yeah. He has taught me to like, you know. release and just give it away and just not not question it yeah is it do you feel exposed when you're on a stage you're like scantily dressed you're in full rock star regalia i mean look the nature of the show you've done intimate scenes that stuff is very exposing too is it is it in a way more exposing as exposing to do like an intimate scene versus like singing in front of a crowd um um i don't know if like i do find it exposing i mean i find yeah i don't know if i like exposing sometimes it can be um like a lot because like you've got a lot of like strangers touching you and you know like there's that can be like a you do sort of just you do shut down right not in a in a traumatized way just in a way that you're like just do disassociate a little bit from the extremity of the situation yeah but i don't necessarily feel like exposed um you know because it's the it's the job i mean the absurdity of it is like you're doing like a sex scene or a nudity scene or like you're doing a concert and you're like you don't have any clothes on you're shooting it for like you know eight ten minute takes and they call cut and then i go and put on a a shirt or like what's the point you all just saw everything yeah a cardigan and be like But that's in between the takes, I think, where it's like, when it's off, then it's a bit like, well, this is unnecessary to walk around.

22:47Right. Yeah. Right. It's interesting because obviously, and this is a good question that someone sent in that I wanted to get to because the nature of the show is so much about perspective and who's centered. LB says that, you know, Lestat spent two seasons being filtered through other people's memories of him. Now we're moving into Lestat's own perspective. did playing him change once you stopped asking how is louis seeing him and started asking how does lestat see himself yeah i mean yeah it did change yeah i mean it did i mean mostly the biggest thing for me and i know i've said this a couple times but but it's true is the biggest thing for me is like like during the first seasons when it's real lestat or like not a not a dream version of Lestat because that dream character is it was totally different but when it was like you know Lestat as how he's seen yes as himself um I knew that he felt remorse regret shame um questioned himself you know you know felt like most of the normal breadth of kind of you know emotions that a human-like creature would feel but but I also knew that that you would never see that right so So that was sort of difficult to do.

24:07It was sort of like you'd be like, I know he's blown up here, but he's also feeling a bit embarrassed about that. Right. He's second-guessing himself. So the difference between this season was that I knew that you were going to be able to see that. Right. So, yeah, it was sort of, it was more like, he does have a lot more doubt

24:33than you necessarily saw him before. So yeah, it did change. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about, I mean, we obviously always, the fans love seeing you and Jacob and that relationship is so key. And on and off screen, it's important to you. You guys clearly became fast friends and that relationship's been very important. Talk to me a little bit about what it's like to be going on a journey like this because this is a very unique kind of experience. It's been really crazy. Yeah, I mean, you've had a lot of experiences in your career, but nothing quite like this. he had gone through game of thrones so he knew fandoms in that way i guess was that valuable has that has that continued to be valuable to kind of have a cohort to go on the journey with totally yes the best because you you you you have so much to relate to and and like little things that don't necessarily like mean anything to anybody else like you have a shared like a very intense shared experience with someone which is like so valuable like in anything in life like it's like so nice to be able to share something with someone um so that we can like we do you know talk about it all um yeah it's been a weird it's been a weird journey because um you know it's hard to fathom sometimes because for us it's just like a job like it's not just a job is a bit of a lifestyle now because it's like been going on for so long and it is all consuming but we just sort of go off and do our thing and um you know like right we love making the show and then it has this whole other life or that you sort of get glimpses into sometimes that are just sort of like oh yeah this is being seen by millions of people who are tattooing themselves and yeah it can be very staggering it can be very sort of shocking um and you know like wonderful but also like confusing but the wild thing is it's sort of always been set up in our show that that and and in the books too it's like set up that that the the construct of the media be whatever it is exists out in the real world as well yeah and this season we like go into it even in a more extreme sense like the meta levels of the way that it kind of like balances and so the making of dark is fantastic yeah but even like you know because i mean like malloy sort of says in season one he's talking about claudia is like you put it out into the real world you put claudia out in the real world and they'll make it make make of her what what they want which is you know because it's such an incredible character written by anne rice and and then there she is in in season three in a um halloween costume like a little kids are dressing up as i mean armand and louis too but you sort of like and that's that that's what it feels like a little bit yeah i mean for me though sometimes seeing people get dressed up as us is just such a trip.

27:19I love it so much. I love to see it. I just love it. How do you manage? I mean, I know enough from talking to you in the past that you maintain a bit of a distance. You're not on social media as far as I know. No. But you still are aware clearly of what's going on. I mean, you try. I mean, look, I still am tempted at times. And look, I'm human. It's impossible to be that controlled. I'm pretty disciplined with it though. I'm pretty good at being like, that's enough. Like, you know, and also like I don't have accounts. So you're very limited, like what you can see. You're not working out there, are you?

27:54You're, you're. No, I don't have, I don't have accounts. Like physical accounts. So like Instagram, I can't see anything at all. Wow. Like Instagram, I get, people will send me like, people get, I get sent stuff all the time. Sure. And like when you get sent a link to an Instagram page that you don't have an account to, you kind of get like this very stock standard page. And if you click it, it goes, please sign in. So you're like, I can't see that one. So Instagram, Twitter, like I see more of because it can, you can see more of that or X or whatever. But that's a sort of insidious place that I don't.

28:26So, yeah, I mean, I see, I see things, but, but I think the benefit of, of like having some boundaries with it is, is that I, like, I still need to do my job. You don't want it to affect the work. Yeah, you don't want to. And it really can because sometimes you see like takes that are just like, watch that. How did that become a reality from this show? But that's, I mean, that's the point of it. It can overwhelm some shows. I mean, I've done so much with like these like intense fandoms for all these shows. Like I've done so much with Stranger Things in recent years and it's like, and it's great in some ways, like fandoms are amazing, but like it can sometimes overtake the narrative of what the creators and the actors even want to write about yeah i mean i'm i'm grateful that roland and hannah don't really feel that pressure in fact actually if anything they do respond to it they're very aware of of it and they you know have writers rooms where they discuss it all and they talk about it and they they don't they don't write in like fan fiction they write in the concept or the universe in which the people who are watching it understand so you know like there's like all of that stuff with the um the gen z book um right you know bookstore clerks who kind of like have all of this and originally in the script um that scene was much longer all those those kids were they had a much larger arc and they it was amazing like their dialogue was like completely incomprehensible because they're just talking about all of this really wild stuff so they do they do like weave it in and give reference to to the audience but um they don't let it take over because i think really people say they want to see something and they really need to see something or this really needs to happen something you don't you don't really know what you need to see what you want to see until you've seen it and then you're like oh wow that's what i needed to see so you kind of have to like when you're going on you've done working on it you do have to like hold on to that that that state of mind being like this might be confronting for somebody or like they might think they really want this character to go in this particular way but I think once they see what they've done and what choice they've made I think they'll be happy yeah since I since I wronged Jacob a couple years ago at comic-con and tried to have you talk smack about him let me make it up to him now give me 30 seconds on what makes Jacob a great actor a great screen partner oh wow I mean I mean those that first season when we were working together his load of work was so overwhelming like i mean it was such an intense amount i mean it was intense for both of us in terms of just like the pressure and the extremity and you know every time i would speak it would be like a fucking two pages i mean i remember alan taylor be like oh my god just keep going you keep going but um but um you know jacob like just had so much to do i mean it's just and and then those dubai scenes were just gigantic and he was not only incredibly talented and able to like you know do all of the work come to work incredibly prepared like so prepared that it just bit like you wouldn't even know how much work he had right um uh but he also like generates a environment on set which is incredibly inclusive and warm and friendly and everyone comes to work and has a good time yeah and um i mean that's like one of the best things that you can ask from um you know scene partner and you know the leading actor i mean it's this kind of like to create that space on set that everyone feels welcome and everyone feels um like they're able to try things right yeah that's yeah and it's a really it's a really special um skill that he has is it true you guys had the screen test over over zoomed initially everything crazy i didn't meet a single soul from this show until I turned up to start working on it.

32:24I mean, screen tests generally suck anyway, like chemistry reads, even if you're in the same room. But I can only imagine, like, how do you sense chemistry over a computer screen? Yeah, and I don't really know if they did sense chemistry. Like, I mean, like a chemistry test, a lot of the time is like, what do these two people look like next to each other? You know, what does everybody think of this? Like, when they're incorporating the other actors into the conversation and people are talking you know i don't know if they're like whoa did you feel that i don't really know if that's true um i think you know like a lot is said about jacob and my chemistry but actually the the key to that chemistry is roland jones yeah because he is such he's so fiercely protective over his material and who he casts and i mean obviously we had we've had um kate road james as a casting director and avie california from the first season but amazing casting directors but the the way that roland like does background checks yeah on everybody like he does vibe check to make sure there's a massive vibe check so there's no dickheads anywhere that's huge yeah which is disturbing because you're like is it me you know because that's what i usually say like if you don't but i don't know if you don't know who it is then it must be you but but um no but he really he does such a he does such an amazing deep dive on everybody.

33:47Every single person who's working on the show to make sure that there's no one there who would make things difficult. And that's a big key to why Jacob and I got on so well is because we're actually very similar people. We come from very different parts of the world and have very different experiences although we do have a lot of mutual friends in England because I spent time there. But, yeah, I think it was like also that we instantly became friends. Yeah. Like instantly. And I was like, wow, this is, I've just made a, I'm in my 30s and I've made like a best friend. This is a crazy thing to do because you don't really do that, you know?

34:27Yeah. The list is closed for me. It's over. I might let you in. It's not too late. Use us as an example that it's not too late to find new friends. You're my inspiration. Yeah. More Happy Say Confused coming up.

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35:43Can we talk a little bit about your background because we've talked so much about this great show, but I mean Growing up so you went to lambda that was kind of like where you really yeah double down on this is obviously you don't do that Flippantly, did you have kind of like a crop of actors? Like I did the math was like Sam Claflin was he there was a year above me. Yeah, okay Yeah, so you had some contemporaries that were kind of at similar points in in careers early on or I mean no sam sam sort of had a skyrocketing moment i can't remember what he did first but he was a year above me but he was everyone sort of i think he left to go and do was hunger games was it the first big thing was it the hunger games that he went and left i don't think he left to do the game it was a different thing anyway but it was he did it he did it it was like a itv drama okay um where he played a guy over multiple years i think jim broadbent i mean sorry sorry sam i don't know But I love Sam.

36:40He's a wonderful guy. Yeah, you've worked with him. Yeah, I have worked with him, yeah. And he's been a good friend for many years. I haven't seen him in a long time. But yeah, he was a year above. People would leave school to go and do a job. But if you left, you weren't allowed back. Is Lambda one of those things where you can't take a professional job while you're in school? It's like, you'll be out here. Yes, they don't encourage it. Yeah, you have to finish school. They don't feel like you're ready. But I got a job while I was still at school. But I was on a student visa. And for me to progress onto like a working visa in the UK, I had to get my degree in professional acting.

37:17It's just like professional actor. Yeah. And so, I mean, the stock standard protocol, they would have kicked me out of school, which was, you know, you would have been kicked out with a celebration if you chose to do it. They didn't really look very highly upon you going to do a film. Was this anonymous? Was this Roland Emmerich? Yeah, it was anonymous. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. um and so they made me um ask roland emmerich to give me a score like a mark so it could be part of my module what did you get from roland well i didn't i could never ask him to give me a score so my agent and i just made up a fake score and we were like let's not give me full marks it's embarrassing so i was like i think we actually gave my me pretty like average average marks and were you i think you alluded to this earlier i mean what was that first experience like being on set was it a little bit of a culture shock like with a camera oh yeah i mean my first scene was with um vanessa redgrave oh my god yeah my very first ever seen as an actor like being paid to be an oh no i did like one episode of television when i was a kid but um but uh yeah Yeah, it was opposite Vanessa Redgrave.

38:26And she came up to me just beforehand. And the scene was like, I burst, like the Earl of Essex bursts into the room. And I can't remember, he's annoyed about something. And he like runs, he like storms up to the Queen and says something. I can't remember what it was. But she came and there was these amazing sets of shooting in Berlin. And it was just like, what the hell? And it was very overwhelming, the whole thing. And also at that time, and they've stopped doing it now, but that time, the way they would put makeup on you was with an airbrush. And so like that, I'd be like, like this kind of thing in the mornings.

39:04And it would be like so thick. You'd have so much makeup on. And it just, everything felt very extreme. I had this weird wig on. And I was in this like amazing costume. I could barely walk in it with all this like armor, this like plastic armor and everything was. and Vanessa Redcrave came up to me she's like I've heard this is your first day as an actor and I was like yeah she's like are you nervous and I was like yeah yeah because you're Vanessa Redcrave and she was like I'm really nervous too which was so sweet it was so lovely um yeah and that actually did did calm me down and and um and I and I you know was so green that I was like storming in but like full of like you know storming and storming that I kept walking past the camera right you know and roland was like you know sam you're doing great but you're you keep walking past you've got you've got to stay in front of the camera you're gonna stay in the frame he's like but don't don't ever change your enthusiasm you're so sweet keep it going this is great your enthusiasm is great but like no to stay in the team shot yeah so when you look at like the 2010s you're working a bell's a big film for you 71 it's a great cast in there like are you also kind of like are there near misses i mean again you're a jobbing actor so many misses yeah so many oh so many misses like is there one or two that jump out of like oh this is going to be the one that's going to change my career i'm in the top two or three and it feels like it almost happened um like what were you going on i mean i mean oh you mean that i missed they didn't get yeah oh gosh let's let's really mind the psychology the the uh yeah i mean i have i've had a lot of projects collapse like to not go ahead which I think was like quite brutal particularly in my 20s it was pretty hard because you'd commit to like you'd work so hard to get so I mean like I remember I screen tested for Terminator and the guy Courtney got yes for Alan Taylor who directed the first episode of interview with the vampire sister and that was I mean I think all my agents were really excited about it i was a bit like i don't know if this is the if this is my film i don't really think this is right for me right um you know and it wasn't and that's fine yeah so i didn't that one didn't feel like a like a life-changing experience but the ones that that that did kind of because you i mean like god i when i was in my 20s out of drama school and like jobbing and i might be going for you know i had a rule with my agents i think it's very different now um there's not as much stuff getting made by rule with my agents i would like do one i could only do one audition a day right if you think back i was like doing like five auditions a week you'd just be like and i was living in a in a share house with my friends from drama school and and harry melling who's like you know extraordinary actor all my best friends you know and simon man yonder lara rossi harriet kemsley who's like turned into this amazing um stand-up comedian um i think she's like one anyway um uh so so one day because just you put so much into it it was just like psychologically a lot to like really it's too hard it's too hard to learn all the lines like because people would give you like 10 pages and you have to go in to do this like so you know you're just like you would just drill at night you'd just be learning lines going into auditions learning lines going into auditions learning lines going to audition um and uh it was like you'd be praying to just get the job so that you didn't have to audition for just to end this madness yeah just for a patch you know um and you know and then i had i had like people lovely casting judges like susie paris who like just cast me in all these like tv jobs and it was like i was you know keeping me a light or keep paying my rent but it was when i booked like i booked um around that time i think i got a um it was paradise lost it was an alex priors film oh yes and i had this was around forever they kept trying to make it yeah and um and i was originally australian filmmaker alex proyas yeah great film dark city one of my favorites yeah amazing amazing and i was originally um and i was testing and testing and testing for this over and over and then originally i was going to play gabriel and um and that's what's testing testing testing and then um casey affleck was cast as gabriel was like but we think you'd be really good rafael i was like okay is i gonna try no i got cast as rafael and then you know like uh i realized oh they want you to get into shape and to go to a personal trainer and i started working with this personal trainer in london that was like you know i had like six weeks to like gain weight i'd be like eating steak and nuts for breakfast i was like it was a totally stressful experience and flying out to los angeles it's my first time in los angeles ever they put me up in they put me up in um in the holiday inn in Santa Monica.

43:57And I remember being like, whoa, this is such a weird experience. Like, anyway. And then, but then going over to the studios and doing, making full 3D avatars of your face and sitting there like doing every facial expression so they could do it. And then like two weeks before that was supposed to start, but it got canceled. Yeah. It was like a big one. I remember that one. Yeah. And I, it was, teaches you a lesson. I mean, I guess, I mean, it was just, it was just one of those things where I was like, Oh, and all of that is gone. And now you've got to go back. And, and the lucky thing about that was I wasn't in Los Angeles anyway at that time.

44:39Right. Um, and, uh, I had done a self tape for Susanna beer Serena. Yeah. And then, um, and then my agent called and she was like, so she said, Susanna Beer wants to meet you. By the way, Paradise Lost has collapsed. Bad news, but? But Susanna Beer wants to meet you. Can you get on a plane? I mean, like, you know, in two days or something. I was like, whoa, okay. So, like, I had to buy a ticket to get on the plane. You know, like, fly back to London. Because they're not going to fly you back. I mean, there's a lot of... That's what it is. People maybe don't know that, you know, particularly at those times you're really, like, working to pay for your life.

45:19Because it's so expensive. Totally. like crazy um and um yeah so then i yeah got ended up working with bradley cooper on serena and he told me a lot more about what went down on paradise on paradise last which i won't say publicly but yeah um and then the other one that collapsed like that that was like very heartbreaking was i was in a steve mcqueen tv series called codes of conduct that um i was shooting a tv show in new orleans that um i probably shouldn't have done but i did it because i um loved um learn a show figure directed um the riot club and she had said hey can you come over and do this show and you know um and so i went over and did that with her and then i was uh you know auditioning for um this steve mcqueen project uh tv series called code of conduct and like you know again like flying that time they did fly me over to new york from new orleans um to screen test for him and then you know got it and then signed this very similar to what i have now this very long standing contract this complete thing there's a lot more um uh yeah there's a lot more yeah it was a very intense small print contract i have to say it was a very extreme um thing but um uh and then moved to new york shot we shot the pilot got picked up then moved to new york like my entire life from london over to new york i was like this is where i'm going to live now i'm going to be shooting the show and um you know like we had all these other kind of potential options that i could have done some other films here and there um but i was like no i'm here i'm doing this yeah like this is this is everything it's like you know the most exciting thing and then again it just it's crazy yeah yeah and that that was that one was hard because that was very discombobulating that one was there like were you fitting a type like were casting directors envisioning you for a certain kind of a thing like like were you because like that was also the time of like it was like ya that was like you know there was that there was like the romance fiction kind of things like the outlanders of the world like were you kind of going up for anything and everything or ever anything and everything and i think maybe that's probably been my problem is that i I'm not very good at a basic thing to a single type like I like to like try and be different things um I mean I think in England when I was living in England I was really like posh guy like you know I was really like and then that might be you know that was a bit of riot club right that right club and I mean I pretty much everything I did was this in England was this sort of like RP or like period movie um in some capacity and after a while that that that did become difficult yeah yeah because it was sort of like i don't feel i don't i can't do this all the time and i don't feel like this character and um and i did and then you know after um codes of conduct because he was like a he was like a new jersey cop so like i i and you know and i started working with a trainer for that and i like i had um i got up to like 90 kilos which is crazy i mean and I don't know you're going kilos, but like season two of Interview with a Vampire was something crazy like 69, 70 kilos.