Tom Bateman was walking through Soho on his way to an audition when his agent rang to tell him he’d won the lead in ITV’s much-anticipated new action-adventure drama – but not before winding him up first. “He said, ‘Just remind me, what part did you go up for in Jekyll and Hyde?’, and I replied, ‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ then he paused, ‘right … so they want you to play Jekyll and Hyde’.”
Needless to say, said audition was abandoned; Bateman, 26, who had recently finished a successful seven-month run as the lead in Shakespeare In Love in the West End – and was relatively unknown, albeit with small TV roles in Sky Atlantic’s The Tunnel and Fox’s Da Vinci’s Demons – had just bagged himself not one, but two major lead roles.
“Two roles for the price of one … I did ask them to pay me twice!” jokes Bateman from the rehearsal room of Kenneth Branagh’s new West End adaptation of The Winter’s Tale, in which he’ll star this autumn alongside Dame Judi Dench.
“I don’t know what the hell goes on in [writer] Charlie’s brain,” he says. “But I loved it from the second I read the script. Every scene was like, ‘just when we thought it couldn’t get any more crazy and mental, you’ve proved us all wrong’.”
The real challenge for Bateman wasn’t playing two different characters but rather “bridging the gap” between two personalities. “It’s the idea that there is two men in one body. Jekyll is aware of what Hyde does and Hyde is aware of what Jekyll does. It’s like being in a quiet room but wanting to scream”, he explains, analogising with a recent Mumford and Sons gig. “They did one song a cappella with no microphones; the whole audience was completely silent and I said to my friend, ‘the temptation to scream right now is just too much.’ What stopped him from unleashing Hyde? “The fact that thousands of people could have thrown beer at me!”
So how did Bateman manage to win the role over other more experienced and well-known actors? Really it’s down to a subtle portrayal that simply does justice to Charlie Higson’s quick-witted script. Yes, he’s dark and menacing, but he’s also charismatic, liberated and, most importantly, enjoyable to watch.
“When we were filming, the producers would say, ‘oh, I’m a bit bored of Jekyll now, let’s do some more Hyde’,” he recalls. “It’s a lot more fun and he has some cool lines. One of my favourite scenes is at Bella’s bar when there’s a massive fight taking place and Hyde, sat in the corner eating peanuts just says, ‘would you like any help now?’.”
Bateman’s enthusiasm for the more physical Hyde scenes might also have something to do with being directed by legendary Star Wars stuntman Nick Gillard. “It’s so much a part of Hyde I wanted to do as many fight scenes as possible; to be confident in playing this guy who has the ability to destroy a whole room. Jumping off a 30ft wall on to concrete wasn’t allowed – although I was quite glad about that.”
Filming the Ceylon scenes in Sri Lanka was a luxury for Bateman who had previously spent a lot of time on rainy hill tops in Wales pretending to be in Italy, where Da Vinci’s Demons is set. The 4am starts, however, were a very different discipline for an actor more familiar with evening theatre performances. Especially since he was on set for 124 days out of 130. “You have to pace yourself, sleeping for half an hour after lunch helped!”
Now he’s back on UK soil with his feet firmly on the ground, is he ready for the level of exposure the show will bring him? “Maybe I’m just being naive but I haven’t really thought about it,” he shrugs. “When we were filming, people were saying, are you ready? This is going to change your life, and I thought, well I don’t really want my life to change.
“I don’t think my family would allow any change. I’ve got 13 siblings. I’ll walk into the house and tell mum what I’ve been doing that day and she’ll reply, ‘yeah great, there’s some potatoes that need peeling’.”
