TV

Rafe Spall doesn't mind that Ridley Scott forgot his name

The actor stars opposite Emily Blunt as one of television's evilest characters in The English
Rafe Spall on playing the most evil man on television in The English

Warning: spoilers ahead for The English.

Rafe Spall has been in everything. Well, not literally, but he's been in so much you often forget just how many legends he's been in the presence of. Wracking up a list of directors that includes Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Adam McKay, and co-stars like Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling, he's solidified himself as one of the most “oh that guy is in this” guys of all time. 

He's currently starring opposite Emily Blunt in The English, a grand, epic 1800s-set Western from Hugo Blick. The BBC series follows Blunt's Cornelia Locke, an English noblewoman who forms an unlikely partnership with a Native American solider, played by Chaske Spencer, as they traverse the inhospitable plains of the wild west to hunt down the man who killed her son. That man, whose murderous practices come by way of committing some kind of biological warfare by knowingly spreading syphilis to every woman he encounters, is Spall's David Melmont. 

Rafe Spall hopped on a call with GQ to talk about getting into the headspace of a villain, method acting and the time Ridley Scott forgot his name. 

GQ: Do you think David Melmont is the most overtly evil character you've ever played?

Rafe Spall: Yeah, the most evil since the last time I worked with Hugo Blick, which was on The Shadow Line (2011), he was pretty bad. But this is ramped up. He has a pure, dark heart. It's unrelenting evil and it was a very creative experience. Hugo said to me that he'd written it with me in mind, which I was flattered by, and he pitched it to me like a sort of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. I mean, not that I compare myself to Marlon Brando, but character-wise, the way the characters serves the story is similar.

How do you get into the headspace to play someone that odious?

You do all the work in advance in terms of how you want him to sound, and how you want his face to look. I had a slight wince in my right eye that probably doesn't even read to an audience member, but for me, I knew I was doing it because I knew that he had worked in abattoirs and blood pits and would have probably been carrying around carcasses. I wanted him to sort of look like a bull, but at the same time as a sort of dandy-ish one, and that was down to Phoebe de Gaye, the costume designer, who actually taught my dad drama. And then in terms of the headspace, that's really easy, because I think any sort of bleeding from character into your own personal life comes when you're playing someone very close to you. And this guy's not close to me at all!

Thank God.

Yeah! I'm not someone who stays in character on set. In fact, even the use of the phrase “stays in character on set” makes me cringe. I mean, what other people do? Fair play to them. But for me, I just feel daft.  

So if you're not trapped in the headspace of someone like David Melmont, does that make it easy to wash him away at the end of the day?

I don't want to, sort of, offend people by talking about other people's process, but that's not the case for me. I do acting. When you're filming in 44-degree heat or whatever and you call cut, then a very nice person comes up and covers you with an umbrella and gives you cold water. So the idea of, like, “maintaining character” in that sort of environment is preposterous. You're pretending that you're a 19th-century syphilitic cockney cowboy and then some nice person comes up and goes “Hey Rafe, so the options for lunch are beef or chicken”. If you're gonna stay in character then go and forage for your own food.

There is one scene that really stays with me from the series and it's one of you shirtless and covered in blood on horseback. What was the process of shooting that scene like?

Well, it was 44-degree heat most days, apart from one day, which was when I had my show up on a horse. It was cold and I had all this sticky blood on me. I thought it'd be good to be bare-chested, I thought that was quite a striking image, on a horse covered in blood.

The way The English comes to a head is very unexpected. Essentially, beyond David Melmont, the main villain is syphilis. What was your reaction when you found out the murderer in the piece was an STD?

Yeah, that my character had sort of dished out, that was extremely sinister. And then this horrible revelation that Cornelia is going to die from it, her son died from it, but Melmont is okay. That desperate realisation that the bad guy sometimes wins, even though he gets killed at the end. 

Is there a moment from shooting that really struck you?

The scene where Chaske Spencer's character, Eli Whip – I've been shot, and then someone says “he's still alive”, and then he comes over and he plunges a broken sabre into my heart. I couldn't see where the camera was and so I'm just looking up into the sun. I'm lying there looking into this deep blue, azure sky, and then Chaske sort of kneels down next to me with his Mohican hairstyle, with his knife in his hand and his earring. This beautiful, Native American man. It was like a dream, like “wow I do this for a living”.

Are there any other moments from your career that have hit you like that?

Yeah, all the time! Like being on Prometheus 11 years ago. That was one of the biggest sets ever built, it was on the 007 soundstage, just one of the biggest soundstages in the world, and they extended it 200 feet out the door and built a whole alien planet. Like, I'm going to space and Ridley Scott's there and it's like “wow!”, even though he forgot my name. Yeah, honestly, one of the best and worst moments of my life. 

If you're going to have anyone forget your name, Ridley Scott might be the best person.

I didn't mind, I don't care. And then another time, I did a small bit on the film The BFG with Steven Spielberg. I just cried because I was like, ‘this is what I always imagined being an actor would be like’. And the reason he cast me in that film was because I did a play on Broadway called Betrayal by Harold Pinter with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. On the opening night of that, Daniel was like “someone wants to meet you”, and he took me over and it was Steven Spielberg and he said, “I want to put you in a film”. And then he was like, “I want you to meet my friend, Bruce” and it was Bruce Springsteen! And then Bruce was like “oh you were great in the show” and I was like “Shut up Bruce Springsteen, this is outrageous!”. So those are really incredible, jazzy moments that you hope beyond your wildest dreams will happen to you. And then they do, and it's really lovely.

That whole whistle-stop tour of career moments sounds like when people describe their dream dinner party.

On that opening night as well, like, Bruce Springsteen was there, as I said, Spielberg, Julia Roberts Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, the then-Vice President Joe Biden. It was unbelievable.

The English is available in full on BBC iPlayer now.