Matt Lewis discusses his newest role, as Gordon House aka Tower Block, in BBC Three’s Bluestone 42 in a new interview with Gloucestershire Echo. The show begins airing on February 27th, but Matthew has already appeared in the shows’ Christmas Special which aired last year. In the interview he discusses the show, Harry Potter, theatre and more – read the full interview here!
Of course the interview brings up the ever-present fact that people are amazed at how the actor has grown up:
Despite starring in all eight Harry Potter films as shy and clumsy Neville Longbottom, he’s getting more of a reaction on the street now, almost three years after the final movie was released.”The thing my friends and family, and myself, can’t seem to fathom is the fact that it’s actually got worse,” says Lewis, who’s calling in from sunny South Africa where he’s filming his latest project. “It’s not a bad thing, but more people recognise me now than they ever did when I was making the films.”
They next go on to discuss the new series and his character:
The series follows a fictional bomb disposal detachment in Afghanistan and was a critical success when it first aired in early 2013.
“I watched the first series and remember thinking that I’d love to be part of a show like that. It’s a comedy and aims to make people laugh but it’s not trivialised,” says Lewis, who made his first appearance in the Christmas special and cements his character in the new six-part series. Cheeky chappy Gordon, nicknamed Tower Block, was brought in to replace Corporal Millsy (Gary Carr) as number two to Captain Medhurst (Oliver Chris).
“He’s the best of the best and came top in all his classes, but when he arrived in Afghanistan he was very green and thought he knew a lot more than he actually did,” explains Lewis, who admits his alter-ego “had a bit of a chip on his shoulder” at first.
“He didn’t get on with Medhurst initially, there was a bit of friction between them. Gordon’s a lad and loves getting stuck in with the banter – especially giving Medhurst stick for being a posh public schoolboy, but then he did a lot of growing up in that half-hour special.”
[…]
“On Bluestone 42, you’re doing different stuff every day. We’re blowing stuff up, playing around with rifles and it’s beautiful sunshine, so if I ever complain about a job like this then someone kill me immediately!”
Of his fellow castmates, he says:
“I arrived at the read-through, and obviously it’s quite daunting joining a show, but everyone was so fantastic taking me under their wing, I felt part of the team early on.” And there’s been plenty of time for fun in the sunny location, which he describes as “stunning”. “We’re laughing and joking on set because we’re making a comedy, but when we’re not working everyone’s spending time together and it’s been great.”
In the first week, he and four others entered a local 10k run in South Africa. “We all did pretty well,” says Lewis, who completed the Great North Run last September and describes himself as “pretty sporty”. But he’s far from holier than thou, he insists.
“There are a fair few bars in the town we’ve been staying in. We’ve tried to drink like squaddies and done a pretty good job of it – but of course been very professional on school nights,” he adds, laughing.
They also made sure to talk about his hometown of Leeds, which he is very proud of:
“Yeah I’m still up there,” he says. “All my friends are there and they’re the ones who keep me grounded. When you’re making movies like Potter, you can lose yourself in the glamour of making a big Hollywood film. To come away from that and be normal and go to the pub and watch football, that’s what I really enjoy.”
We also can’t forget the fact that Matt has two brothers also in the industry:
“Anthony, my older brother [who’s appeared in shows like A Touch Of Frost and Emmerdale], started when he was eight and I was two, so my mother chaperoned him and I got taken along. So I kind of grew up on television and film sets,” he explains, adding that he decided “at an early age” that he wanted to act.
There’s a third sibling, Chris, the eldest, who’s also in the industry – behind the camera. “He’s always been much more technically minded so he became a cameraman, and now he’s an editor and works on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent,” says Lewis, who’s not sure why the three of them have wound up in showbiz territory. Their mother’s a magistrate, their father works in computers “and if you put a video camera in my parents’ faces they don’t like it”, he notes.
“My uncle did a family tree and way, way back we had a clown in the family, but that’s about as close as we could get to the entertainment industry.”
