Matthew Lewis has been profiled by The New York Times to mark the airing of the reboot of “All Creatures Great And Small” which began airing on PBS in the US on January 10th. Previously the show aired on Channel 5 in the UK last year. We will share a few snippets below but head over to The New York Times for the full feature.
Of his role as Hugh in All Creatures Great and Small:
But Lewis is still coming to terms with being a leading man — God forbid, a sexy one. Which is why, when the opportunity came to audition for “All Creatures Great and Small,” Lewis hesitated.
“The original series is a bit of an institution in Yorkshire, and my dad really wanted me to do it,” he said. “But this guy is supposed to be very dark and handsome, and it has to be believable that Helen’s in love with him. I was like, ‘I don’t know about this. When I shave, everyone will see I look like I’m about 12.’”
Even after he got the part, he still didn’t think he was in the clear. “I was dreading turning up the first day on set,” he said. “I was sure they’d be like, ‘This is what he actually looks like? Jesus, we need to recast this guy.’”
When discussing how he chooses roles:
Lewis said he struggles with roles that are too similar to his own life. “I find it quite difficult when too much of me starts to come through in a character,” he said. “It’s easier when I can play someone completely different, like a police officer in London or someone who’s wealthy.”
David Yates, director of the final four Harry Potter films discussed how Matthew grew as an actor and his importance in those films:
Yates kept thinking of ways to expand Lewis’s role in scenes, ultimately building a sequence around him in “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” in which Neville blows up a bridge to Hogwarts to thwart the dark wizard Voldemort’s army — a scene that didn’t exist in either the book or in early drafts of Steve Kloves’s screenplay. “But it captured the charms of Neville and Matthew’s everyman quality,” Yates said. “He had a modesty and an honesty that was hard to ignore.”
Read the full interview at The New York Times.
Tune into All Creatures Great and Small on Sundays at 9pm on PBS.