The Talented Mr. Tovey: ‘Drama has the amazing ability to connect people’

There’s a haunting moment in the third episode of new Disney drama+ Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes when it becomes slowly and harrowingly clear that the Metropolitan Police have, to put it bluntly, fucked up. 

We see a bomb expert decked out in full body armour, boarding a Northern Line train at Stockwell tube station to rifle through the clothing of a man shot dead by the force at point-blank range just minutes before. Through the narrow lens of a helmet, we see a pair of uncertain eyes peering at the man’s ID. That one piece of evidence provides the first inkling that De Menezes was not one of the men involved in the previous day’s failed attacks on the capital. The bomb expert’s fears are confirmed just minutes later when further tests come back entirely negative. The Met now have one hell of a problem on their hands. 

This is the real-life situation that unfolds in the drama, which takes a bold and brave look at the events 20 years ago that led to the fatal shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician on that fateful morning on 22 July 2005 – and the subsequent aftermath that concluded with a divisive open verdict in December 2008.  

Few real-life figures come away from the drama smelling of flowers, but a rare redeeming face comes in the form of Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met Brian Paddick, who is shown as one of the few who stood up to question the official story and when exactly the team of Sir Ian Blair – the then Commissioner of the Met – realised that the wrong man had been targeted. 

Paddick, who was essentially demoted to a desk job for daring to speak out, is portrayed in the show by Russell Tovey, a real-life friend of his who conveys the dogged but impressively measured approach that Paddick took in his pursuit of the truth. 

“Drama has the amazing ability to connect people, and you look at shows like Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence as recent examples of ones that have had an amazing way to educate and open discussion,” explains the Essex-born actor when we meet in London just weeks before the drama’s release. “I’m hoping this does the same thing and there’s some accountability off the back of it. 

“But I wanted to honour Brian Paddick too; I wanted to serve him and that character and what he went through in order to honour the truth. He tried to take accountability at the time but that risked his position, and it affected the rest of his life,” says Tovey, who has known Paddick for nearly 20 years. 

“He was a public figure who was out in a high position and ran for Mayor, and I always found him quite commendable and heroic,” he explains. “And of course, people have said we sort of look similar to each other, and when this drama was announced, I thought ‘Surely, they’re gonna let me play him?! We’re both gay men and we’ve got grey hair – come on, who else is there?!’” 

In one remarkable moment in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, Paddick puts it bluntly to his colleagues: “It’s like we’re saying: ‘Sorry we killed you, but it is your own fault.’” 

Tovey adds: “Brian put his neck on the line, and when I’ve been talking to him about his career, it’s clear that truth was the most important thing, which certainly feels radical in today’s climate of post-truth and alternative facts.  

“He wanted to tell the truth, hold people accountable, and I think that marked him out as being a troublemaker, which is just bizarre. For someone in that role to want to uphold honesty and truth and that be seen in some capacity as a negative is just shocking. When you watch it, you’ll see that actually the want and need is for lies to be upheld and supported. This show will break that all open again, hopefully.”  

There’s also the hope, Tovey explains, that the documentary will rehabilitate the image of De Menezes. Writer Jeff Pope toes the line with a forensic, near-journalistic approach that simply presents the facts of the matter, but this is a drama where those facts – and the horrific death of an innocent man – speak for themselves. For example, it’s widely known that the police got the wrong man, but it’s been largely lost that De Menezes did not jump the barrier and run from the police. The 2008 inquest revealed that he calmly tapped through the Tube barriers with an Oyster card and boarded the train. It was in fact the firearms officers who had jumped the barrier when pursuing De Menezes, but by that point the damage was already done. 

“Ninety per cent of society who were following this story believe that those events were the reality,” reflects Tovey. “There’s a mural of Jean Charles outside Stockwell Station, and I bet people have walked past it and gone ‘Didn’t he run from the police? Wasn’t he wearing a big, suspicious coat?’ I’ve passed it hundreds of times, and every time I do, I just think how tragic it was. He was an innocent man, and I think there’s going to be lots of people that will be blamed and held accountable, and when you watch this drama, you’re going to see how the system works. 

“His family have watched it, but they have been fighting for 20 years, and the offensiveness of the way they’ve been treated, and the memory of Jean Charles has been treated, is just disgusting. If this show can humanise this person’s existence and show he mattered and was loved, then that’s a real honour to be part of.” 

But the timing matters too, explains Tovey. It’s a show that arrives at a time when we’re in a “terrifying” post-truth era. It’s important then, he says, to tell the truth during a period when social media giants like Facebook have abandoned fact checkers, in a move perceived to be bowing to the Trump administration. 

“I think, as human beings, we want the truth if it’s being written down in a newspaper or if it’s spoken about on a news channel. It has to be reliable, because what are we supposed to understand about the world if we’re constantly being gaslit? Dramatising these events and upholding honesty just really matters.” 

The series is the latest hard-hitting project for Tovey, who tells me about the joy of receiving a Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival in January for Plainclothes, a real-life drama about a working-class police officer in 90s New York who is tasked with entrapping gay men in public toilets, only to find himself entangled in an unexpected relationship with one of his targets. 

“Gay men were being targeted when they were cruising bathrooms, and the police would trap them and ruin their lives,” he reflects. 

It would be a bold and important story to tell at any time, but it seems more important in the time of Trump’s America – when key rights for LGBTQ+ people are under threat like never before.  

“Those rights are eroding, and I think what we have to do is make more and more content that’s overtly queer and obvious and keep it visible and keep amplifying that because it’s so easy to erase it and it’s so easy to go back politically,” he says. 

Tovey was also part of Looking, Andrew Haigh’s landmark show which marked HBO’s first television series focused primarily on the lives of gay men. Would the network, in the face of the Trump administration, be brave enough to make such a show today? 

“Right now, I’m sure there are multiple conversations happening where they’re thinking of green-lighting queer characters or queer content, which makes it all the more important to say yes and do it,” he ponders. 

“What’s happening in the States is fucking terrifying, but it makes me more determined to tell gay stories and to play gay characters. If people are having to be brave, they should be brave right now because they’re going to be on the right side of history, and I think I’ve always really run towards that.” 

Tovey, who won acclaim for his portrayal of Joe Pitt in the 2017 London revival of seminal gay play Angels in America, adds: “When I was younger, people would tell me that I didn’t want to be typecast in gay roles, and I’d just say that there are billions of queer characters around the world so how the hell can I be pigeonholed? There’s so many stories to tell and every one I’ve done has been so varied, nuanced, and moved the dial somewhere along the line. I absolutely have to keep doing these roles.” 

Tovey’s powerful response is bang on, and especially so for an actor of his range. One of his earliest roles came in The History Boys, which has allowed him to forge a strong friendship with Alan Bennett (“I saw him two weeks ago! He’s 90 and still incredible!). 

But on the flip side of this, he’s had forays into the world of comic-book drama with the DCEU’s Supergirl. Later this year, he will return to the Whoniverse for The War Between the Land and the Sea, a Doctor Who spin-off series focusing on the threat of classic Who villain the Sea Devils. Its finer details are still shrouded in mystery. 

“Err… what do you want to know?” says Tovey with a coy smile when asked about the series, with the air of a man only too aware that loose lips sink not only ships but TV shows too. 

“I loved that role and I’m really proud of the time we had on it, so I hope that transfers onto the screen,” he diplomatically puts it. 

“But we’ve got five episodes and [Tovey’s co-star] Gugu Mbatha-Raw is in prosthetics, which is something I had to go through for Being Human, that whole thing of being in earlier than everyone else, so I felt sympathy for her! The whole cast is great, and Dylan Holmes Williams, who’s directing it, is a superstar. It was a very, very special job, and I think if you meet people who have worked on it, I think that they will feel the same and say the same.” 

Tovey is incredibly busy outside of the acting world too. The keen art enthusiast and collector is currently wrapping up work on a children’s art book that he hopes will impart his love of art to a new generation. His podcast TalkArt – which sees him grilling stalwarts such as Tracey Emin – constantly tops Apple charts across the globe. Is there anyone from the art world that Tovey would love to portray? 

“Oh, [David] Hockney. Absolutely,” he says, without missing a beat. 

“We wanted to interview him for the podcast, and he’s evaded us so far, but I would love to play him. I think the story of him making art that was very coded and very queer at a time when it was still illegal, at the Royal College of Art, is amazing. His story too, coming from Bradford and Leeds and going to Malibu and living this incredible life where he’s been surrounded by friends, muses and lovers. That story is phenomenal.” 

He adds of his passion: “It’s amazing, really, that I get to be a geek, have another passion project and do this stuff. I was at college when the YBA movement happened, and I remember seeing Damien Hirst’s work [and] Tracey Emin’s bed and just being shook by it. I understood what the word contemporary meant, and that working-class generation of artists gave me access to that world, and it felt like ‘Oh, well they’re in it, I’m allowed to be in it as well.’ It makes me so happy. Going to see shows and meeting artists and visiting studios is such a dopamine rush. Art should be in the same conversation as storytelling in the way we view our world. It needs to be in the same discussion as everything else, otherwise it’s othered, elitist and academic.” 

In a nutshell, then: Russell Tovey is a man finding himself, quite rightly, in strong demand across multiple genres and – as his art shows – multiple worlds too. 

“Now I just wanna keep telling great stories and just playing fucking great characters,” he surmises. “I’ve been really lucky that I’ve had so many amazing men that I’ve got to play.” 

Photographer: Craig Gibson 
Set Designer: Mollie Griffiths 
Stylist: Christopher Brown at Collective Talents Inc
Groomer: Justine Jenkins
Photographer Assistant: Rachel Byrne 
Styling Assistant: Inca Bayley 
Set Designer Assistant: Eva Lindsay