Luke Evans, star of The Hobbit films, Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, Netflix’s The Alienist, Amazon’s Nine Perfect Strangers and ITV’s The Pembrokeshire Murders, took to the stage of the Wales Screen Summit this Monday, adding some homegrown, Hollywood star power to the media expo.

One of the biggest takeaways was the announcement of Evans’ casting in The Way, a “bold new BBC drama” co-created and executive produced by Michael Sheen. Speaking about the series – currently filming in Sheen’s backyard of Port Talbot – Evans revealed to BAFTA CEO Jane Millichip that this would also be the Good Omens actor’s directorial debut.

“It’s Michael Sheen’s first directing job. You’d never think it. You look at the picture board in your trailer and think, how has he managed to get all these people in this Welsh story? Because he’s Michael Sheen. As a director, he’s great, because he’s an actor. He understands how to speak to an actor. He knows what he needs and how to get it out of you.”

According to a press release from the BBC, Sheen will also lead the cast alongside a packed lineup of Welsh talent: Steffan Rhodri (Steeltown Murders, Gavin and Stacey), Mali Harries (Keeping Faith, Hinterland), Sophie Melville (The Pact, Iphigenia In Splott), and Callum Scott Howells (It’s A Sin, Cabaret). Together, they’ll make up the Driscoll family, forced to leave their home due to civil unrest stemming from their small, industrial hometown. Maja Laskowska (Trigonometry, Baptise) joins them as a young woman drawn into the family drama. Welsh-based Red Seam and Little Door Productions are behind the project, slated to be a three-parter, with James Graham on writing duties and Adam Curtis Sheen’s co-creator.

“I feel very lucky to get to work every day with these phenomenal actors,” Sheen said. “We’ve always had so much acting talent here in Wales and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to tell this extraordinary story with the very best at work today.”

Gerwyn Evans, Deputy Director of funding partner Creative Wales, added: “It’s a very exciting year for the Welsh screen industry, with an exciting slate of drama productions coming to our screens in 2023.”

The Way comes shortly on the heels of Evans’ last collaboration with the BBC: his Showtime Christmas special in 2022. “It was a wonderful moment. I loved every second of it,” he said of the experience. “I felt like Des O’Connor in his best moments – I had guests, an audience full of Welsh people. It’s exactly what we wanted to do, to bring it back to Wales and have a Welsh song. It felt like good old-school Christmas entertainment. We brought some big stars to Newport – they thought they were going to London, then the car turned left…” 

But he’s still got one foot firmly in the American film industry. His next feature, Our Son, which also stars Billy Porter as Evans’ husband, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Sat 10 June. With Evans and Porter playing feuding partners in a custody battle over their eight-year-old son, it’s been described as a “gay Kramer vs. Kramer“.

Evans told Millichip how much the role meant to him personally. “As a proud gay man, I knew there would come a point where I felt it was a story worth telling … [that] we’re all the same, we’re all going through equal pain and heartache and I felt this story did that. It’s not the first gay character I’ve played – [he played a gay man in Nine Perfect Strangers] – but it’s really meaty, poignant, emotional, powerful and real. Not sensational. Doesn’t have to be sensational or to shock. This is just real life, and I wanted to tell that story … as heartbreaking as it was. Everyone will be able to relate to it, not necessarily just for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a story of hope.”

Though getting its first screening during Pride month, UK audiences will have to wait longer to see Our Son, which has yet to find a distributor.

As for fans still hankering to see him don a tux and shake up a martini to play James Bond, as per the rumour mill for years now, the actor still couldn’t provide a clear answer:

“Nobody knows – that’s part of the fun of it all …  For a Welsh boy, from the valleys – a gay kid from the valleys – is in that small group of actors that’s up for playing Bond. That in itself is boundary-breaking [sends] a message to the youth of my country [that] anything can happen.”

Instead, he dispelled the pervasive idea that anyone looking to make it in showbiz – or any industry, for that matter – has to leave the country to do so: “[Wales] is bubbling with creativity and generations of talent. The young guy putting my sound mic on, said ‘my dad did this for you on The Pembrokeshire Murders’… It’s good there’s so much going on here that they don’t need to leave the country.”

The Way was co-commissioned with BBC Cymru Wales and will air on BBC One and Player.

Our Son does not have a UK release date yet.

words HANNAH COLLINS