INTERVIEW: Lloyd Owen plays American strategist Larry in RSC political thriller The New Real at The Other Place.
Lloyd Owen is hoping that audiences will be captivated by political thriller, The New Real, opening at The Other Place. He spins an enticing pitch as tells Gill Sutherland about the play and his role as strategist Larry.
It’s 30 years since you’ve been at the RSC – so let’s start with how you came to get the role.
At the end of 2023 and beginning of 24 I was asked to do a couple of workshops which I was really delighted about. I love David Edgar’s work.
There’s something about new work that I really enjoy, particularly if you’ve got a living writer in the room.
I was really excited to do that. And Holly [director Holly Race Roughan] has been on my radar for a bit, especially because of her work with Headlong.
And I’ve known Daniel Evans for years. With him and Tamara taking over at the RSC there’s this whole new impetus here, which is really exciting to be a part of.
So they offered me the role and I thought, yeah, I’d love to be back at the RSC after 30 years!
Before we move on, tell us a bit about how you got into acting. I know your dad was an actor, Glynn Owen, was there a point where you thought, this is what I’m going to do, a pivotal point?
I remember sort of being slightly press ganged when I was doing a school play because my dad was an actor, and I was good at reading.
I played Montano in Othello and I was so nervous. I went on to play Iago at the National Youth Theatre when I was 17, but my first one was Montano.
And everyone at school talks about my voice, and my dad had a very deep voice. But I was so nervous when we performed it, I just lost my voice.
So my first line – “What from the cape can you discern at sea?” – came out as a complete falsetto. Oh, no. And I just thought, I never, ever want to put myself through that again.
But as I say I did join the National Youth Theatre so it can’t have been that traumatic.
I love the community of acting. I love the fact that the show is created anew every evening with a different set of people in the audience. We all make it together.
So David Edgar’s been in the rehearsals, what’s the vibe like in the room?
David does makes tweaks but it’s been a really collaborative experience.
He’s not precious. He’s open to discussion and explanation – there are some really chunky, complex, brilliant ideas in play. So that’s been a privilege.
The best period of time for me, even though it’s nerve-wracking, is right now, which is just before previews, where nobody really knows what we’ve got.
We’ve done the final run through in the rehearsal room and now we’re moving into technical. And that’s always a strange transition period because you have to amalgamate the narrative storytelling to the technical part.
One has an idea of what you think the play is about, but the audience really educate you in the previews about what’s landing and I really love that. Because you suddenly, as the actor, go, ‘oh, that’s a moment there’. It’s fascinating.
What is the play about?
David’s big theme is 1968, student revolution around the West – down with capitalism, more free love.
Then when the wall comes down in 1989, all the Eastern European countries say give us capitalism, give us democracy. It’s a contrast between these two things.
The play takes two American political strategists who have worked together on elections on the Democratic side. They’ve got very good at what they do. They get sucked into helping these different campaigns, sometimes even working on opposite sides.
This actually happened a lot in the Philippines, Venezuela and, of course, in Eastern Europe.
So David has taken that topic and he’s tried to show how the mix between idealism for spreading liberal democracy and ambition to win an election is combined and how some of those ex-totalitarian states actually teach the American political strategists how to do a few dirty tricks, as it were, or how to work out how to segment the population and guarantee the win.
Ultimately, that all gets exported back to us, which is where we are today.
So David’s given us, on some level, a history lesson, but he’s also grounding it in the personal relationships between the two strategists – played by me and Martina Laird – so that what you see is the combination of ambition, idealism, the nature of money and the rise of populism and how we’ve got to this stage today.
I see why it’s a political thriller... So, Lloyd, what sort or political animal are you – are you very engaged?
Yeah, I did politics at A Level. I’ve been engaged, but I’m not activist in any way, but I’m intrigued on many levels.
The macro part of it, always fascinating, but also the core intrigue of politics, I’ve always enjoyed. Even though in the UK we like to try to separate personality from politics, as the actor, I’m fascinated by the personality behind that leadership.
I know personal relationships have to affect decision-making, and so that’s the really fascinating part for me.
This topic of what happens when the West go into Eastern Europe to try and affect and try and create democracy is really fascinating.
How are you feeling about the current political scene?
I have to admit to being a bit exhausted by it over recent years, like we all have.
I suppose when I grew up, there was a printed newspaper, The Guardian, Times, Observer or Sunday Times, and you picked one up regularly. But now it’s different, that constant doom-scrolling flow of news is relentless.
So I think today I have to take limited amounts of time in the news cycle, if you know what I mean.
During Farage’s rise and Brexit, a lot of middle class saw populism as a terrible thing and were very against it… and thus the conflict over Brexit. There’s a danger of preachiness from the left. The New Real sounds like thoughtful, but how does it avoid being preachy?
That’s a really good question, and that actually speaks to my character within this.
So my Democratic political strategist would have been an idealist when he was younger. He’s working class, from Flint in Michigan, which is where they used to make automobiles, and where the Buick plants were closed down. Manufacturing stopped and they were just left. Now there’s oxycontin addiction and no work.
And so Larry, this character, is championing what we would call the old-fashioned working class, what the Labour Party used to be, for the workers.
But what he witnesses is, as liberal democracy and liberalism moves towards identity politics, he’s like, well, these people are being left behind, and you’re just ignoring them. It’s like when Hillary Clinton called them ‘deplorables’ – even though that was out of context – you can dismiss a section of society.
There’s an element of Antony Scaramucci [White House communications director] in my character, although he’s on the Republican side. But essentially, Larry’s trying to fight for the white working class.
And if you think about Trump, he and Bernie Sanders of the left, were talking to the same group of people, saying the same things, which is: you, the auto workers, you, the industries, the smokestack industries, you’ve been left behind and they’ve ignored you. And so I think David is absolutely not dismissing that, not preaching one way or the other. He’s saying, this is what’s happened.
It’s very easy to brand people racist, sexist, whatever that stuff is, without actually listening to what the deeper concern is. And then the folk like Trump and Farage, like all of that lot, can exploit that. They’ve done it for years and years in history, and David mentions that in the play.
He’s very even-handed, and that’s what I love about the theatre, and I love about David.
He goes, here it is folks, hopefully in a drama that you can be engaged in emotionally, because you’ve got these two characters.
You play a consultant, a nice word for spin doctor – there are lots of examples out there, who or what has inspired you?
Yes, consultant, strategist – take your pick.
James Harding wrote a brilliant book called Alpha Dogs about this about ten years ago that was inspiring. Harding used to run BBC News, and then he went over to America.
Then there’s David Axelrod, who was Obama’s political strategist, spin doctor, the person who worked out how to win the campaign.
So Axelrod on the left, then you’ve got the far right version of that is Roger Stone, there’s a great documentary on him, Get Me Roger Stone; he’s quite a character, a bit shocking.
Then there’s Paul Manafort, who worked for Trump, who might well be coming back into Trump’s current campaign. He got jailed for three months, and then Trump pardoned him.
But there’s a lot to be connected to Ukraine as well, although the play isn’t based on an individual Eastern European country.
So Larry, my character, is a mixture, as is Martina’s character Rachel, of all of these political strategists, really. It’s based on how they have operated historically. And they are quite brilliant people.
It sounds like quite a role. And Larry’s, a great American name.
Oh, it’s fantastic. I’m absolutely loving it.
Politics and history lessons aren’t for everyone, how are you making The New Real entertaining?
I think the thing about David is he’s got a very wry sense of humour. He knows where the joke is.
He can make you roar with laughter in quite an unassuming way as well.
He’s definitely got a twinkle about him, and that’s very prevalent in his work. And so there are plenty of little jokes in there.
There’s like the in-joke and then the broad joke too, which is great.
And [director] Holly’s also set it in traverse, so it’s almost like there’s a debate for us all as the audience too.
Some people might not be interested in politics, and I totally understand that. But the thing about this play is there’s something for everyone in it.
And yes, you’ll have to sit up and listen, but it’s a fantastically rich, sort of informative, challenging, provoking play that will make you think, make you do some work, which I don’t think audiences are shy of, actually.
For those who are older and have watched The West Wing, it’s sort of like that on stage, where you’re in awe of the brilliance of the minds around the president, around politics, and at times you might not have really fully understood.
But the great thing about The West Wing was even if you didn’t know what was going on, it would be explained to you. You knew you’d come to a deeper understanding by the end. It provoked you to think and feel.
So it’s brain food, but also I think people will feel... Because in the end, politics is about feeling, isn’t it? It’s about thinking what do I deeply believe is right and wrong? It’s always moral and ethical, isn’t it?
That should be where we come to it from – some idea of whatever the greater good is, and you have to see that on the right as well.
The production run ends agonisingly two days before the US election (on 4th November), you must have talked a lot in the pub about what’s going on there. How do you think it’s going to pan out?
Oh, certainly we’ve been discussing it!
At the end of the play, because we sort of bridge the gap from 2002 to 2020 to so it’s just as that Trump wave is rising in the US, so it’s very very present in that sense.
Deborah Mattinson [UK Labour strategist] came to talk to us, and said the crucial part it’s about storytelling really.
As a political strategist you need to communicate your idea clearly you need to story tell why to vote and that’s so crucial.
And it can be simple, if you think back to Clinton: ‘it’s the economy stupid’. Or Dominic Cummings: ‘getting Brexit done’; you know these simple but brilliantly clear things that condense it.
It’s all about swing states and the tiny proportion of the population that will vote, and somehow you have to inspire confidence in the candidates with a simple message. I guess that’s what the campaign strategists do – they’re at making people feel. Trump does it, he’s got that reptilian connection, and is able to speak the language that folk sort of feel in their gut as opposed to in their heads.
I think as we talk today it’s 50-50, with Trump just edging, I think Democrats have got a real battle on their hands.
Political consumption
Lloyd’s recommended listening/viewing/watching that he namechecked during the interview.
Rest is Politics – US podcast that’s very good, with Cathy Kay and Antony Scaramucci.
James Harding’s Alpha Dogs – a brilliant book.
Roger Stone, there’s a great documentary on him, Get Me Roger Stone, quite a character, a bit shocking.
Gillian Tett’s book Fool’s Gold – it’s a brilliant, she’s an anthropoligist, and predicted the 2008 crash in her column in the FT years ago.
The Little Black Book of the Populist Right: What it is, why it’s on the march and how to stop it – David Edgar’s new book and essential reading.