Tom Bateman, star of Beecham House, talks with Des Sampson about being cast the heart-throb
Are you ready to be a heart-throb and have loads of women run down the street after you?
Hmm ... how would you get ready for that? I don't think you can get ready for
that. With all these things, I think if that happens it just means people loved the show. So I suppose my thought is, "How wonderful that people love it." I really hope people like it because it's been a joy making it and I hope it does something new. When I told my mum and dad about it – they're my litmus test – they were really excited because it's new and quite political. I've never seen anything with India that hugely a part of it – it's in every scene – it's just there, you can see the heat and the light – so I hope that, at the very least, people go, "Wow, I've not seen that before."
Do you worry about being typecast as the heart-throb?
You know what, no, because I've played arseholes for the last few things. I've played a bunch of bad guys recently, so it's quite nice to play a good person and there's a couple of things that I'm about to start filming where I'm not like that at all.
Did you realise that the minute you took off your top everyone would compare you to Aidan Turner, in Poldark? It's become a thing now, hasn't it?
It has, yeah. I've never seen Poldark but I did see the pictures in the paper the next day. Did I know? No, not really. I knew what it was – I'm not stupid. I knew there's certain boxes, I suppose, that are there to be ticked. But one of them made sense – the action was there – he was doing it for practical reasons, because he needs to cut this stuff [vegetation] down, so these spies can't hide in the bushes. Standing still in India you're sweating, so there's no way you'd be clothed.
Did you feel objectified at all?
Um, no, no. You feel a bit ... there's a funny line between feeling objectified and feeling supported and it's a very odd one ... Gurinder's [director Gurinder Chadha] wonderful at making you not feel like an idiot but at the same time she doesn't cross the line into pervy. And she sort of said, "Ooh, you look fantastic - it's a great scene" and then she goes ... and she sort of made some comment about people being sat behind the monitor going, "Oooh", which didn't make me feel uncomfortable because, by that point, we were a big, old family and so I just felt supported and we were all making fun of each other. But hilariously, that scene was a nightmare because it was the first time I was topless outside and we were filming right below a hornet's nest. And the smoke we used for the scene aggravated the hornets and they came after the whole crew [so] we had to move locations for the afternoon – we couldn't go back there until it was sorted out. I did a little bit of a topless scene, then went away and then came back and did [more of] of a topless scene after lunch.
