Acting projects are like buses for Callum Scott Howells right now: nothing for ages and then three come along at once. Having stolen our hearts as sweet, unassuming Colin in It’s a Sin, before breaking them as he was cruelly claimed by Aids, "it’s just so nice to have something out there again" he tells me.
And what a slate it is. In May, he begins previews in the West End revival of the Arthur Miller classic A View from the Bridge at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Next month, he takes to the field for Beautiful Game, a Netflix movie about the Homeless World Cup. And tomorrow, his new TV drama The Way, directed by co-star Michael Sheen and following a family caught up in a civil uprising in Port Talbot, Wales, starts on BBC One.
Talking to me from his home in Camden ("It’s cute," he says. "OK, cute’s not the right word, Camden’s f***ing mad, but I love it") with Anais, his photographer girlfriend of a year beside him ("we kind of haven’t gone public yet," laughs Howells), it’s clear that he is feeling energised. Not least because he’s soon to be jousting it out in rehearsals for A View from the Bridge with Dominic West, who plays the leading role of Eddie Carbone.
Scott Howells, 24, plays recent Sicilian emigré to New York, Rodolpho, who falls in love with his host Carbone’s precious niece. "You see this unraveling of the relationship," says the actor. "It’s a super character-driven piece, writing’s amazing, obviously, and it’s my first Miller. And I’m just really excited to be acting with Dominic West."
Theatre can be tough going, but after a sell-out turn as the Emcee in Cabaret, and a highly acclaimed appearance in Gary Owen’s beautiful contemporary drama Romeo and Julie at the National Theatre opposite Rosie Sheehy, he says he gets off on the "immediate feedback" created by being in front of an audience. And it’s a useful way to change course after the fresh-out-the-box success of his part in Russell T Davies' Eighties LGBTQ+ drama It’s A Sin.
"I’ll always love Colin. I will always be indebted to that character, it was huge for me," he says. "But I want to always keep proving people wrong. With that type of a break-out role, the tendency is to typecast you, so it’s taken a lot of work to shake that off. But I’m getting to a position where I can show people I can push it and do other things."
His TV output is going in a completely different direction with The Way. Under the keen eye of Sheen, making his directorial debut, and with a script courtesy of James Graham (Quiz, Brexit: The Uncivil War, Sherwood), it is a "domestic but epic" exploration of the simmering societal questions in the UK today.
As civil uprising bubbles in the steel-working town in South Wales, the Driscoll family become central to the story. Scott Howells plays son, Owen, "a complicated outsider, who is going through his own thing."
It's the first time that the Rhondda Valley boy has filmed a project in his motherland, Wales. "It was really cool to do something in Wales and really get my teeth into it. I’m not from Port Talbot, but I fell in love with it. It’s given birth to so many creatives: Richard Burton is from there, Michael Sheen, Anthony Hopkins. Coming from Rhondda Valley I felt like I didn’t have a hope in hell – you had to be from Port Talbot."
The show was filmed in the small enclave of Pontrhydyfen, Neath nearby, where Richard Burton grew up. "It’s such a beautiful unique place. The steelworks, which is such a core part of The Way, sort of towers over everything. There’s this mad figure that 4,000 or 5,000 people from the town work there. It has such a massive impact on the identity of the place."
The show was filmed last year, and the team behind it couldn’t have known how painfully relevant it would become only a month before air, when Tata Steel announced plans to shut down two loss-making blast furnaces at the Port Talbot steelworks, impacting up to 2,800 workers.
"It’s a bold show and I think it’ll start a lot of conversations about these small towns across the country getting left behind that need to be had," he says.
But what has the biggest impact on the identity of the show is Sheen’s meticulous direction, which he shared with the filmmaker Adam Curtis. The result is a riot of personal journeys in an increasingly mad social landscape, with a who’s who of Welsh talent such as Steffan ‘Dave Coaches’ Rhodri, Aneurin Barnard, Sheen himself and a serious twist courtesy of Hollywood A-lister Luke Evans.
“Michael [Sheen] is just incredible, I'm such a huge fan of him as an actor,” says Scott Howells, who describes himself as very lucky to have been involved in this directorial debut. “The Damned Utd is in my top three films of all time, so to get to work with him on this felt like a real once in a lifetime opportunity. He’s such a craftsman, everything he does is so specific. You see his vision – it's such a joy to be part of it and bring it to life.”
Another screen legend whom Scott Howells is teaming up with is Bill Nighy, who plays Mal, the real-life coach and creator of the Homeless World Cup in The Beautiful Game. Alongside Micheal Ward and Kit Young, Scott Howells plays Nathan, a young heroin-addict living rough, who is scooped up by the tournament.
“[The tournament] has changed millions of people’s lives who have taken part in some way or another since the early noughties – the statistics are staggering,” he says. “It has a real feel-good message to it. I hope people get excited by the football aspect, but even for me making it, it’s really shifted my perspective on homelessness and that community.”
Like It’s a Sin, the show shines a light on an often overlooked section of the male community. “The tournament gives people from around the world a chance to have a purpose and find themselves again,” he says.
Next, Scott Howells is attached to play Eighties music legend Holly Johnson in Relax, a biopic about the rise to fame of the band Frankie Goes To Hollywood, under the direction of Bernard Rose, who directed some of the band’s most iconic videos.
“It’s very early days, so there’s not much to say yet,” says Scott Howells. “But playing Holly with Bernard directing, I’m very excited.”
So sure, it’s good to avoid being pigeonholed, but what is the commonality between these characters, I ask? There must be an underlying thread which unites them?
“I think for me, it's never being the stereotypical leading man,” he says, after thinking for a minute. “I think what I've been playing so far is always the other side and I think that's something I've always kept. And they're always the most interesting parts. I’m lucky that people trust me with these more unconventional characters.”
Scott Howells does harbour one unique Hollywood dream... to “do a Ryan Reynolds”. And no, that’s not to star in Deadpool (although he does like the idea of playing more “heightened, less realistic, supernatural characters”). No, he’d love to be in possession of a Welsh football team – ideally his beloved Cardiff City, whom he’d also love to see promoted, finally, into the Premier League (”I’m always an optimist,” he laughs).
“I would love to do what Ryan and his partner Rob McElhenney are doing [at Wrexham], that would be the dream,” he says. “What they have achieved, not just for the Wrexham football but for Wales in general – putting it on the map – is so amazing. People are discovering our small but mighty country on a global stage and I saw that they've now put money into television in Wales. We talk about Arts Council funding cuts and then people like Ryan roll up and do something like that. It’s so inspiring and so exciting.”
The beautiful game, unifying the strands of his career yet again.
The Way is on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Monday February 19. A View from the Bridge runs from May 23 to August 3 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket; buy tickets here. The Beautiful Game is on Netflix in mid-March
