Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Ice cream and beer got me in ‘shape’ to play this monster. He could make me TV’S most hated man...
Poldark made its name with steamy scenes featuring topless hunk Aidan Turner. So it is little wonder viewers’ stomachs turned at the sight of bloated Reverend Osborne Whitworth sucking a prostitute’s toes, his eyes rolling back in his head in ecstasy.
But Christian Brassington, who plays the BBC1 show’s lecherous new villain, is usually just as dishy as its leading man.
The 34-year-old – who flaunted his trim body in Y-fronts in a drama about Tony Blair’s university years – had to pile on the pounds to play grotesque Ossie.
In the months before filming, he scoffed 3,500 calories a day to balloon from 13 stone to 15. Christian said: “Normally, actors have to get into shape for a role rather than out of it. But Osborne is described as a large character and a man of a huge appetite, so there was no getting around that. I had to gain a lot weight.
“I ate a diet that included some protein shakes but it was mostly Häagen-dazs ice cream and beer. I quite enjoyed putting the weight on to start with but near the end I didn’t so much – and now I am trying to lose it, which is no fun at all. It takes much longer to lose weight than to put it on.
“The producers didn’t demand I put on the weight but this character, he’s a big guy and he needs to be like that and I love that side of things. I like losing the weight, putting on the weight and transforming the body for the part. I hope it looks good.”
On competing with Aidan, 34, he adds with a laugh: “I am going to do some topless modelling at my top weight!” Now filming has wrapped up, Christian plans to work on a writing project with Georgia Moffett, 32 – the wife of his good pal David Tennant, 46. He met the former