THE RELUCTANT HERO

HE WON THE HEARTS OF A NATION AS THE SCAR-FACED, SKINNY-DIPPING, SCYTHE-WIELDING ROSS POLDARK. BUT AS AIDAN TURNER RETURNS FOR THE SHOW’S FINAL ACT, MEGAN CONNER ASKS: WHAT NOW?

Aidan Turner on life after Poldark

last summer, as the fourth series of Poldark unravelled on TV, Aidan Turner starred in a West End play. He’d always admired the director Michael Grandage’s work and leapt at his offer of the lead role in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, a subversive comedy about an Irish terrorist seeking revenge for the killing of his cat. The part of a man deemed too dangerous for the IRA was a far cry from the beloved hero Turner has brought to life in the BBC’S prime-time juggernaut, so you can imagine his surprise when, on opening night, a hoard of Poldark fans turned up at the stage door. While some had come bearing gifts for Turner’s dressing room, others had bought tickets for the play. ‘So that was quite sweet…’ Turner says, as I speak to him in a hotel just off London’s Trafalgar Square.

The show was a hit with the critics, but did the Poldarkers enjoy it? ‘They seemed to,’ Turner nods. And did they behave? ‘I… er… ha!’ He’s chuckling, but looks like he wants the ground to swallow him up. ‘There were a couple of moments, shall we say.’ What sort of moments? ‘Ah… someone shouted from the audience. Someone whistled when I came on stage. It was funny. People laughed. But I was also thinking, “God, if this happens every night, it’s going to ruin the play.”’

Today, Turner, who hails from Dublin, is here to promote the final series of Poldark, which returns to our screens this month. And although he’s charming and polite, it’s clear that talking about his unwavering popularity with female television viewers is not his forte.

He currently has a thick beard, which I suggest is possibly a ploy to distract from his startlingly good looks. ‘Like a disguise?’ he laughs. ‘In truth, I just really hate shaving.’ He’s dressed all in dark colours, too: navy T-shirt, black jeans and Nike high-tops. He looks athletic, but not toned to within an inch of his life like his ripped alter ego, Ross Poldark, which is sort of refreshing.

He admits that he was nervous about taking on the role that has made him the face of Sunday nights. ‘It was a bit like, “Jesus, I hope I’m gonna pull this off.” Because if you’re anyone else in the show you can get away with it. If you’re Poldark and the ship goes down, it’s kind of your fault.’ He remembers that, in some ways, the stakes seemed even higher, because he was offered the job without having to do any sort of audition. ‘You’re walking in on the first day, thinking, “Even if I’m crap, it’s probably too late for them to fire me.”’

At that point, Turner’s biggest claim to fame was playing a recurring but small role in The Hobbit movies. He’d previously worked for the BBC, as one of three leads in the teen drama series Being Human (alongside Russell Tovey), but he was hardly setting the world alight: ‘No. I mean, The Hobbit was great, they were big films, but I just wasn’t getting to act an awful lot. When Poldark came along, it seemed like the perfect job,’ he says.

When the show made its debut in 2015, Turner’s profile shot through the roof. By episode three, his face and torso were splashed across every red top. This was due to what is now widely regarded as the show’s much-discussed scything scene – a brief blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that saw Ross Poldark perform manual labour in a field with his top off. Depending on whom you ask, it was either a sublimely thrilling or wildly insignificant moment of TV; nevertheless, it set off a debate about gender politics and objectification. At that time, Turner seemed troubled by the attention and did his best to avoid the topic in interviews. ‘I found the whole thing difficult to speak about,’ he recalls. ‘I felt like whatever I said, it would add oxygen to the fire. Also, I think a lot of people wanted me to feel something I wasn’t necessarily feeling.’ That he was being objectified? ‘Yeah. It was as though they wanted me to draw parallels with a woman doing that scene. The thing is, as a man, I can walk down the street and feel safe. I’ve never felt threatened in my life. And I realise it’s quite different for a woman in a similar situation, who might be followed by three men wanting an autograph.’

In reality, the semi-naked scything scene was Turner’s idea. The day it was filmed was ‘scorching

‘POLDARK SEEMED LIKE THE PERFECT JOB’

hot’, so at the actor’s own suggestion, he took his shirt off. It was never even in the script, then? ‘No, I just thought it was kind of silly that he would scythe wearing it…’ Hang on, what? ‘I know, I know,’ he shakes his head, laughing. ‘It was completely self-inflicted.’

In February, Turner wrapped up filming the series for good. When I ask if he felt sad to leave it behind (after all, it has been five years of his life), he claims he’s still not really thought about it: ‘I’m not very good at that.’ What, feelings? He laughs. ‘It’s probably natural for me to bury things, move on.’ So far, he has resisted the urge to hurl himself into another project. In fact, he hasn’t been doing very much at all: ‘I’ve just been reading scripts, chilling a bit.’ I wonder if he’s had a lot of offers of work. ‘Yeah, there’s been stuff. When you finish something, you tend to get a lot of offers, but sometimes it’s not that imaginative,’ he says. ‘After Being Human [in which he played a vampire], I got offered a lot of vampires. So, we’ll see…’

Right now, he’s enjoying the time out. His girlfriend of two years, American actress Caitlin Fitzgerald, lives in New York, so he’s been able to fly between their homes in Brooklyn and London more freely. He loves Brooklyn (‘it’s really cool’), and tells me he’s been renting a space at an artist’s studio to paint. What does he paint? ‘Oh, just abstract stuff – I’m not very good! But it’s something I really enjoy doing.’

Given that Cornish mining probably doesn’t translate so well outside the UK, I suggest it must be a little easier to go incognito there than it is in Britain. ‘Actually, the show’s travelled quite well in America.’ He’s nodding now. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ So had his girlfriend seen Poldark before they met? ‘Ha ha! No. God, no.’

While a lot of actors will remark that they never wanted to be famous, with Turner it at least seems to ring true. Raised by an electrician father and accountant mother, he hadn’t the faintest idea what he wanted to do until he was 17 and walked past a sign outside a drama school. After signing up, he realised he loved acting. ‘Like, really loved it. It was such a surprise and so out of character for me… Like, what a weirdo,’ he laughs.

Now he’s grateful that his way into the industry was as random as that. ‘I’m really thankful because if I’d thought it was my destiny from the beginning or it had been my childhood dream, it would have been very disappointing if it hadn’t worked out,’ he says. As timing would have it, the day he moved to London to act full-time was also the day he found out he’d landed his role on Being Human, so he never really experienced a demoralising period when he was out of work. At the time, he was living in a flat in Camden. ‘I mean, we were still broke – it was me and my girlfriend at the time, but we were young and on Camden High Street. It was exactly where we wanted to be.’

Nowadays, he says, he’s much less of a party guy. ‘In fact, the older I’m getting, I’m realising how bad I am at keeping in touch with people,’ he admits. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t ‘do’ social media. ‘I mean, until recently, I’d never used Whatsapp,’ he says nonchalantly. I’m sorry, what? ‘Yep! I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t really know it was a “thing”… Then the cast of The Lieutenant Of Inishmore started this group; you know, “Where are we going after the show?” Now I think it’s brilliant.

I can talk to anyone! But it’s unusual for me to be part of something like that.’ Not that he’s a hermit by any stretch; he has a pretty active social life. When he’s at home in Dublin, his big thing is hosting snooker nights; in fact, snooker was his passion as a kid, and it’s a hobby he still loves. ‘My absolute hero is Ken Doherty, which probably won’t mean anything to most people.’ (1997 world snooker champion; Irish… I had to google him.)

His other talent as a child was ballroom dancing, which he did competitively between the ages of 10 and 16, but I’ve read that he doesn’t like talking about that very much. ‘Ha ha! I suppose if you don’t know that world, it can sound a bit strange.’

Does he still dance? ‘Yeah, a little bit. I might do it at weddings…’ More of a performance then? ‘I don’t know!’ More laughter follows. ‘It’s hard not to do the whole thing…’ We laugh about whether he still practises his moves at home, about whether you should gently ease a new partner into the tango or go in cold (the latter, he thinks), before chat turns to the fact he’s currently renovating an 1840s townhouse in London…

Tomorrow, he’s expecting a delivery of some furniture: a French antique dining table and set of benches for his kitchen. As it turns out, they’re the same table and chairs he’s been using for years, in Ross Poldark’s house. ‘I don’t think our producer knows it yet, but the art department is dropping them round,’ he reveals. It’s something Turner’s been planning for a while, although he couldn’t let anyone in on the secret until the set’s shutters finally came down. He grins. ‘A lot of big scenes have happened around that table, you know? After five years, it sort of means something.’

‘I PAINT ABSTRACT STUFF. I’M NOT VERY GOOD!’