View from my sofa: Mark Lewis Jones
The actor is proud to promote the Welsh language — even in lands far, far away
Photo by Francesca Jones/BAFTA/Contour by Getty Images
- Huw Fullerton
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What’s the view from your sofa?
Well, the TV is on a table. It’s not gigantic-silly, but it’s quite a decent size. We have a large sofa, so my wife will sit there and I’ve got four sons, so if any of them are with us with their girlfriends, they will also sit on this incredibly long sofa. And I sit on the chair.
Who controls the remote at home?
Me – if somebody else has it, it makes me a little bit twitchy.
What have you enjoyed watching recently?
We watch a lot of “murder things”: Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter, Mindhunter, American Nightmare. And Adolescence – the single-shot thing was extraordinary, but I kind of forgot about that, because I was so taken in by the acting.
You’re one of the busiest actors around — especially in Welsh TV. How do you choose your roles?
It’s what feels right in the moment. I’m not in the position of being able to pick and choose much. If it’s not a lead part, I’m happy to do a well-crafted cameo in one episode only. It’s stuff like Baby Reindeer and The Crown where you get an opportunity to make an impact. Star Wars [Jones played Captain Canady in The Last Jedi] was exactly that.
You also had the first Welsh accent in Star Wars…
I wasn’t told to do any other accent, so I thought, “Well, there’s no point me putting on an accent. What for?”
You’re now back for the second series of Dal y Mellt, the Welsh-language crime drama. What can we expect?
It’s a group of people who work out a plan to do a heist, and then over the next six hours, we get the backstory of the heist, and why they’re doing it. The response was fantastic to the first series. I do a lot of “back-to-back” series in both Welsh and English, but it feels special that this is just in Welsh. After the S4C and BBC airing it, it went onto Netflix titled Rough Cut – the first Welsh-language-speaking series on there.
Was that a big deal?
It’s fantastic. A lot of the big Oscar films from South Korea and all the Nordic noir stuff means that people have become comfortable with subtitles. The character I played in The Crown spoke Welsh with his wife, and it was a real move forward. It opened a lot of people’s minds. If you look at the listings of those episodes in that series, the one I’m in is called Tywysog Cymru. They don’t translate it. That means Prince of Wales.
You’ve also represented Wales at the Oscars…
There have been two Oscar-nominated Welsh-speaking films in the foreign language section, and I was in one of them, Solomon & Gaenor. To be there representing a Welsh-language film, and to do the foreign film circuit running up to the ceremony – it was wonderful.
How do “back-to-back” series work?
The same show is filmed in Welsh and English, scene by scene. You see it in Keeping Faith/Un Bore Mercher, The Light in the Hall/Y Golau, Hinterland/Y Gwyll… you’ve got to learn it twice, basically. You do it shot by shot, not scene by scene, so you have to keep changing from one to another.
It sounds like a challenge!
But it works. And in these times of tightened budgets, without it, we’d probably have a lot fewer Welsh series.
There’s more Welsh drama than ever. Is there a Welsh renaissance?
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I hope so. People are much more aware now of the Welsh language because of things like Dal y Mellt. The aim is to have a million Welsh speakers by 2050. I just think doing more through the arts really helps.
Authors
Huw FullertonCommissioning editor
Huw Fullerton is a commissioning editor for Radio Times magazine handling comedy, entertainment and specialist drama. In a previous regeneration, he covered all things sci-fi and fantasy for RadioTimes.com.
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