-Matthew, thank you for being here. How are you?
-I'm very well. I'm very well. Yeah, I'm very hot.
I'm less hot now 'cause the night has drawn in
but I'm in Sicily on holiday with my family.
-I have been also lucky enough
to have gone to Sicily in the past.
It's a beautiful place.
This is a very hot time of year in Sicily.
-It is, it is, yeah.
Yeah, it's very sweaty. -[ Laughs ]
I mean, I guess we should celebrate the fact
that you're on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean
where even though the pandemic is not totally under control,
people can at least travel and holiday to some degree.
-Yeah, this is true. It's good.
And it's weird. Even where I live in West London,
it feels like sort of, people wearing masks,
but it's not sort of weird as the early days of the lockdown.
Central London is very strange,
but kind of where people live is sort of okay, but who knows?
-Fingers crossed that being okay spreads. That would be nice.
So I'm very flattered to hear, but your wife, Keeley Hawes,
who I'm a huge fan of as well,
she was on the show, and when you're on the show in person --
you obviously are being denied this great honor --
you are given a "Late Night" T-shirt,
and I hear it's getting worn in your family.
-It's like hanging in rags.
It's my youngest son's favorite.
His all-time favorite T-shirt,
which for a teenage boy, it's a big deal.
It's a big deal.
-Please let him know that I understand
that he's one shirt in deficit
but because his father's on the show,
we will get it to him eventually.
-Okay, wonderful, and I think Keeley very happily took away
a mug from you which has lost its holder,
so that now is a pen pot.
-I'll take it. [ Laughs ]
-There's a lot of Seth in our house.
-I should say, this is just,
it's not what you're here promoting
but a lot of people are looking for television shows
to watch during quarantine.
I was introduced to both you and Keeley on a fantastic show,
"MI-5," that people should go back and watch.
It's a fantastic, fantastic show.
-We look very young. We met on that show.
We came to Sicily to sort of get away from it all,
and we found out very early on in the airport that "Bodyguard,"
a TV show did that Keeley did,
a racy thriller with Richard Madden...
-Yes, which I've also seen, yes.
-Yeah, it's on TV right now in Italy.
So there's lots of sort of...
[ Speaks Italian ]
Yeah, so Keeley's had a lot of attention.
-That's really exciting because that's probably
three years ago for her now?
-Yeah, two years maybe, two or three, yeah. So it's good.
-That's nice to have a second life like that
in a foreign country.
-Yeah.
-I heard your family re-enacted a British cooking show early on
when this first started?
-Yes, it's a sort of --
I think it's daytime TV show called "Come Dine with Me."
It's horribly addictive, if you're not doing
much in the day, and anyway, we re-enacted it.
And it was good, and the kids took it very seriously
and we had a small cash prize.
The idea is you cook a meal from scratch on consecutive nights
and then you're judged, and then you win the prize and yeah.
-Are you a decent cook, all things considered?
-My vanity is that I'm a very good cook.
And they ganged up on me and I lost.
-Oh, well.
-Yeah, it was fun, but not that --
I was sort of manfully pretending
it was more fun than it was.
-They probably ganged up against you out of petty jealousy, yes?
-Kind of, yeah. They assumed that I would win,
but I made onion bhajis, and it was the wrong --
It was disgusting what I did, but it was, yeah.
-[ Laughs ]
-We tried to do virtuous things like reading hour,
which didn't work, but it was good.
Lockdown was alright, and they're all teenagers,
and we all got on. It was sort of lovely actually.
-I've got much younger children who it is not, their extra time
with their parents, I think, they're of the age
where they're very happy about it.
That's good if your teenagers survived through it.
I think that speaks well to the level of parent you are.
-I hope so, yeah.
I'd like to think.
-I want to congratulate you
on your Emmy nomination for "Succession."
It is -- Tom is as good a character
as there is on TV and again,
having first been introduced to you in far more serious fare,
I was blown away by how funny this portrayal is.
When you first read the character, did you --
could you appreciate how funny it would be
or were you just taken with how awkward it was?
Because it is the most awkward scenes on television.
-I thought it was very --
Well, the pilot, the pilot, it was very funny.
He was so sort of pathetically
ass-kissing to Logan at the beginning.
He has this watch that he's trying to give him,
and then there's this sort of really horrible scene at the end
where he turns on cousin Greg,
and that was the sort of thing that made me think,
"Wow, maybe this --"
and then they just sort of built on that.
The truth is it's a real joy because as an actor,
you sort of -- sometimes if you have a bit of success
in one kind of part, then you're offered a similar --
you know, parts like that
and you end up sort of not getting in a rut
but you sort of have to be canny and try and do different things,
and this was such a blast.
It was such a breath of fresh air.
-Well, it was a bunch of different things.
One, you have an American accent,
and it's like this sort of -- you all of a sudden
have no class or style and very funny.
So a departure from everything I knew you to be good at, so,
and you and Nicholas Braun are many --
much has been written about how it's television's best bromance.
He's also nominated in your category.
So is Kieran Culkin.
All well-deserved.
Will there be some bragging rights at stake here
if one of you were to be the winner?
-Kieran has already descended into threats of violence.
He's threatened to punch Nick in the [bleep] if Nick wins.
-He seems very -- very prone to rage, Kieran.
-Yeah, it's unprofessional apart from anything else.
-Yeah. -And I just won't go there.
I'll just be very gracious,
and I'm going to get the Emmy people, if I win,
to sort of split it into three maybe and so we can all share.
-That's very kind. -I think so.
-How are you feeling about --
I think it's, you know -- it's sort of a mixed blessing --
There's nothing good about the fact
that this will be a virtual Emmys,
but, you know, you are saved having to go through
this sort of dog and pony show that is required of a nominee.
-Yeah, it's quite scary, the whole thing.
I've been nominated for various bits,
and it's very exciting and then it's sort of --
it's just frightening.
It's partly because I've got to get up and say something
if I win, and then you don't win
and then you sort of feel, you know.
So there are consolations of it not being a sort of zoo thing.
There are.
But I will miss seeing everybody.
I miss the sort of conviviality of it
and I miss, you know, and inevitably in those things,
you meet a lot of old friends you haven't seen for ages,
and not just your cast, so I'll miss that.
-Yeah, I always find the nicest part, when I look back on it,
if you have the opportunity as well to go up to somebody
who you never met before, who you're a fan of.
And I think can genuinely -- people can tell when you're --
when you're just saying it.
People can also tell when you go out of your way to say,
"You were great." -Thank you, yeah. Exactly.
-Another thing, the conviviality,
I imagine you're missing is being with the cast of the show.
You have a third season coming
that you have not been able to film.
Do you guys -- Are you ever given any sense
of where the show is going?
Because it is a show that has great, you know,
twists and turns for lack of a better term.
-Yeah, no, it's true.
Well, the first two seasons,
we were sort of in blissful ignorance, or I was.
I think Brian knew a little bit more,
and Jeremy wanted to know very --
and so Jesse's very sort of generous --
if people want to know, he'll sort of give them little tidbits
and ideas about where the character might go,
and I've had a little chat, and so I know a little bit.
But not -- It's sort of lovely not knowing.
And then you get the script.
-I can imagine, I mean,
it's such a tremendously well-written show.
I imagine it jumps off the page
that way when you're reading it as well.
-It does. It's just brilliant.
The writing is just amazing, and as you know, it's not --
The really wonderful writing looks after you, as an actor.
It all seems very sort of,
you think, "Oh, well, I know how to play the scene
because it's sort of telling me how to do it."
Because it's so brilliant.
It's so funny and angry and odd and caustic
that it's just a joy for an actor.
-Your Congressional testimony scene was as uncomfortable
as I've been watching in a long time.
-I was really scared. I was so scared.
And my heart -- because they built
this thing in the studio in Queens
and you walk in and my heart was thumping
because there's all these extras who are,
you know, the Senate,
and I'd been watching little bits and pieces.
I think the Cohen thing would've been on C-SPAN,
so I was sort of -- I'd watched little bits
and bobs, and yeah, awful.
-I mean, it's nice to know that they'd actually built it
in a way that you as an actor could also feel terrified
because that certainly came across.
-No imagination. Yeah, yeah.
-You can never trust everything you read online,
but is it true that you are also a John le Carré fan?
-I am. I am. My dad --
Yeah, I've got a real soft spot.
My dad gave me -- "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold"
was my -- that was first sort of proper grown-up book.
And yeah, I love --
"A Perfect Spy" is my favorite novel of all time probably.
-I watched that, I guess, mini-series a long time ago.
Do you believe that's a mini-series that holds up?
Should we also recommend that to everybody who's watching?
-I think so, yeah. That's a really -- Yeah.
Brilliant acting and very -- I think it was the '80s.
Ray McAnally and Peter Egan.
-Oh, yeah, Ray McAnally, who --
-He played a version of his dad. -Yes.
-Like his old man father, yeah.
But I love the older he gets, he doesn't sort of --
John le Carré doesn't --
he sort of gets more politically aware and angry, and he's not,
you know, he's not sort of getting cozy in his old age.
-I know 'cause from what I read about him,
he just is living a very lovely life,
but still very mad, which is -- I'm very impressed with.
-Yeah. -[ Laughs ]
Alright, so the takeaway for everybody
should be to watch "Succession."
When you're done with that, "MI-5."
Only if, you know -- again, it's very long but I would say,
if you're a fan of you and Keeley,
I think just a couple seasons, right?
-Yeah, 2, 2 1/2, and then other people --
-Alright, great.
-Other people come in, and yeah.
-Yeah, then just move on to "A Perfect Spy."
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-Hey, thanks so much for making the time.
Congratulations. So well-deserved.
-Great pleasure, thank you, Seth. Thank you very much.