Michael Sheen is a legendary British actor and I want to talk to him about a few things.
Firstly, why is acting so dominated by people from such privileged backgrounds but also,
Michael Sheen has a lot to say on what's going on in modern Britain. He's very proud of his
Welsh identity, he grew up in Port Talbot, a place at the absolute epicentre of deindustrialisation
and all the rest. So what is his take on what is happening in Britain?
Why is it that acting is so dominated by people from rich backgrounds?
Well, there's a number of reasons. I mean, over time as drama departments get cut it
becomes an extracurricular activity. If there's not the money there to put on a school production
then it doesn't happen.
Youth drama groups that aren't being supported, don't have the money then that's not happening.
So there's that aspect of it: getting children into it in the first place.
Then to come to drama school is expensive.
In a way, I think a lot of people think now, because of things like X Factor and, you know,
sort of ... talent shows, Britain's Got Talent, that kind of stuff, that you can become an
overnight sensation. Overnight famous.
For acting you can't do it on your own in your bedroom. You have to be with a group of people.
I went to a comprehensive school that had a drama department. I did school plays. My
drama teacher at school put me forward for the local county youth theatre. I got into
the local county youth theatre. Through that there was a pathway into finding out about
auditioning for drama schools. I got a discretionary grant because I couldn't have afforded to
go otherwise and I went to drama school and then had the career that I had.
First of all my comprehensive school cut the drama department. Now the school doesn't even
exist at all.
My county youth theatre lost its funding, the discretionary grant is not there any more.
My parents were both very supportive of me wanting to go into the arts and that kind of stuff.
So I had a lot of advantages. When I think about children and young people who don't
have those advantages even ... If the pathway for me is no longer there, then for them what
chance is there at all?
The figures are shocking. You know, seven percent of people get privately educated in
this country and yet the representations of people who are privately educated across all
the top professions is mind-boggling.
Including the media.
Absolutely, I mean, just under 80 percent of the leading editors of newspapers in journalism
are from private school. It's kind of ... really shocking when you think about that.
When we think about TV and film, it's not just the actors but the whole thing is kind
of dominated by people from quite privileged backgrounds.
Do you think that's a problem in that it's not just unjust, in terms of the people who
are very talented elsewhere who don't make it, but in terms of the sorts of things that
are commissioned – the lack of authentic, accurate, working class characters, dramas and so on.
Yeah, well you have to remember, before the mid 50s, the culture of Britain as represented
in – certainly in mainstream film, theatre – was very, very weighted towards ... you
know it was the time of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan and this, kind of, 'Anyone for tennis?'
kind of look at things.
If you saw or heard working class accents or characters they were usually in the background;
'alright, guvnor?' And you know, the sort of comedy character in the background ...
– Clowns almost – ... or the servants or whatever it was, yeah.
Then suddenly, in the mid 50s you get a play like Look Back in Anger, John Osborne writing
it, sort of the kitchen sink drama. And it revolutionised not just theatre but British culture.
It was a burst of energy. I think, you know during the 60s I think it was far more down
to that opening up of regional voices, regional stories, much more than the kind of drug culture,
pop music, popular culture thing, I think that's what vitalised our country.
The danger is ... is that we're going back the other way again.
Our culture is a conversation. It's a conversation we have with each other and it's about voices
and stories coming from all over. You know, opinions that do clash. There has to be a
healthy way to have differing opinions without it just becoming offensive and abusive and
'you are the worst kind of shitty scum for not agreeing with what I think. That's unhealthy.
A healthy argument is one where there are different opinions, different voices and they're
able to be aired and you can be affected by ... You know, you telling me that you disagree
with me actually changes me in some way. That's important. If we lose that, we're just having
a one sided conversation that just goes round and round in circles and everyone misses out.
Everyone loses because of it.
Port Talbot, where you grew up, is a working class community. Industry was at it's very
heart as it was for many communities. But industrial decline and the disappearance of
many of the traditional industries has taken its toll, hasn't it?
Well, this is as you know, very much a pivotal moment in Port Talbot's history.
It's on the coast, if you come back off the coast, up through the Afan Valley – as it's
known – you're going up through communities that grew up around the collieries, the pits,
the ironworks. You go back to the industrial revolution, that part, the south Wales coalfield
was like the wild west. You had to survive, you had to be hardy, you had to be resilient.
These communities grew incredibly strong because of that, over time.
Those communities that grew up around those works in the period of deindustrialisation,
you know, they have been just left.
In the miners' strike in 84 and 85 those communities were – not just collateral necessarily – but
actually, the danger was that after the Heath government was essentially brought down by
the NUM in 74, that there was an out and out decision that this must not be allowed to happen.
And therefore they had to be defeated. –Taught a lesson.
– Taught a lesson that Thatcher was... 'This cannot stand. We have to change this country
so that this can never happen again.'
The defeat of the miners, the defeat of the trade unions, led to the total abandonment
of those communities.
You know, I was in Ystradgynlais yesterday talking to some of the older men there who
were working on the council and they said: 'you know, Michael, there's nothing here.
There's no jobs and we're an ageing community. The young people have had to go and, you know,
there's just nothing to keep people here.'
When people say: 'well, you should just go, you should just leave. If the work's not there
go and find the work.' You know, 'get on your bike,' as Tebbit used to say.
There are different ways of dying and for some people to leave where you live, when
you've fought so hard and gone through so much in those communities, to leave it would
be to die in a particular way.
With Port Talbot, you know Port Talbot still has a steel industry there and it's still
a major employer. Not just the works but also the supply chain around it
When the stories came out originally that Tata were going to make, first of all, make
a lot of people redundant and then pull out all together from their UK operations, the
stories were that it was losing a million pounds a day and that kind of thing. Now,
that was hard for the pride of the workforce there, the men there and they turned that
around and they worked so hard to try and get that place into profit and they managed it.
You know, at this point, whilst the steelworks is still there, there's still hope and people
are working really hard to try and keep it going.
But, if it's in the face of a totally disinterested and unsupportive government then there's going
to be big problems for the community. And especially if, as has happened across all
those old mining communities, if there is no support there. If there's no plan B to
help those communities then it becomes very scary.
Where you grew up voted to leave the European Union, Heavily so in fact. Why do you think that was?
You know, it can't be a coincidence that in a lot of the communities – not just in Wales
but throughout Britain – that have had the greatest loss through deindustrialisation
and have, I think, felt the loss the hardest about globalisation, about manufacturing jobs
going elsewhere ... These are communities that were centred around those manufacturing
jobs and heavy industry. It's those communities that seem to have voted most to leave and
they're the communities, obviously, that have also received the most EU money. So obviously
there's a huge irony there.
There's also a huge irony in the fact that a lot of the people voting to leave were voting
along with the right wing Tories who were part of the defeat of those communities during
the miners' strike. That was a kind of tragic irony as well.
But if you can kind of look past the ideology, look past all that and kind of go; 'what was
most resonant?' I think the most resonant thing for a lot people that I've talked to
in the different communities was that 'take back control'.
Very powerful message; 'take back control', regardless whether it's about take back control
from the EU or ... But that sense of ownership, of control of your community. These are communities
that have lost all sense of control.
These were the most cohesive, cooperative ... You know, the solidarity of these communities,
there was nothing like it. Nowhere else, you know, certainly in Britain. Those mining communities,
that yearning for a sense of community, of belonging, of something that is bigger than
yourself, something where you do find strength through togetherness, I think that was ... That
was what made that, you know, take back control a very powerful message, I think, for those communities.
And if you feel like your voice isn't being heard, if you feel like you've been abandoned,
then to have some way to hit out against that ... I think that was a big part of what the
vote was, I think.
The only way that we can have a future in those communities is to somehow get back that
sense of ownership and that sense of control.
I don't necessarily think that's to do with leaving the EU or not leaving the EU. I think
it's more about communities being able to take ownership through things like cooperatives,
like credit unions, like community share schemes.
So that's what I'm focussing on at the moment is looking for how can we get a community
to help itself. You know, to stand on its own two feet and I think what could be true
of Port Talbot could potentially be true of the whole of Wales.
The other issue, of course, in the EU referendum – as you say – was immigration. Now,
where I grew up in Stockport, that part of Stockport voted to leave. Very few immigrants
where I grew up. It's also the same where you grew up. Why do you think that is?
Well, I don't know is the simple answer. I can theorise about it but, you know, ultimately
I don't know.
I do think there is a sense that someone, somewhere has messed our community up.
Globalisation was supposed to be the tide that rose ... that makes all ships rise. Unfortunately,
the water that allows them to rise is coming from somewhere and the water has drained out
of a lot of our communities.
The idea of, you know, free movement of trade, free movement of people and I think it's become
very connected in people's minds.
And so, regardless of whether you're brought up in a town, like Port Talbot, which doesn't
have an immigration problem in terms of people coming into the town but I think there's a
sense of 'there are people from other countries who are doing jobs that we used to do and
look at what that's done to us.'
I mean, that's the only thing I can think of really because, like you say, it's not
a case of towns being overrun with people from other countries.
Straddling the Atlantic as you do, in the United States we've seen the rise, of course,
of Trump. I mean, do you see a parallel there between what's happened here and Donald Trump?
And Trumpism?
Oh, absolutely! Absolute parallel. I think, in a way, the biggest danger that we have
is that the personality of Trump gets in the way of what is actually going on.
You know, once the figure of Donald Trump has moved off the stage, what he has tapped
into is still there. And that's ... You know, I think it has been characterised by the man
who has, you know, strangely with an orange face and a squirrel on his head, has somehow
managed to take centre stage over it.
The things that demagogues and dangerous, dangerous leaders tap into are real things.
They're not made up. They're just channeled in a particular way that becomes very dangerous for us.
You know, there was a lot of similar messaging going on with Trump and with Bernie Sanders,
you know, on the other side, on the left. There was a lot of, you know, appealing to
the forces of globalisation, people who have lost out because of manufacturing going elsewhere,
workers' rights, you know, pay. All kinds of things that people are very scared about
and very concerned about.
So I think, in a way, Trump is a kind of distraction for the very real thing that's going on.
And I also think that there is a lot to be learnt by the left in this country about this.
There is clearly a disconnect between the Labour party and the people who they have
represented for generations upon generations now.
There is a gap and that gap is being filled by people like Ukip in this country, Trump
and the far right, the sort of Tea Party, Breitbart lot in America.
If a party like Ukip, which is a bunch of numpties, you know, just horrendous. If they
can pick up so many votes it shows that people ...
– Neil Hamilton in Wales. – Oh my god! People clearly, desperately
just want someone to be the face of what they're feeling. Even if it's bloody Ukip or Trump in America.
So I think it's so important that the left gets its act together.
Do you think Jeremy Corbyn's failing to do that in places like Port Talbot at the moment?
Well, it seems not because people don't want to get behind him, you know. I really hope
that the grass roots movement to rally behind these sorts of issues that I think are really
important ... I really hope it is able to expand to the point where it can win a general
election within a few years. We'll never know unless the Labour party unites.
I mean, we'll never know. And that will be the danger. The danger is that, you know,
the group that Corbyn represents, if they never get the chance to try and fail possibly
then they'll always think; 'oh well, we were ... It was rigged. It was stolen from us.
It never happened.'
And that fighting will just go on and on and on and on. You know, the one positive thing
about maybe, you know, Corbyn actually having a united party behind him and trying it and
failing in the next election, if that were to be the case, is at least the Labour party
can then go; 'right that didn't work. How are we going to make this work?'
At least, you know, everyone can move together.
You did a speech about the National Health Service last year, which went viral. Why should
we treasure the NHS and how worried are you for its future existence.
It's not just the NHS, is it? It's that whole post-war consensus. The Attlee government,
what they brought in, what Nye Bevan was part of creating. The idea of the safety net, that
coming out of the war with a sense of what can be achieved by working together, creating
pillars of institutions in our country to be a safety net for people.
What we have now are people having to create safety nets around those safety nets and those
extra safety nets also have massive holes in them.
And, you know, the dismantling of the NHS, the attack on the welfare system, these are
things that... you know they do need to be modernised, they do need to be looked at.
We can never take it for granted that we've got them and they work and that's it.
But it was about who we are. I think that's why it connected with a lot of people. About,
what do we want our values to be?
It's important to know how you connect up. You know, I was talking about the miners'
welfare halls before. Part of what is so sad for a lot of people in the communities now
is saying, you know, a lot of the younger people in our communities, they have no idea.
You know, and that's just another part of the defeat of those communities is make sure
that you don't know what has gone before you, don't know what you're a part of, what is
at stake. And as soon as people lose that connection, that living connection to what's
gone before then, of course, you just have anger that just wants to strike out anywhere.
Doesn't know where to go.
So, yeah, the NHS absolutely. The ethos behind the NHS and what it stands for has to be preserved.
It has to be. But it's also part of a wider way of just looking at how we live together,
how we work as a society.
Tell you what, he's a lot more charismatic than most politicians. Michael Sheen for PM, anyone?
What are your thoughts? So, please do leave your thoughts, as ever. We've got loads of
other interviews up there and we've got loads more interviews to come. Always welcome your
suggestions. So leave your comments, subscribe and I'll see you next time.