Jason Watkins: ‘I've won a Bafta and made Hollywood films – but I still have to clean up poo in the garden'

Telegraph

09-05-2025

'Oh, that's really nice,' Jason Watkins enthuses, casting a discerning eye over my vintage blue velvet Jaeger jacket, borrowed from my mother's wardrobe. It reminds him of a navy velvet suit his late father bought from Simpsons, the department store in London, he tells me.
Watkins, 62, is quite the natty dresser himself. 'I've got a bit more dapper as I've grown older,' he confirms, illustrated by his outfit today: statement red socks, a lemon shirt channelling spring under a blue cardigan-jacket, and a playful ­soccer-motif tie – a nod to his semi-professional footballing days as a teenager playing for Wrexham's youth team, among others.
We're in the bar of the Royal Court Theatre, in Sloane Square, where the actor has performed many times and helped with youth workshops. Watkins is here to discuss his new four-part thriller, The Game, in which he plays the newly retired, diligent detective Huw Miller, who is haunted by his failure to catch a serial killer.
When a new neighbour, played by Robson Green, moves in across the road, Miller becomes fixated that he could be a potential suspect. Green's Grantchester schedule meant he turned up mid-shoot and that Watkins and Sunetra Sarker, who plays Miller's wife, filmed most of their scenes together without him. 'The show was a weird animal in that way,' Watkins says. 'But Robson and I have worked together before, on Being Human and Soldier Soldier. He's just great, we had a lot of fun when he was there.'
Following 2023's The Catch, and Coma in 2024, this is a hat-trick for Watkins in terms of Channel 5 ­dramas. So, what's the appeal? 'Channel 5 is just very straightforward – offer, do it, but hard, hard work and a tough schedule, because everyone's on a budget. So, instead of filming two, three, four pages [of script] a day, you might do seven or eight, which is tough.'
The schedule may be punishing, but he relished shooting for seven weeks in and around Bilbao, Spain – standing in for the UK – where there were good tax breaks, great crews and actors. 'One of the joys is working with people from Europe and their culture. I learnt a bit of Basque and they gave me one of their famous berets at the end. I was very touched by that,' he says proudly. 'It was nice to think we are working with our European neighbours, having left Europe, catastrophically, in my opinion.'
At his core, Miller is a flawed yet good man, trying to make amends for his mistakes and to do right by his family and his profession – but floundering. Watkins, similarly, is a dedicated and hard-working family man, with two children from his first marriage and two with his ­second wife, the actress Clara ­Francis. Watkins and Francis's ­two-year-old daughter Maude tragically died from undiagnosed sepsis in 2011 and is the subject of their deeply moving ITV documentary Jason & Clara: In Memory of Maudie.
Down to earth and genial, Watkins brings a compelling everyman quality to this new role that makes you root for Miller and offers a sense of familiarity; he could be your neighbour, the man on the train, or indeed, a different national treasure altogether. 'People often confuse me with Toby Jones,' he reveals, his eyes twinkling behind his tortoiseshell-framed glasses. 'I was at lunch yesterday, and this director, who I worked with on a film, thought I was Toby. But then he [the director] is getting on a bit...'
Rada alumnus Watkins may have a passing resemblance to his friend Jones, but he is, of course, a highly respected actor in his own right. His talent for impersonation was highlighted when he played prime minister Harold Wilson in Netflix's The Crown, and his sensitive and nuanced performance as Christopher Jefferies, the schoolteacher falsely accused of the murder of Joanna Yeates in ITV's The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, won him the Bafta for leading actor in 2015. In an era of prestige TV, how does he feel about those who judge or dismiss Channel 5 dramas because of their mainstream appeal and smaller budgets?
'I think if it's a good script and I like the character, I'll nearly always do it – and, frankly, one can't always choose. Last year was very tough for everybody. Almost 50 per cent less drama was being made, 78 per cent less documentaries. I mean, it was brutal. When things get tough, that kind of snobbery is redundant. I wish I could choose all my work, but I can't, and I feel most people are in that boat,' he admits.
'If it's a good script, just get it made. Channel 5 is underpinned by Paramount [which currently owns it], so that has enabled it to make choices and get the people in place, including Ben Frow [chief content officer], who knows what their USP is. They have always been very ambitious about the work, the subjects and the people they want, supplying what they know their market likes.'
Watkins's work with the channel isn't limited to dramas. For several years, he's narrated the documentary series Inside the Tower of Lon­don, which led to his own three-part Tower of London strand. Shortly after narrating an episode about Lady Jane Grey and the famous Paul Delaroche painting of her in the National Gallery – which depicts her being led to the execution block by Sir John Brydges, the lieutenant of the Tower – the actor discovered a surprising personal connection.
'A few weeks [after recording that episode], my dad passed away. He was adopted, and there were always these rumours that he was connected to Jane Austen. I found some photographs and birth certificates that had Austen on them and did some Googling, and if, in fact, I was related to Jane Austen through my dad, then I was also related to John Brydges, the guy in the painting. I mentioned it to my team who were making Inside the Tower of London and then to Ben Frow at the launch of Coma, and he said, 'Well, you should make it' – and the next day he greenlit it.'
Being related to Jane Austen means Watkins is also a distant relative of Edward I and Richard III. It must be thrilling for the Houns­low-raised boy to discover that he's got blue blood. 'What do you do with it, though? Do I just walk up to the palace and say it's mine?' he asks impishly. 'They're [Netflix] doing Pride and Prejudice. I think they should just cast me as a matter of course.' Watkins's Mr Bennet to Olivia Colman's Mrs Bennet would be quite the powerhouse pairing, I suggest.
He is no stranger to sharing scenes with acting royalty, after all, having just performed with Cate Blanchett in Duncan Macmillan's modern take on Chekhov's classic play The Seagull, at the Barbican Theatre. Blanchett played Arkadina, an egomaniacal actress with extra­ordinary levels of self-­obsession, while Watkins was her sickly brother, Peter Sorin. The con­temporary update, which broke the fourth wall and used modern technology (including VR sets) and rock music, received a four-star review from The Telegraph, while London Theatre described Watkins as 'the quiet soul of the whole piece'.
'Cate was amazing,' he confirms. 'She's incredibly inventive in rehearsal and a real team player. It never felt like a vanity project for her.' As a veteran of the stage – he's been in approximately 120 plays across his 40-year career – why does he think other Hollywood stars, including Brie Larson, Rami Malek and Sigourney Weaver, have fared so badly in the West End recently? 'Who knows? I mean all I can say is Cate's a theatre animal – she ran the ­Sydney Theatre Company. So, she's done theatre and that helps, understanding what that is,' he says diplomatically.
The news in January that the ITV crime drama McDonald & Dodds, in which Watkins played the eponymous DS Dodds to Tala Gouveia's DCI Lauren McDonald, was ending after four series was a source of great disappointment to him. However, the downtime did lead to him getting a literary agent and writing a TV show, about which he is tight-lipped but reveals that it is 'getting close now'. He is also set to take on another campaigning role later this year, about which he is equally secretive. 'This project is less personal, but more about an issue,' he offers. 'As soon as these roles come along, I tend to jump at them. We've seen with Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence what these dramas can do – how getting hold of the zeitgeist really makes an impact.'
After an hour in his company, the word I'd use to describe Watkins is 'grounded', which in no small part seems down to his family. 'In my household, I'm the lowest rung of the ladder. I have absolutely no credibility, kudos,' he muses. 'Last year, I did a Wes Anderson movie [The Phoenician Scheme], came home and was still, quite rightly [treated like that]. The Seagull has been so rewarding, but I still have to clean up the poo in the garden.'
He warms to this theme. 'We were on holiday once and I was trying to adjust the bike seat and the kids said, 'No, you don't do it like that, Dad, you do it like this.' I said, 'No, I've got the Allen key.' I do know what I'm doing with a bike, but there's this terrible mistrust, they think I'm useless. I did sort of say in a fit, 'Listen, I've won a f------Bafta! I do know what I'm doing!''
And did that have the desired effect? 'No, of course not!' he chuckles. 'There was more ­laughter!'
I suspect he wouldn't have it any other way.