Latest news with #TomCullen
Wales Online
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Gritty Welsh crime thriller with Downton Abbey and The Crown stars promises gripping drama
Gritty Welsh crime thriller with Downton Abbey and The Crown stars promises gripping drama Reach Screen Time spoke exclusively to the lead stars of Mudtown about your next big watch Downton Abbey's Tom Cullen plays Saint Pete in Mudtown A gritty new TV drama will be hitting screens this month, serving up audiences a compelling story filled with tension and conflict. The show comes as another mystery thriller will be arriving later this year. Mudtown is set in Newport, Wales and follows magistrate Claire Lewis Jones (played by Erin Richards), who is thrown into a quandary when the daughter of a childhood friend is brought in on arson charges. Claire quickly finds her personal and professional lives colliding as she tries to preside over the case. To add another layer of complication, former flame and local gangster Saint Pete (Tom Cullen) turns up in Claire's life again, enlisting her help in the courtroom. She will be left torn over divided loyalties and making sure justice is served. Mudtown was co-created by Keeping Faith actor and writer Hannah Daniels alongside real-life magistrate Georgia Lee. In an exclusive interview with Reach Screen Time, lead stars Cullen and Richards opened up about signing onto the series. Article continues below The Crown star Erin Richards leads Mudtown (Image: UKTV) Cullen admitted he'd been highly tentative about taking on the role of crime lord Saint Pete, despite portraying real-life gangster Johnny Palmer in BBC's The Gold. He said: 'On a personal level, Pete is a character that I've never really got to play before and when they offered it to me, I was absolutely terrified and confused as to why they wanted me to play this character. 'And I was absolutely terrified of the prospect of playing because I thought it was way beyond my reach, capabilities as an actor and for that reason, also, I decided to do it, to scare myself.' Addressing why he wanted to do Mudtown, Cullen explained: Lots attracted me to the show. Just on a script-level, I found it really interesting. 'I thought that its themes really resonated with me and the socio-political aspect to it about the choices we make and what choices do we have when we grow up in certain areas, and the different paths a certain decision can make, I found that really interesting. I also thought that the characters were so complex.' He said he was also drawn to the project because of the chance to work in his home nation of Wales, which he rarely got to do and 'work with friends' he'd 'known for years', describing it as a 'joyous experience'. Tom Cullen admitted he was terrified of his Mudtown role (Image: UKTV) While The Crown and Gotham star Richards admitted she had similar reasons for signing onto Mudtown, admitting she was also drawn to the opportunity to work in Wales as well as the chance to be close to her family. 'It was such a dream and it was the first job I did since having my son, who is now two-and-a-half, but was one, and just the ability to come home every night and see him and sleep in my own bed, and travel to Newport which is somewhere I've never been before but obviously visited a lot,' she said. Richards and Cullen have known each other for years after making a film together when they were just 16, which she admitted enhanced their onscreen chemistry and altered her performance. The star said: 'I had a specific idea of who Claire was and I was playing her a certain way, and then when I would do the scenes with Tom, she would like change a little bit and I didn't plan for that to happen. 'But I think just because of the history that Tom and I have and how much we know about each other, it really reflected how Claire and Saint Pete were together. It was a really dynamic we had as friends but also had as characters.' Erin Richards plays a magistrate in legal drama Mudtown (Image: UKTV) The series was shot consecutively in English and Welsh, like many Welsh productions including the aforementioned Keeping Faith and The Light in the Hall. Shooting back-to-back in the two languages meant the Welsh-speaking cast would start off in one language for a scene and then flip to the other language for the next scene depending on the shot. Richards admitted: 'It was a real mind-bending thing at the beginning, but then halfway through I got used to it and my brain would just do it and click into place.' The actress prepared for the role by sitting in at magistrates courts in both Cardiff and Newport, learning how it worked and admitted she was 'surprised' that more shows about the court hadn't been made. Addressing the possibility of a second season, Richards teased: 'I think the final episode, the final scene leaves it open to another series. I would love to do one. Cullen added: 'I'd love to do one. We'll see how it goes, fingers crossed.' Article continues below Mudtown is available on U&alibi from August 29 at 9pm, available on Sky, Virgin Media and NOW
Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Tom Cullen: ‘I've worked with some nefarious characters'
When I met Tom Cullen at a chilly Twickenham Studios 18 months ago he had the bone-tired, slightly wired exhaustion of a new dad, deepened by the toll of playing John Palmer in Brink's-Mat thriller The Gold and the many associated takes of snorting ersatz cocaine. 'I could not sleep,' he told me about the shoot. 'Don't do glucose, kids.' Life is now more hectic still. Cullen turned 40 last month, moved house last week and is filming two projects in parallel. Yet the warm and empathetic Welshman is, he says, 'content for the first time in my life', a happiness that has been hard won, cracked open by fatherhood and a return to his roots after a long, wonky journey. I speak to a bearded Cullen between takes on the set of an indie film in north Wales (he can't tell me the title because it hasn't been announced). His weekends are spent shooting House of the Dragon and squeezing in trips to Cardiff, where he, his partner the American actress and musician Alison Sudol and their two daughters, aged four and two, have settled. He can't say much about the series because, well, it's House of the Dragon. Although he does concede that he'll be playing Luthor Largent, an ally of Matt Smith's crazed Daemon Targaryen and a warrior so fierce he killed a horse with a single punch. Possibly. 'You'll have to find out, because they always do a different take on the characters [from the books],' Cullen says. 'I really can't say a word. I have to be very shifty, I'm sorry.' He somehow looks contrite yet mischievous. 'Like the rest of the world, I was enraptured by Game of Thrones,' he adds. 'To enter that world has been mind-blowing. I find myself watching these characters I love, in the flesh, going, 'Wow, this is awesome.' ' Like House of the Dragon, his latest series, Mudtown, is — to Cullen's delight — one of many projects now filming in Wales. He plays Pete Burton, a saturnine Newport gangster whose scramble to recoup money lost in a warehouse fire brings him into conflict with a local magistrate (Erin Richards, a long-time friend who introduced Cullen and Sudol). 'Mudtown is about what happens to someone depending on their socioeconomic background and the way the world treats them,' Cullen says. 'Pete's a smart guy. He could have been a banker or something, but grew up in an area without a lot of opportunities.' Pete was a figure Cullen recognised from a youth spent working and DJing in bars owned by 'nefarious Cardiff characters'. 'You knew they were dangerous and you couldn't cross them, but there was a warmth to them as well. I remember as a student I couldn't afford to pay my phone bill. One of them found out, came down one day and paid it. It was a weird moment, but very kind.' Was the debt ever called in? He laughs. 'Luckily not, no!' Cullen started filming Mudtown a week after wrapping the second series of The Gold, in which his character, Palmer — born into grinding poverty yet by the 1990s ranked above the Queen in The Sunday Times Rich List — faced the police and criminals circling his Tenerife timeshare empire. Cullen found him fascinating. 'He was driven to escape his upbringing, to better himself and his family's life, but couldn't stop until it went beyond that into obsession and greed. John's legend is still very present on Tenerife. There were rumours he was still hiding out there.' • I knew The Gold's geezers — this show nailed them Cullen's way with charming crooks has meant sidelining ethical considerations. 'One of the trickier things of the job is not to judge these characters, because you'd feel it through the performance. I have to embody their reasoning. They're the heroes of their stories, justifying their actions to themselves as we all do.' At this point, he's called to set. When we reconvene a few days later Cullen is slumped on the sofa after a night-drive home. But he's on relaxed form, excited about school-uniform shopping — his children will attend a Welsh-language school — and delighted to be home, in both senses. 'I wanted my kids to have the autonomy and space I felt they couldn't necessarily have in London. I never thought I'd move back to Wales, but there's a Welsh word, hiraeth, a longing for home. Tthat's been building over the last few years.' He has good memories of his childhood in Llandrindod Wells, telling a charming story of 'what seemed like hundreds of kids' following him and his best friend Barry as they carried an injured fox to the RSPCA, having first taken it back to their den to feed it leaves and cheese sandwiches ('Barry always had a cheese sandwich'). 'Our council estate was filled with young families, so we were this feral bunch of kids rampaging around the fields and brooks. I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I never felt it, because it was such a creative household: fun, enriching and loving.' His parents had moved from east London to 'change the world' with the Theatre In Education programme at Theatre Powys. 'I'd sit in a rehearsal room after school and watch adults be kids. It was a bunch of hippies smoking rollies, the building was rotting and it was kind of chaotic, but also intoxicating and magical. It really stayed with me.' • Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews That feeling eventually rescued Cullen from years of drift after leaving school. 'You know when you look in the mirror and really see yourself? I remember this person looking back at me and thinking, 'That guy's really miserable.' So, why not try acting? It felt like I'd been trying to avoid it. Maybe I was afraid of doing something I really wanted and failing.' After graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2009, Cullen and his fellow actor Alexander Vlahos (of Versailles fame) founded Undeb Theatre ('union' in Welsh), putting on plays in pubs and attracting mates with no interest in theatre and national press attention. Then came the film audition that changed his life. Weekend, Andrew Haigh's gorgeous 2011 debut about two men, Russell (Cullen) and Glen (Chris New), falling in love, set the creative bar impossibly high. 'Absolutely. In many ways, I've been chasing that experience ever since.' Given the debate over lived experience, would Cullen feel comfortable playing a gay character again? His answer is thoughtful, lengthy, contradictory and careful: first yes, then no, then maybe. Eventually, he follows up over email. 'If a project like Weekend came along again, I'd have to really think about it: the content, whether the writer or director were queer, the other cast members. I think I got the job because of my chemistry with Chris and because I really identified with Russell. He was lost, having spent his life moving around and moulding himself to his surroundings, never sure who he was. I spent a lot of my life feeling like this, disassociated from the capitalist construct of school, university, job. I had some tricky experiences to navigate as a teen that pushed me further and further away from myself and what I wanted to do.' Having found the right path, the TV work began to flow: Black Mirror, Downton Abbey, Harlan Coben's The Five and, last year, Michael Sheen's ambitious Cymru fantasia The Way. And if the double whammy of Mudtown and The Gold doesn't make him a household name, perhaps his third series of 2025 will: Trespasses is an adaptation of Louise Kennedy's novel, with Cullen as a Protestant barrister who begins an affair with a younger Catholic woman (Lola Petticrew) in 1975 Belfast. 'It looks at what it means to love — others, ourselves and our communities — and it's been one of my most challenging, rewarding and moving working experiences. I'm proud it's so inherently female. I don't want to sound reductive, but it has a texture that can only be made by women.' With the tidal wave of new parenthood receding, he is plotting a return to the stage and a follow-up to Pink Wall, his warmly reviewed 2019 film debut as director. While the juggle remains intense, Cullen is happy personally and professionally, rhapsodising about 'brilliant' Sudol and his 'eccentric, weird, funny' children. In 2023 the two came together when he directed the video for Come On Baby, Sudol's song about a miscarriage. 'It let my grief move,' she said. Is the Tom Cullen entering his forties a different prospect to the one a decade ago? 'I was a very tough person in my twenties, terrified of vulnerability. The last two decades have been about chipping away at myself, trying to get back to the joy of that kid in his parents' rehearsal room. I used to feel being alive was about chasing massive highs and having massive lows, but now I've got a family and life is simple, not fireworks — porridge at 7am, reading a story at 6.30 at night — and that's not scary, it's amazing.'Turning 40 felt like a celebration of that journey to liking myself and knowing I'm resilient. I'm not held back by a constant fear. I don't know what my forties will look like, but I'm ready for it.' Mudtown starts on U&Alibi on August 20 at 9pm; Trespasses is on Channel 4 this autumnLove TV? 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Times
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
How accurate is The Gold series 2? We separate fact from fiction
T he Gold's second series has been a fascinating depiction of the aftermath of the Brink's-Mat robbery as detective Brian Boyce (played with upright integrity by Hugh Bonneville) attempted to seize the missing gold and laundered money and bring the perpetrators to justice — most notably John 'Goldfinger' Palmer (played with wolfish charm by Tom Cullen). Each episode starts with a disclaimer that, while inspired by real events, 'some characters, elements and chronologies have been created or changed for dramatic purposes'. The series writer, Neil Forsyth, who also co-wrote a book, The Gold: The Real Story Behind Brink's Mat, said: 'I don't think it is a more invented story. There are fewer people convicted for the activities we show in this series, so there's automatically less coverage and you have to be a bit more careful in certain ways how you tell the story. Some people co-operated with the authorities and received anonymity as a result. It's underpinned by a huge amount of research.'
Scotsman
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The Gold series 2: how many episodes are left? Schedule
The Gold's second series will continue on the BBC - but how many episodes are left? 👀 Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The Gold is back after a two year break. Viewers can expect a new episode in a matter of hours. But how many are left in the series? The tale of the Brink's-Mat robbery and its aftermath will continue with the latest episode of The Gold. After a two-year wait the acclaimed show has returned and viewers are being treated to multiple episodes a week. Hugh Bonneville leads the cast of the historical drama - while plenty other familiar faces also appear in the series. The Beeb was forced into moving the show around on the schedule due to live sports. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But how many episodes are left in the second series? Here's all you need to know: When is The Gold next on TV? Tom Cullen (John Palmer) and Joshua Samuels (Jerren) in The Gold series 2 | BBC Viewers have been forced to wait an extra 24 hours for the second episode of the new season. The Gold will continue on BBC One tonight (June 10) after being pushed back due to Wales' world cup qualifier against Belgium taking its normal slot last night (June 9). The latest episode is due to start at 9pm this evening and it will run for an hour once again. The preview, via Radio Times , reads: 'The police investigation into the Brink's-Mat robbery spreads overseas, as evidence comes in that the proceeds from the bullion heist are being laundered through growing international criminal networks.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad How many episodes of The Gold are left in series 2? First making its debut back in early 2023, fans of the historical drama have faced a lengthy wait for the show to return. It took more than two years for the second series to arrive but it is finally here. The first season of The Gold had six episodes - which is often the length of a BBC (or ITV) drama. For series two, it will also have six episodes and will be broadcast over the course of three weeks. However if you can't wait for the next episode, the full boxset became available on BBC iPlayer on Sunday (June 8). Both seasons can be binged right now. Have you enjoyed The Gold series two so far? Let me know your thoughts by email: . Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Have you got a story you want to share with our readers? You can now send it to us online via YourWorld at . It's free to use and, once checked, your story will appear on our website and, space allowing, in our newspapers.
Scotsman
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The Gold series 2: how many episodes are left? Schedule
The Gold's second series will continue on the BBC - but how many episodes are left? 👀 Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The Gold is back after a two year break. Viewers can expect a new episode in a matter of hours. But how many are left in the series? The tale of the Brink's-Mat robbery and its aftermath will continue with the latest episode of The Gold. After a two-year wait the acclaimed show has returned and viewers are being treated to multiple episodes a week. Hugh Bonneville leads the cast of the historical drama - while plenty other familiar faces also appear in the series. The Beeb was forced into moving the show around on the schedule due to live sports. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad But how many episodes are left in the second series? Here's all you need to know: When is The Gold next on TV? Tom Cullen (John Palmer) and Joshua Samuels (Jerren) in The Gold series 2 | BBC Viewers have been forced to wait an extra 24 hours for the second episode of the new season. The Gold will continue on BBC One tonight (June 10) after being pushed back due to Wales' world cup qualifier against Belgium taking its normal slot last night (June 9). The latest episode is due to start at 9pm this evening and it will run for an hour once again. The preview, via Radio Times , reads: 'The police investigation into the Brink's-Mat robbery spreads overseas, as evidence comes in that the proceeds from the bullion heist are being laundered through growing international criminal networks.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad How many episodes of The Gold are left in series 2? First making its debut back in early 2023, fans of the historical drama have faced a lengthy wait for the show to return. It took more than two years for the second series to arrive but it is finally here. The first season of The Gold had six episodes - which is often the length of a BBC (or ITV) drama. For series two, it will also have six episodes and will be broadcast over the course of three weeks. However if you can't wait for the next episode, the full boxset became available on BBC iPlayer on Sunday (June 8). Both seasons can be binged right now. Have you enjoyed The Gold series two so far? Let me know your thoughts by email: . Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
