Add Betrayal to your watchlist
The last time I interviewed Shaun Evans, we both had a little cry. Me, because I’d been poorly and watching every episode of his peerless Endeavour had sustained me through three bedbound months. Him… well, because he’s a very nice man, and also because he recognised the import of saying goodbye to young Morse after nine series. We signed off saying, “We will speak again.”
And now we do, three years later, when the first thing Evans does is enquire after my health. Like I said, he’s a nice man. But we’re here to talk about Betrayal, an espionage thriller/marital drama he has both produced and stars in. Evans’s character John Hughes, an MI5 agent battling on many fronts – fighting “voluntary” redundancy requests, struggling to save his marriage, all the while investigating a national security threat – has the same solitude and righteousness of his Endeavour, but in a very different, contemporary setting. John is often at home with his children and troubled wife Clare, where we see the pressures on an ordinary man of an extraordinary job.
“I was interested in playing a man having a midlife crisis,” says Evans. “Plus, there’s always an appetite for the spy genre, so I was curious to see if we could mix together those two. At work, he follows his instincts and it ends in catastrophe. His marriage is on the rocks. The four episodes trace his attempts to solve these seemingly intractable problems.”
The two key themes in the show are the world of espionage, and the act of betrayal. For the first, producers recruited former BBC security correspondent- turned-podcaster Gordon Corera as production adviser. For the second? “I always think imagination is more important than knowledge,” says Evans. “It’s interesting to play these characters who are different from you, and find the reason for why they behave as they do. That’s the job, making the imaginative leap.” It’s a full and considered answer that gives nothing away. He’d make a good spy.
In Betrayal, as in his previous drama Until I Kill You, the actor eschewed the neutral tones of Endeavour for his native Liverpudlian accent. For the latter, his character, real-life murderer John Sweeney, was also from Liverpool, so that was an obvious choice. For Betrayal, Evans wanted to lean into the class element. “We expect MI5 officers to be from Oxbridge, but it’s no longer the case,” he says.
More generally, he’s been using accents as a tool since he graduated from the Guildhall School of Drama over 20 years ago. “When I first started, I wanted to play parts far away from me, to transform into someone else and leave any of my baggage behind.”
He pauses. “In a weird way, when you play someone with your own accent, you have to work harder to make the leap.” I imagine accent-switching with such ease must also make it easier to sit in a pub unrecognised? “Yes, exactly. It’s like wearing a big coat.”
When we last spoke, Evans – credited with not just matching the quality of the much-loved Morse but perhaps surpassing it – was planning to give himself a proper, extended break, what he called “decompression”, after playing the same character for nine intense years.
His plans included taking himself off to Italy to study the language and indulging his great passion for photography. When I ask how much of this came to pass, he swiftly takes a small camera – not a phone! – out of his pocket by way of proof, and adds, “I did go to Italy and attend a language course. I’m not fluent, but I’m pretty good. I return there a lot. I took a lot of photographs, had a small exhibition when I got back, then I got offered another job and threw myself into that.”
Now Evans is once again a jobbing actor, albeit one whose name can greenlight primetime projects, life must feel quite different from the days when he was working flat out as title star, producer and sometime director on a massive TV franchise. “There are pros and cons,” he says. “Every element of Endeavour was joyful, and all those people are still in my life.”
Even his co-star Roger Allam, famously unsentimental about his projects in interviews? “Ah, he presents like that, but underneath he’s a big softie.” Just like Inspector Thursday, then. “Gently, gradually, your life moves in a new direction,” Evans continues. “Endeavour was a huge education for me, and I felt I graduated. Different jobs mean bringing all my skills to bear.I like the variety.”
Even though his Oxford detective is often to be found on ITV3 in the afternoon, Evans rarely watches this or any other screen appearance. “I hope everyone else enjoys it but, for me, I’d rather focus on the day, and then step back and leave it. I love the freedom of being a gun for hire, just going in and doing a good job. What gets my juices flowing? The work itself.”
TROUBLE & STRIFE
Romola Garai is the other half of the rocky marriage
What drew you to Betrayal?
I was really intrigued. You have a marital drama interspersed with a high-stakes geopolitical espionage storyline, and they’re given almost the same weight in terms of the story, which felt unusual and fresh to me.
Your character Clare is married to a man who can’t tell her what he does all day. How realistic is that?
It’s bonkers but accurate. I always thought there’d be an inner ring of confidence where people can share, but the Official Secrets Act covers a lot. It can’t be conducive to a good marriage and theirs is definitely fragmented. Initially, he’s the holder of all this information, but the balance of power soon starts to shift.
How do you pick your projects?
When I began, it was all career, ambition and opportunity but, at some point, you realise it’s not just about you. If I’m to be away from my children, it has to be worth it. I need to feel like I’m doing interesting work. Storytelling was always a big thing for me.
You’ve spoken out previously about the treatment of women in your industry, what changes have you seen?
It’s very different. When I was in my teens and 20s, it wouldn’t be uncommon for there to be no women on set at all, apart from the actors. And people didn’t seem to find it odd. I think there has been a systemic top-down attempt to change that. It would be very unusual now to have an all-male creative team. There’s also the growing understanding that women want to see themselves depicted in different ways on screen, with all the various shades of what it means to be a woman.
Do people still ask you about the much-missed BBC drama The Hour?
It’s weird because that show didn’t do any numbers and it was cancelled after two series, but more than anything else I’ve ever been in, people still come up to me and say, “I loved it, I don’t understand why it ended.” It’s really nice to have been in something that people really love.
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