EMMA BROWN: Did you grow up in a creative family?

IWAN RHEON: My parents aren’t artists or anything, but growing up in Wales, especially in a Welsh language school and community, they have this thing called the Eisteddfod where people compete in singing and acting and dancing and oratory all sorts of things. From a very young age, it’s been a part of my upbringing.

BROWN: When did you decide you wanted to go to drama school?

RHEON: I was in sixth form in school, at that point where they go, “Right, what are you going to do when you leave here?” I thought I’d give acting a whirl and audition. I did that for a year and I got the part on Pobol y Cwm when I was 17. The producer Bethan Jones pulled me into her office. I was going, “Shit, what have I done?” And she said, “Look Iwan, I think you should carry on, you should go to a drama school.” I think she thought that, at that young of an age, I needed to develop my skills more. I could have stayed on Pobol y Cwm for a few years and made a lot of money, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think she thought if you want to get on stage, you need to go do that sort of stuff. So she helped me with my audition speech, because I’d never acted in English. I had to do Shakespeare, and she took the time out to do Shakespeare speeches with me in her office. She was amazing.

BROWN: Did you have a stronger Welsh accent before you started drama school?

RHEON: Probably. It’s a weird thing with accents. When I go home it gets a lot stronger, when I’ve had a few beers it gets a lot stronger. I think drama school really teaches you how to annunciate; you’re conscious that people might not understand you if you speak too fast and too Welsh. [But] weirdly, when I was in drama school my accent probably got stronger because of that sense of identity when you leave home and go to somewhere where there are loads of people from different places. Holding on to being Welsh and where I was from was a real crutch for me.

BROWN: It’s a great school, obviously, but what made you choose LAMDA?

RHEON: I got in. [laughs] Simple as that. I only applied for RADA and LAMDA. I didn’t get into RADA and I got into LAMDA. I might not have ever tried again. You just don’t know when you’re that young.

BROWN: Drama school, particularly in England, has a reputation for being very theater based—they don’t teach you acting for the camera. Did you find that?

RHEON: Absolutely. The television and film bit we did was diabolical. It was run by dinosaurs and it had no relevance to what was going on in the industry at all, in my opinion. I’d done two years on a soap opera where I was shooting things every day and they gave me a hard time about that, which I think is the wrong way to teach a young actor. They just made me really, really self-conscious about everything I did, which is the opposite of what you need to be when you’re filming. But that was just how it was at LAMDA at the time. I’m sure it’s better now.