[INTERVIEW] 160910 The Times | Aidan Turner: ‘I don’t feel objectified. It’s just a few people admiring your body’

Aidan Turner, star of the BBC series Poldark, wears his fame lightly

Aidan Turner is sitting in a London hotel room. In an hour he will attend the GQ awards at Tate Modern, where he will receive the TV actor of the year trophy for his performance in the BBC’s 18th-century Cornish drama Poldark.

His tuxedo has arrived and he’s surrounded by scripts for series three, which started shooting this week. What? He can memorise lines and get dressed for a big night out? No wonder Demelza and Elizabeth are fighting over him in the series.

(…)

“I don’t feel objectified, it’s funny! It’s just a couple of people admiring your body. It’s like doing any other scene. It’s the same as me galloping on a horse on a beach.”

Turner admits that he doesn’t always agree with his character’s actions. “But I don’t ever dislike him. Sometimes you think, ‘Wow! that’s a crazy judgment! That move is dangerous and bold and inconsiderate and I don’t see the logic behind it.’ ”



(…)

I remind him that he was absolutely knackered when we last met, at the tail end of shooting series two. Did he get a holiday? “I did,” he says, brightly. He took four months off, went home to Dublin, then to Los Angeles for a month, Tokyo, Amsterdam, France and “a bunch of other places too”.

He adds: “As much as everyone enjoys shooting Poldark, and it’s a great bunch of people, it is exhausting for myself and Eleanor. We both worked more than 100 days this year, we are on almost all the time.

”Do you all hang out together, in the holidays? “Heida [Reed, who plays Elizabeth] stayed with me for a week, more than a week, in LA.”

And Demelza? I mean, Eleanor? “We didn’t really hang out. We work so closely on set, especially me and Eleanor, we are close friends but it’s not the worst thing in the world to take time off.”

When he isn’t working he says he likes to paint in his studio in Dublin. “Just rubbish abstracts,” he says. “I thought I had some sort of talent when it comes to painting but it turns out I don’t. I realised that this summer.” So no exhibition round the corner? “Nah. I am not into showing off really, I mean,” he laughs. “Er, would you believe it?”

(…)

Turner says that he hasn’t made a conscious decision to abandon film for television but he does think “you can really invest in TV: with a feature film the limit is usually three hours; with series two of Poldark the box set is ten hours. There is more story and you get to see the characters grow, so it does make sense that TV has become the main form of entertainment.”

(…)

He says that it would be “amazing” to get back on the stage. “If I could get a shorter run or work with a new writer, a new play, something contemporary maybe. Every actor starts to panic around the end of the job. I have agents and good representatives and management looking after me, so they won’t let me be too lazy this time around.”

(…)