Welsh actor Matthew Rhys has made his home in Los Angeles, but he’s back in Britain for one-off ITV drama The Scapegoat. He tells Kate Whiting about his toughest role to date and how he staves off homesickness

MATTHEW RHYS is talking to himself, literally. No, he hasn’t gone mad, he’s just starring as doppelgangers John and Johnny in a new adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s tale The Scapegoat.

Directed by Charles Sturridge, who also directed the 1981 TV classic Brideshead Revisited, the drama is set in 1952 and begins with teacher John Standing losing his job. Popping into a pub to drown his sorrows, he meets his wealthy doppelganger, Johnny Spence, who buys him a drink.

Soon the pair are getting on famously and even swap coats, but the next morning, John is woken at his room in the Inn by Johnny’s chauffeur George, who tells him he’s late and must get ready. It seems Johnny has switched his belongings with John’s and, unable to convince George of who he really is, John gets driven to Johnny’s enormous stately home.

He soon discovers ‘he’ has a wife, a daughter, a sister who’s not talking to him, and runs a glass factory (badly) with his brother. Oh, and he’s sleeping with his sister-in-law.

As far as roles go, it’s a challenging one: “It was that double-edged thing of, ‘Ooh, that would be interesting’ and, ‘Ooh, that would be a mad thing to do’,” says the curlyhaired Rhys, in his lilting Welsh accent.

“But it was appealing and I thought the challenge of it would be fun.”

RHYS, who’s best known for starring alongside Sally Field and Calista Flockhart in US family drama Brothers & Sisters, was stepping into big shoes after Alec Guinness played the doppelgangers in the 1959 film version.

But he decided against watching the film to help with his preparation.

“I know what I’m like and I’d nick something from Alec Guinness if I did, so I thought I’d be a purist and just stay with the script.”

To help get his performances spoton for the scenes between the two characters, he rehearsed with another actor.

“I was wary that you have two very different characters, but they have to be alike enough to be believable. At first, I thought, ‘I know, I’ll give one a limp and then the audience will know which is which’. But you have to be similar enough so that the closest people to them believe that the other person is them. That was the tightrope.”

The Scapegoat also stars the formidable Dame Eileen Atkins as Johnny’s bed-bound mother: “She’s everything you’d want her to be,” says Rhys, 37.

“But when you’re working with someone of that calibre, you still get a bit nervous. In a way, you don’t have to do any acting, because she sort of lasers you like an old Victorian mother would, so you go, ‘Oh God’ And this is before they say action,” he laughs.

Rhys is no stranger to period drama. In 2008, he played Welsh poet Dylan Thomas opposite Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley in The Edge Of Love, and earlier this year he was in the BBC’s adaptation of Dickens’s last novel The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.

IT was the first time he’d performed back on British TV after Brothers & Sisters ended in May last year.

“I was looking to do some different parts and Dickens especially was a great leap. After the first day of rehearsals, the director was like, ‘It’s a bit American’. I had arrogantly thought, ‘I’m back on old territory now’, so it was a bit of a shock,” he admits, smiling.

Brothers & Sisters was cancelled after five seasons and Rhys says that, although he was sad to see the end, it had probably “run its course”.

Far from being put off by the idea of another long-running drama, the Los Angeles-based actor has signed up for another show, The Americans, which has been picked up for a full series.

He plays a Russian KGB sleeper agent, living with his fellow agent wife (Keri Russell) in 1980s Cold Warera USA – and trying to fit in.

It’s one of his first real action roles: “I was like, ‘At last. This is why I became an actor’, I’ve been waiting for a gun.”

Rhys owes his acting career in part to his primary school-friend Ioan Gruffudd, who is a year older.

“We were never direct contemporaries, he was always one step ahead of me, so he took the older brother role.

“I enjoyed acting and then, when I was about 17, he went to RADA and I thought, ‘Maybe I don’t have to work for a living. I can go to drama school’.”

The pair even shared a flat in north London with fellow Welshman Martin Sheen.

“There were definite Withnail And I moments and Men Behaving Sadly,” he recalls, laughing.

“We were quite well-behaved with our hygiene and cleanliness and the three of us were working, so we weren’t sharing beans thankfully.”

Now they all live in Los Angeles, along with a number of other British actors, and provide a “great little support network” for each other.

“I think that’s the best way to deal with the madness of the place, have friends around who remind you of home.”

As he gets older, though, he misses Wales more and more.

“It’s nice to be back. Weirdly, there are times when you miss the actual topography of the place. LA’s very brown for most of the year, so sometimes when you go back to Wales it’s like an overload of green because of the rain.

“But I have enough British friends in LA, so that I’m not short of British humour.”

  •  The Scapegoat was on ITV1 on Sunday, 9pm