With previous RSC roles Richard II and Hamlet and now Malvolio, actor Samuel West is adding to the tally of parts taken on by his actor parents, Prunella Scales and Timothy West, who trode the RSC boards before him. In this second part of the Herald Arts interview, the All Creatures Great and Small actor tells Gill Sutherland about losing his father, family life, music and his work.
IT seems fitting that I talk with Sam West at the RSC’s Library – the room off the back of the Swan Theatre bar. Its walls are covered from floor to ceiling with programme covers and posters from numerous RSC productions. Some of them feature his parents, Timothy West and Prunella Scales. As well as being brilliant as Malvolio – Twelfth Night on until 18th January and is a must-see – Sam is a warm, witty and thoughtful conversationalist.
Your whole family – including mum Prunella and dad Tim – have got a history with the RSC. What’s it like coming back?
It’s both peculiar and good to come back now. As you know, my dad died – it was exactly a month before the Twelfth Night press night.
I’ll talk a little bit about him. I don’t want to talk too much about him, but there are certain echoes and reflections which I find very comforting.
Timothy West in Coriolanus at the RSC in 2007; Samuel West as Malvolio currently, and Prunella Scales at the theatre in 1956.
He was at the RSC when I was conceived. I remember at some point in the mid-80s we had been to Stratford – to see Troilus and Cressida with Anton Lesser and Juliet Stevenson, the first time I had met Juliet… I say met, I think our eyes met across the crowded Dirty Duck.
Anyway we were driving back home after the show, with my parents in the front. We drove by a roadsign and they shared a knowing look. I went, ‘Sorry, what was that?’ And they smiled and went, ‘OK, let’s show him’.
They spun the car around and drove down a road towards Tredington. And pointed to a little house, the middle window of three on the first floor. And said, ‘You were conceived in there’. It was hilarious.
So he was with the company when I was conceived, and I’m here when he dies.
Before he died, I went to see him, and the last thing he said to me was, where are you going to rehearse? And the answer was Clapham, the RSC rehearsal rooms.
And I searched for a picture of him in 2007 when he last worked for the RSC. And I found one in the rehearsal room I was in.
I was rehearsing on the day he died. It was only 15 minutes from the care home he was in.
There’s been a sort of impeccable timing… To be doing a play about grief in a supportive company in your last week before you go to Stratford. Then I was given the first day off in Stratford off to go to the funeral.
Samuel West pictured outside the Swan Theatre. Above and inset, Sam’s previous roles at the RSC include Hamlet (2001) and Richard II (2000). Right, as Malvolio in the current production of Twelfth Night at the RST. Photos: RSC
Opening in a new play while losing your father must have been a lot to take on…
Well, it’s not been a journey of unmixed delight but it’s had a lot of comforts that I’m incredibly grateful for. Both companies, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the company of Twelfth Night, couldn’t have been kinder and more understanding.
And when somebody who’s been on telly dies, quite a lot of things happen around the edges that aren’t really to do with people who knew that person – like getting 5,500 messages on Twitter 12 hours after posting the news.
What has that public reaction to your dad’s death been like?
Very few of those people had ever met him, but he meant something to all of them, and that’s extraordinary.
In other circumstances, it could be a bit discombobulating. Although as an actor I’ve appreciated the reaction, he was my dad too. And my brother and my half-sister and the grandchildren would all have different experiences of what he meant – and they aren’t necessarily connected with acting or not as much. But I found comfort in that extraordinary outpouring of gratitude for his life and work .
And people say, I loved his King Lear or I loved Brass… EastEnders. And then somebody said, ‘He did a comedy workshop in Loughborough in 1987, and I’ve never forgotten it’. What an extraordinary privilege, for people to say, ‘you touched my life’.
It’s just amazing and extraordinary.
All those treasured performances…
He’s written four books and he’s in quite a lot of programmes. And I’ve started re-listening to his Anthony Trollope audiobooks, so I’ve got his voice. His lovely voice.
Yesterday evening [the Twelfth Night opening] I sort of stood up and, quietly to myself, said, ‘This one’s for you’.
I was talking to somebody who was at the show last night whose mother recently died. Having a dead parent is not a club you want to join, but you have to belong eventually. And I suppose 58 [Sam’s age] is quite good really, especially given that I wasn’t a father until I was 48. My children have had ten years of all four grandparents. My mother didn#t know any of her grandparents.While it doesn’t make it nice, it’s all very comforting.
Samuel West as Hamlet, 2001. Photo: Manuel Harlan
There’s all sorts of things that have made it easier. I think we’re that generation where our children won’t have that.
Back to your own memories of growing up, was there a clincher moment where you thought, ‘I’m going to be an actor like Mum and Dad and Grandad [Lockwood West]’?
My great-granddad was an actor, so four generations: three grandparents and two great-grandparents. Both my dad’s mum’s parents were actors.
There wasn’t any pressure, and the weird thing is that there hasn’t been a clincher. I think I’ve never really decided that this is what I want to do. At heart I still want to be a train driver. And I think I probably ought to start quite soon, because I haven’t got long.
Are you a bit of a train spotter?
I was. They call them train enthusiasts. I’m very, very geeky, and proudly so.
I think if I’d chosen an ideal profession, I would love to have been a musician… Although I’m not talented enough as a musician to get work as a performer. I didn’t have the application.
I mean, I play the cello and the piano a bit. But I think if you’d said when I was 18, ‘If you really devote yourself, you could become a conductor’, I think that would have been nice.
Samuel West as Hamlet, 2001. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Wow, a conductor?
Yes, because I’m quite opinionated about music. I have a tiresomely inflated belief in my own musical taste. And I love the complicity of orchestras.
I played in a school orchestra, string quartets and stuff like that. It’s the closest to acting I’ve ever got. That feeling of being part of something that is a cog in a wheel, a cog in a machine that is greater than the sum of its parts.
And to come out of something and go, ‘I don’t know how we did that’, is the greatest joy. And so doing that with music would have been great. I love it with acting too.
As well as live and screen performances, you direct – what’s your favoured mode?
I’m really enjoying this show. But you know what they say, films make you rich, television makes you famous, and theatre makes you happy.
Directing I really enjoy, but I find it very hard. I have to prepare a lot.
People who direct five shows a year astound me, how anybody can do it. I mean, the repetition and the experience. I’ve only directed 13 shows in 20 years, so I don’t even do one a year.
Since All Creatures started, I haven’t really done any directing, because I haven’t had the time. But I’m not bad at it at times. I mean, if anybody’s reading, I would love to direct a Shakespeare here.
I’m not bad at casting. I know the set-up, I’m quite fluent in verse. So could knuckle down to it quite quickly… At the end of it, you’d either have a very good production or a very sincere apology.
OK you’ve got the gig, what play would you do?
[Looking round the room at all the play posters] I’m just looking at all these – I know which ones I wouldn’t do. There’s a wonderful book that [director] Steven Pimlott, God rest his soul, called Producing Shakespeare from the 1930s, when directors were called producers.
And it has a page for each play. And under each play it has things that are a problem.
And so it says things like, Romeo And Juliet – don’t kill Mercutio before the interval. It’s a very good piece of advice. Have a light Cordelia – very good advice. But for Antony And Cleopatra, it just says, producers’ problems – Acts 4 and 5 – stay away.
What’s your fancy – comedy, tragedy, history?
Henry V would be nice, Macbeth, King Lear… I’d love to direct King Lear.
Samuel West as Richard II in 2000. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Who would be your King Lear?
I don’t know! I should have an answer for that, shouldn’t I?
Would you be King Lear one day?
I hope so. It’s weird when you have a Shakespearean dad. Because he played Macbeth twice and King Lear four times. The first time when he was 37. Because he was quite big and he lost his hair, he always looked older.
I’ve played Hamlet and Richard II, neither of whom he has played.
And now Malvolio, which again he didn’t play. We’re sort of going on parallel paths that don’t meet, obviously!
[Still looking round the posters] I might have to get into my grave without directing Titus Andronicus. I love Measure For Measure.
I like the crunchy ones, really… Romeo And Juliet, if I was allowed to cut it a lot. I’ve already directed Hamlet and As You Like It. Perhaps I should work out some of these ideas: do a hit list. Although it’s a director’s job to like the play they’re asked to do.
What have been some of your favourite standout things that you’ve loved working on?
Hamlet for a year here. I was the only person in the world playing Hamlet, at least in English, for a year. And I would have done another year if you’d asked me. I enjoyed having played Hamlet, the pleasure in retrospect is enormous.That feeling of accomplishment, having done it, because it’s extremely hard. And you never really succeed, but you do it.
I’ve always been very happy here at the RSC.
I loved that I was in the first production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Onstage I directed a revival of Close The Coal House Door, a show about the history of the mining unions – I’m very proud of that. And actually Siegfried [Farnon from All Creatures Great and Small, Sam’s ongoing TV role]. I’m loving being in a show that is of some use to people – especially when it started in the pandemic – journeys they could make in their imaginations when they couldn’t make with their feet, and it gave them togetherness and community when meeting face to face was impossible. And it has at its heart decency and an attempt to avoid suffering. In a quiet way I think it’s revolutionary, it doesn’t have any baddies in it – it’s not about children being murdered. And I think that’s rather brilliant.
Finally, as a music fan – what have been your musical highs in 2024?
With Spotify [the digital music platform] you get your ‘Spotify wrapped’ – what you listened to most – and my biggest artist of the year was Johann Sebastian Bach. And my second biggest was the Linda Lindas [LA all-female punky band]. My daughters are really into them. I’ve also been listening to quite a lot of Last Dinner Party. Sparks are my favourite band
I thought Bach and the Linda Lindas are a pretty good mix. My ten-year-old, who’s a big Linda Lindas fan, has a T-shirt from one of their songs called Racist, Sexist Boy – and I love that – girls to the front attitude.