February 18, 2025 • 52 mins
This week, Tommy is joined by actor, singer and songwriter Ben Barnes! On the acting side, Ben has become known as “the king of fantasy.” He starred as Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise before going on to create iconic performances in Dorian Gray, Westworld, Marvel’s The Punisher, and of course, the fan-favorite villain in the wildly popular Netflix series, Shadow and Bone. Earlier this year Ben released his debut album, “Where The Light Gets In.” Inspired by the soul and pop music he loves so much, the album is about the different stages of a relationship; beginnings, tension, sorrow, sex, love, endings, nostalgia. It’s about how our history and our scars configure to make us who we are in this moment. Today, Ben opens up about how he had to get used to feeling more exposed as he became a household name, why now was the right time in his life to put aside a wildly successful acting career to focus on his music, the fears and pressures that came with introducing a different side of himself to the world, going after his dreams at a point in his life that might feel like its too late to many, why age is just a number and shouldn’t dictate your dreams, what he was hoping to achieve with his beautiful debut album, how he reveals a much more personal side to himself for the first time through his music, if he has any interest in giving the fans what they want: a role in the Harry Potter world, his thoughts on reprising his villainous role in Shadow and Bone, how the most critical things ever said about him were said by himself, and so much more. Subscribe, rate, and review this episode if you enjoyed this conversation!
Stream Ben’s album here: https://benbarnes.komi.io/
"One Minute More” video feat. Monica Martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJM06N-naYA&ab_channel=BenBarnes
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, guys, welcome to I've never said this before with me,
Tommy di Dario. I am so excited to share this
conversation with you with one of the most thoughtful and
brilliant humans I've had the pleasure of chatting with the
very talented actor and singer Ben Barnes is hanging out
with me today. So on the acting side, Ben has
(00:24):
become known as the King of Fantasy. He starred as
Prince Caspian and the Chronicles of Narnia franchise, then he
went on to do Dorian Gray, Killing Bono, Westworld, The Marvels,
The Punisher, and of course play the fan favorite villain
in the wildly popular Netflix series Shadow and Bone. And
because his talent can't be contained to just one art form,
(00:45):
he is also a brilliant singer and songwriter. His debut album,
Where the Light Gets In is out right now, and
let me tell you m his lyrics are magical. He
connects to the human spirit in such a way that's
gonna leave you feeling seen and heard and like your voice,
your life journey truly matters. That's the magic of Ben Barnes.
(01:07):
And he was so kind to invite me to his
New York City performance at Webster Hall where, oh man,
the only way I can describe his show is that
it was electric. Today we are celebrating all of the
things that come together to make Ben Barnes who he
truly is, the man behind some of your favorite roles
and the man behind the music. So let's see if
today we can get Ben to say something that he
(01:29):
has never said before. Ben Barnes, how you doing, my man?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Very well? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I am so happy to have you here. Welcome to
New York. I know you've been on a whirldwind tour.
You don't even probably know what city you're in right now.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah, I definitely have almost gone on stage and done
that spinal tap reference of Hello Cleveland. We've never been
anywhere in Italy, but it has been. It's been really,
really fun, magical.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Congratulations. We have so much to get into. I was
listening to your album the other day and it's fantastic.
I'm a sucker for drama and soulful lyrics and real
connection in music, and I'm probably one of the rare
people who can listen to that type of music in
the gym when I'm working out, like I don't need
(02:23):
like a banger, I don't need like the beats like
I like to envision what I'm listening to and create
the story as I'm working out, and your album is
very much that.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I like, something kind of filmic and.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I do I do together, I really do. And I thought,
I think what you did with that is brilliant. We're
going to dive into it. But I find your story
so fascinating. So at nineteen, as she began writing music
right and kind of started working with producers or your
teen years.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I had a very short foray into into music. When
I was nineteen, I was I was signed to Simon Fuller,
who had created the Spice Girls.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yes and name Drop.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We were working on a well. I mention it only
because it kind of provides balance to the story, which
is that it only lasted a few weeks and I
was recording kind of like jazz standards. I think you
thought it might be an interesting idea to have a
teenager singing kind of like rap pack music essentially, and
(03:22):
there was sort of lots of big ideas for it,
but then it just very quickly kind of fell by
the wayside as I came to understand a lot of
those projects do and over the last twenty years of
working in entertainment, I now fully understand how things come
and go and they fall apart. But at the time,
when you're nineteen and aspirational and every next step you
take you think is going to be the step which
(03:45):
takes you up the golden escalator to the place that
you've dreamed of, I think it was more difficult to accept.
I think I think you get better at enduring rejection
and enduring not every being the moment as you get
on in this career, because it's not a smooth ride.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
For anybody, right, right, And then you kind of transition
and had this amazing career and continue to have an
amazing career in the acting world, becoming a king of
a fantasy and that genre right and really doing it
for over two decades. And then suddenly now you're in
this beautiful era with your music. So what made you say, Okay,
you know what it's time for my music, like, I
(04:24):
need to go revisit that at this point in my career.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I think it was a combination of a couple of things.
I think initially I found that being on different films
and TV shows I was getting itchy to have a
little bit more control and a little bit more say,
and invest a little bit more of myself in the
scripts and in the characters that I was working on.
But there has to be an acceptance when you're an
(04:49):
actor that somebody else has written this script, somebody else
is producing, somebody else's designing the costume, somebody else is directing,
and their vision might not be exactly aligned with yours
for any particular project. And so I think you can
go to the writers you know as often as you
want and say I don't think I would say this
line exactly this way, and you could switch three words around,
(05:11):
but actually it's not garnering any kind of real control.
And I think for a lot of creative people, releasing
control of a creative project whilst during the midst of
it is a very difficult thing. And I think I
was yearning to inject something of myself and to sew
something of myself into a lot of these characters. But
then you know, the last particularly the last six or
(05:34):
seven years, I've been playing a lot of psychopaths and
murderers and liars, and there wasn't very much room for
negotiating myself into these characters, and so I think part
of it was realizing that if you have something to
say in the world, or you want to share something
of yourself in the world, or you want to kind
of offer up something into the creative universe, that you
(05:58):
have to start with a blank piece of paper and
it has to be on your terms. But that means
that it's entirely on your shoulders as well, and anything
that kind of comes of it that feels successful will
be you know, you don't have to credit anybody else.
But equally, if it doesn't kind of go the way
that you'd hoped, it's nobody's fault but your own. And
(06:20):
so I think it's harder to kind of take up
that mantle of the blank piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Is historically scary.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, So I think that was the first thing, and
the second thing was really I think when the pandemic
struck and people were given you know, everyone was given
two things. A lot of extra time to muse and
to think on what their dreams and goals and aspirations
might be for the rest of their life given the opportunity,
(06:50):
And I think that second bit was important that everyone
was kind of faced with the mortality of themselves and
the people that they care about, and there's an insistence
that you reprioritize. For me, that meant going back twenty
years to the thing that I really wanted to spend
a lot of time doing, and the thing i'd all
through high school put all of my energy into, which
(07:11):
was singing and making music and making music with groups
and bands of other people. And coming back to that,
and I think i'd just been a very private person
through my acting career. I didn't like sharing a lot
in interviews. I didn't like giving up like what I
deemed to be sort of sacred parts of my own life.
(07:34):
You hired behind a character and you pretend to be that.
But I actually released some of that, I think during
my thirties, and actually doing the music was the final
piece of that puzzle to really realize that there wasn't
anything to be afraid of. People's judgment is not something
to fear, because they're going to do it regardless of
what you do spend your time doing so, I think
(07:57):
I projected forward to the eighty year old version of
myself at the beginning of the pandemic and thought, will
that man be proud of the way I've lived my
life and the way I've done this. And one of
the answers was the fact that you love music so
much and you enjoyed doing it so much, and you
feel like you have at least some skill in this
area and have the opportunity to and you didn't do
(08:19):
it for fear of judgment.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
That would not make me proud.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So that was like a big motivator as well.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So would you say when you were ready to release
your music and put it out into the world, even
though you had been known predominantly as an actor, were
you able to push through that anxiety knowing that this
would make you happy in the future looking at your
future self, or did you still have some anxiety saying, Okay,
I'm about to put this all out there.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It was, It was in steps. It was incremental. I
think there was more than one aspect to it. I
was afraid that people would dig into the songs and
the lyrics and try and kind of insinuate things.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
About my life life.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Also, I was afraid that people wouldn't necessarily take me
as seriously as an actor if I was also trying
to do this thing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean, we grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
You know. I think in the era of watching like
a lot of massive pop stars try their hand at
acting in movies and stuff to usually pretty disastrous to
pretty disastrous effect, And I remember feeling judgment of that, thinking,
stay in your lane, like you're like a world superstar
(09:30):
at doing this. Why are you pretending that just anyone
can be an actor just because they can read? And
I think I had concerned that people might feel the
same the other way around, but they also might judge
the kind of music that I wanted to put out,
because you don't really know what kind of music you
(09:51):
put out.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I think, unless you're sort of.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Plagiarizing something, you don't really know what kind of music
you put you're going to put out until you finished it,
right Because with my music, for example, I'm obsessed with
with kind of nineteen seventies music, soulomotown, a lot of
those kind of like rock bands from that era, and
I think all of those things that I've listened to
have kind of infused everything that I want to make.
(10:17):
But it's all passed through the filter of my experience,
and it's passed through it's passed through my vocal cords,
and it's passed through the fingers of the people playing
on the album and everything that they've ever listened to,
and so it becomes this completely different and new thing,
no matter how hard you try to make it sound
like something that you love. And so I think I
had fear that I wouldn't maybe even like what I
(10:39):
ended up making.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And then where would I be?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And also I knew that, you know, if I put
on a show, even if I put it on in
a place where there was only one hundred people, there
would be one hundred phones filming it and it would
end up.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Online and you know, millions of people would see it.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
So I think I think there was I definitely put
pressure on myself, But that's something that I've spent the
last few years trying to work on doing differently anyway
to release myself of that pressure in that judgment, because
in the end, we're all floating through space on a rock,
So what does it really matter? But I think, you know,
(11:14):
I'm someone to whom everything has always mattered pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, yeah, Well what I love is that you did it.
You didn't let that dissuade you and say, you know what, Ah,
I'm just going to keep acting and stay in that lane,
and you followed through. And I know you had an
EP of about five songs a few years ago, and
this is your debut album, and you followed through and
you did it. And I'm very interested with humanity and
with people. You know, when you reach a certain point
(11:39):
in your life. I just turned thirty nine, and people
think that, you know, you hear forty, and it's like, oh, no,
you can't do something new, or you can't do something
you're not known for. And yes, I'm a host, I'm
an interviewer, but there are other things outside of this
that I'm trying to do and get made and happen
that is not related to this. And so many people
would look at that and say, well good luck, bro,
(12:02):
Like you're gonna be forty next year. You think you
can just do something in a totally different world than
the one you're known for, and it's like, fuck, yeah
you can, Like, yes you can, and why not go
for it? And I like that you have that mentality too.
You're like, I'm granted you have a background, but you
know you didn't say to the point you just made Nope,
I'm not going to do it because the world might
not want it, or I have success in one lane
(12:25):
like you're doing it.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
How do you feel about forty outside of professional endeavor, Like.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh, I think it's young, Like for me, I'm not.
I think age is such an interesting person because I'm
at the age now where I'll be sitting across from
somebody and my age will come up and they'll be like,
you're thirty nine. No, I'm like, well, you know, you
saying that implies that that's like some ancient age, Like
I know you mean well, And I don't take it personally,
but it's just such a funny concept to me, because
(12:49):
you know, it's just the implication of that. And probably
when I was twenty eight I thought that too, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So I remember being thirty nine and having this kind
of like cold dread of forty hit it. And then
I remember to about two days after my fortieth birthday,
I had an audition and I walked into a room
and the casting director sort of chatted to me for
a minute, and then she looked down at my resume
or whatever she was holding, and she was like, oh, oh,
(13:16):
you're forty, right, And this sort of smile crept across
my face because I realized that the character that I
was going in for was like a really interesting character,
and you could tell there was a sort of a
level of, I don't know if quite respect is quite
the right word, but a level of a level of
(13:37):
appreciation of lived experience that maybe I might have it
in me too to be this. And then and after
that moment, I sort of never look back about the aging.
And every night on stage I have a song called
called Someday on the album about sort of not allowing
people to hold you back from your dreams. But it's
a really sort of head Noddy Dancy kind of song,
(13:57):
and I play it last on tour and I talk about,
you know, I talk to the audience saying, if you
take one thing away from this show, don't let people
stand in the way of spending your precious time on
this planet doing the things that you love to do.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Whatever those are, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And if I can stand up here at forty three
and sort of be near the beginning of a pop,
you know, pop music career, then you two can get
out and do whatever the thing is that you've been
dreaming about doing, and it doesn't have to be on
some grand scale. And it's interesting how that was clearly
(14:38):
not something I set out to do to make people
feel like they could have space or opportunity or permission
to go and do creative things or physical things or
intellectual things that they have put off doing. But in
response to the EP that I put out, I think
(14:59):
I do tend to write songs that are essentially about hope.
I think all actually all great art in terms of
like films, TV shows, whatever, essentially when you distill them down.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
There really about hopefulness.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
But I find it very difficult not to write about
that thematically. And I think that one of the upshots
of putting out the EP, which I really hadn't seen,
was lots of people saying this song made me want
to go and do this, And then you realize, once
you put music out into the world, it immediately becomes
not about you. And people always used to say that
(15:32):
to me about films, and I've said in interviews many
years ago that I think, you know, a film is
basically just a collection of scenes edited together until someone
who has had nothing to do with the film watches it,
and then it becomes a film because then there's an
organic and true reaction to what someone has made. Then
(15:52):
it's really a film when you've given it over to
someone else. But I didn't really think about it with
music until I was putting it out. But I think
it's even more true and strong when it comes to
a song because you think of all the songs that
you've ever loved. You're not thinking about the experience of
the sing out. You're not thinking about the experience of
the songwriter. You're thinking about how that music affects you,
(16:13):
how it connects to you.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
How it relates to your life.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, when I try to think of a different
example when I talk about this, because I've had this
conversation with bandmates and friends and people I've written songs with.
But you know, if you listen to Prince sing I
just want your extra time and your kiss, You're not
thinking whose extra time does Prince want?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
You're thinking whose extra time do I want?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Whom?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Who comes into my mind when I listen to this song?
And I think it's so immediate when you're singing songs,
particularly when you're singing live for someone, and the reaction
is so immediate. They're looking up at you and they're
having their own experience that is not yours. And I
have to remind myself. I get very nervous before shows
because it feels like when you've got a thousand, two
(16:58):
thousand people watching you see songs that you wrote alone
in a room, it feels quite raw. But then I
remind myself what it feels like to go to a
concert and how I have no judgment or expectation of
what's about to happen on a stage. I just think, oh,
hope it's good, and then I'm in my own emotional
experience of listening to a song. You know, I've definitely
(17:20):
like cried at concerts before where where.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I'm in my own head about my own stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
But there's something about the core progressional a particular lyric
that it's like struck me.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's got nothing to do with a person who's delivering it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Like I said earlier, this album, man, I mean, it's
just the lyrically. It's beautiful. I think it's just beautiful.
It's your debut album.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I mean so much.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
You just say that in particular because I don't let
anyone else write obviously lyrics.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I do do get music.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I did get music support on the album because I'd
written all the songs myself with the EP, and musically,
I think it's a really good thing to kind of collaborate,
But songs feel like babies, and if you let someone
else sort of mess with the lyrics, it feels like
it's maybe not yours anymore. I know a lot of
people don't feel that way, but for me, yea, words
(18:18):
have always been my main tool. And I think for
all the things I was afraid of in putting out
something new creatively, there was also rewards to be found
along the way in terms of finding things that you're
I think it's hard to learn new things in your
(18:38):
thirties and forties, but to find those little things that
you are sort of organically good at that you didn't
necessarily know you were, it was like a real, really
unexpected reward of this kind of process. And I would
find that I would write songs with people and they
would help me so much, and they would understand things
that I never have a hope of understanding in terms
(19:00):
of music itself. But then afterwards they might say that
was great, can you help me with the lyrics for
this song that I'm writing? And you know, I realize
I have a facility with that, and like a real
passion a real passion for like finding little lyrical hooks
for songs that sound like phrases or idioms or sayings
or whatever, but are actually fresh and new to you.
(19:23):
And it's something that I've discovered that I really really
love to do.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I mean the messages and the lyrics on this
album you speak about so much. I love the title
of the album too. I think it's so fantastic and
and just poetic and very on theme with you know
what you write in the collection you put together Where
the Light Gets In, of course is the name for
everybody listening. You talk about everything from anxiety to letting
(19:50):
go to you know, being loved and the right to
be loved and be loved as you say, and in
the so much you cover in such a collection of music.
So for you, what was the main thing you were
hoping to achieve with this album collectively?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I think I wanted it to feel honest and authentic
to my lived experience. And I think that goes all
the way from very exciting kind of fizzy feelings that
you have when you first meet someone in a romantic way,
all the way through to like considering the mortality of
(20:32):
your parents and trying to wrestle with the idea of
them not being around at some point through to you know,
kind of nostalgically looking back at friendships that have been
fallen by the wayside and you're not quite sure why,
or regretting that you didn't love someone in a certain
kind of way, or wishing you could have loved them differently.
All these all these different kinds of things that make us,
(20:56):
that make us who we are, and all those decisions
that you have made your life that have led you
to where you are, and kind of like I think
it was aligned very much with where I was in
my life a few years ago, trying to just sort
of accept all those things and realize that every decision
you've ever made has brought you to where you are,
and if you don't regret where you are, I shouldn't
regret those decisions. And I think that once i'd written
(21:20):
that song where the Light Gets In, which I wrote
that's the only song I wrote with two of the
band members of Maroon five, because I had this little
hook lyrically already, but I just I didn't have an
idea of what it sounded like. I had some other
songs in my head that were had the warmth that
I wanted that song to have, but I didn't know
(21:42):
where to go with it, and they very graciously agreed
to help me write that one song, and once I'd written,
I knew it had to be the title of the album.
But then it started me thinking about the Japanese are
of Kincigi, where if you break something, if something ceramic breaks,
you fix it using gold.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm sure you've seen those.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Like cracked gold cera mixed before, and that notion, that
concept that something could break and then you could fix
it and make it more precious than it was before
you broke it. I think that's just every person I
know over the age of twenty. It's the story is
(22:23):
that you go through things, and you make choices, and
things happen to you, and you can either let those
weigh you down or you can fight through to a
point where those things actually make you, know, make you
who you are, not necessarily harder or stronger, but just
who you are. And sometimes sometimes strong is about acceptance
(22:44):
rather than fight.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Sometimes strong is about acceptance rather than fight.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
This is what happens there.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I just said that, and I haven't said that before,
and now I feel like I want to write it
in my phone in case it's.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yet him and.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Somebody wrote that down. Example of how how my songs start.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
By the way, that's a that it's usually just chatting
with friends or other musics or whatever, and someone something,
either I say something or someone else says something three
words and you're like, wait, but see, you've just shown
me that you could be a lyricist because your eyes
went up and left and you went wait.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
The way that you listen is like so it's like
such a huge part of being able to make things.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, no, I heard immediately that that resonates with me.
That's that's pretty cool. That's that's going to be something
mark my words. Oh yeah. There's so many songs I
love on this I I particularly love slow it Down.
I think as a little bit of a hopeless romantic
I connected with that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I was about to say, you can tell what kind
of a person someone is by which almost I should start. Actually,
I should do like a like a quizz thing online,
you know, like one of those like personality quizzes. You
listen to the songs and then you pick your favorite.
It tells you what kind of person you are, because
if slow It Down your favorite song on the record.
You're definitely hopeless romantic because it's the only like pure
(24:05):
love song. It's the only song with no tension in it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, you must be too if you're writing that song.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, well that's true, but I also write the all
the other ones.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So all right, right, right, right, true, fair enough, but.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, absolutely no, definitively from from when I was a kid,
you know, any sort of really romantic kind of films, novels, poems,
I've always definitely kind of gravitated towards that, And yeah,
slow It Down is the only.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Like put it on a song for everybody listening, put
it on for your partner. You will win Brownie points
for the next six months.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I was at a show the other day and I
do a thing in the show where I say a
quote from a film and try to get people to
guess what film it's from.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, do you want to do it?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Oh my god, oh god, okay, fine, fine, fine, do
not judge me if I don't know, help my friend
in the corner, and I.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Felt you can have Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
When I'm about to play that song, I get someone
from the audience to tell me what movie the following
quotes from life moves pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
If you don't start to look around once in a while,
you might miss it.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Oh my god, I should know this. It sounds so
familiar that life means pretty fast. If you give me
the decade it's from.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's from the eighties, from the it is.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's not the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You're very close. It's got some of the same actors.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's I feel like it's that. Oh my god, it's
not sixteen care Yes, did you look that up online? Actually,
because I watched that recently, Oh my god, Okay, And
that I.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Had all these scratchings from different like honestly, like a
couple of lines from a birthday card I wrote someone,
a couple of lines from like a poem.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I was sort of muddling with that. I never really
did anything with.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
All these different kind of like I had like a
list of things that made it into the lyrics of those.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Songs.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I think I'd written like share your baby names with me,
stand up family graves with me, and I'd written like
that as a little couplet of like, you know, the
most romantic thing you can do and then the most
kind of you know, the two things the two different
ends of the spectrum of like what you would want
a partner to be there for you with be there
(26:35):
with you four.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I've been sleeping on a bus and then I couldn't
find the hook for the song. And then I.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
We watched Fresh Buder's Day Off, and life Moves pretty
Fast was just those words. I was like, that's what
it is. So I just kind of borrowed those few words,
and then life moves pretty fast with you, I think
finally found someone to slow it down.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
I think you're making everybody listening to this episode swoon
with these lyrics.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Well, it's just such a I like they're beautiful, they are.
I like songs.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I like songs that I like feel really specific, and
I think that's such a specific feeling. It's not like
I hope I find someone with whom I fall, you know,
ahead of heels and love and feel fireworks or you know.
I it's it's a very specific thing. I hope I'm
you know, I hope I find someone, and I hope
(27:33):
I'm in a position to appreciate that when I meet
someone with whom time feels just that bit slower because
life just racist past you two to realize that that
is like equally important, if not more than someone with
whom you know.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It feels like the fireworks all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a stunning song. Every song
is is stunning for a different reason. I know you
have a video dropping very soon for one minute more.
Oh yes, which I got to say see early it
was beautiful. So this song is an interesting one. It's
coming out of Valentine's say the video correct, And that
(28:16):
one is I referenced earlier about letting go a little bit, right,
So talk to me about that that one.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, it's interesting because sometimes you start writing a song
about one thing and then it sort of feels like
it starts to be about something else, but you kind
of keep it a secret. And I think, yeah, it's
it's a sort of deeply romantic song on one level
about being very in love with someone and them not
(28:44):
being in a position or having the tools to love
you back how you need to be loved, and so
you both know on some level that you have to
say goodbye to it, and maybe you've already had the
conversation but you just haven't quite decided to say and
you're just you're dragging you're dragging your feet essentially because
(29:07):
because you know, there's been something wonderful about it. So
on the surface, it was about that. But then as
I started kind of toying with it more, I was
thinking about it from other perspectives, about how all the
different relationships in my life I think being quite transient
as an actor as well. Sometimes, you know, you work
(29:28):
with people very intently for months on end, and then
the months go by really quickly. And even being on
this tour right now, you know, we're almost finished with
the American leg of the tour, and I'm so grateful
that we have the Europe leg of the tour coming,
because if you told me that it was the very
last show tomorrow, then I would be just short because
(29:53):
it's felt such precious time and I just like, just
one more show, just one more moment together doing this
thing because it feels precious. And then I sort of
extrapolated it further to like, you know, honestly, I was thinking,
you know, my mum has been navigating cancer for a decade,
(30:18):
and she's like an extraordinary human being, but there are
times when we when we were kind of told that,
you know, some of the treatments she was having were
going to be difficult, and there was maybe some hard
conversations to have in advance of having those surgeries or
those treatments, and.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
You know, I remember kind.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Of like wailing to the sky, just just please one,
you know, just one more day, one more year, one
more you know, and I think, you know, this is
when I started to realize that those kind of songs
will mean something different to every person who kind of
listens to it. And you ask me what I hope
(31:03):
it is for the songs. I hope that no one
cares what they're about for me. I hope that they
start to have meaning for someone else. Doesn't have to
be important. Meaning could just be a nice moment of like,
oh my, you know, partner and I listened to Slow
it Down. We felt really cozy and that was really nice.
(31:23):
But it also could be like people come up to
IT shows and you realize they've been listening to a
song from your EP for years as they're kind of
like happy song or whatever it might be, and you know,
it doesn't have to be on a Taylor Swift level.
It doesn't have to be millions of people in the
world doing it can be three hundred people. It could
be seven people, you know, And I'm very fortunate that
(31:46):
because I've done what I've done as an actor for
the last twenty years, that there are people who will
show up for me and people support me, and then
hopefully when they do that, they're just rewarding it for them.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Well, they're also showing up for you because you put
out material resonates if you put out garbage. They want
to be shown, you know, to be a fair.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
So that's actually the best answer to that question, which
I am going to steal and use in other interviews,
But like my hope is that it resonates is a
really good word, is that it resonates with people and
just they keep a piece of it with them as well.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You know, Ben, I have to say, it's hard to
imagine you at a point of your life where you
weren't this open and just kind of vulnerable, because I
know I was.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
With my you know, I raised by you know, my
extraordinary um to talk about is it a psychotherapist, Yeah,
my dad's a psychiatrist. I was was very open with them.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
But I'm sure when you hit the spotlight and you
got really big in Hollywood as an actor and suddenly
this exposure happened where everybody wants to know something about
you and is interested in your life and the spotlight
is on you. I imagine that was a bit weird
at first.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
That was weird, but I think it also started, if
i'm really also, I think it started before that as well.
And like in school, I didn't really have a lot
of friends at school, and I didn't really enjoy school
very much, and I felt like if you shared things
and were open in that kind of environment, it was
it wasn't something that was valued, and it was certainly
(33:17):
you know, it's just like can be weaponized. And so
I think I was very open with my family and
with my friends that I was really close to, and
I've always been very open and vulnerable with them. But
I think I kind of took the that sort of
like school life into when I first started doing films
and stuff, and you know, I grew up in the
(33:39):
UK and the tabloid press there is like pretty can
be pretty acute, and and you know, they started asking questions.
In the first few interviews I ever had, I thought,
what are you're asking me this for?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Like what would be an example of that question? I
don't know, just like just intrusive.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, just just like started with questions about maybe, you know, yeah,
what your parents do for a living, or asking about
who you're dating or how long you've been together or
whatever those things are. And it was just like it
just felt like crazy intrusive to ask that stuff before
you ask about.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
The film you've just made or something. And it just
it wasn't you know.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Of course, I realized it can be far worse than that,
you know, I know it can be devastating, but it
just it just it just shored up the walls of
privacy and thought a lot of the actors I really
admire don't really you don't really know much about them.
There's an element of mystery to them. And I just
sort of made this decision that, like, I guess I
just won't necessarily share that much. But I realized this
(34:37):
is like, this is now completely on my terms.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yes, and you have the power.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
This is the stuff that I am choosing to share,
and you can choose to read it however you want
or make it about you or whatever whatever it is.
But I'm still not you know, I'm still not necessarily
sharing like details of how how how I live my
life when I'm not working or making something right. But
(35:06):
I do feel now that there is nothing. I used
to be anxious that people might ask me certain things
or whatever, and now I'm not afraid of any question.
And actually doing music, releasing music, playing music for people
in particular, was one of the really big catalysts for
feeling that way and letting go after you know, almost
(35:26):
forty years of that kind of fear of fear of judgment,
and it's it's and it's it's made its way into
my acting too, Like going back on sets and things,
I feel less afraid of whether people will.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Accept a certain character or what if they don't, you know,
like the show, or you.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Know, just wrestling with those things. And I think because
some of it has been useful and motivating, some of
that self critical thinking has been motivating, but I think
I think in the end, understanding that it's been more
detrimental than than than than motivating was an important thing too.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
For me to get to.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Blown away by what you've done musically. I've got to
ask you an acting question on behalf of all the fans.
When I announced you as my guest, I got a
lot of people writing in about one particular thing I
wonder if you know what I'm going to.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Ask you, well, it's it's it's one of three things.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It's either.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Will there be a third season of Shadow and Bone
because I think the people who love fantasy stuff really
love fantasy stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I often get.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Is there would there be another life for the Billy
Russo character that I played on The Punisher Marvel Show,
because John Bunta, who played the Punisher and that is
playing that character again on the Dad Devil Show. And
that's definitely one of the characters that I've that I
loved playing the most. And really it's just interesting that
(37:08):
different kinds of people obviously respond to Marvel and the
Punisher has different fans from Narnia.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
You know, it's no surprise.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
But and then the third one is that the third
thing it's likely to be about, especially if it was
on the internet, is like.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Harry Potter fan casting.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You nailed it. It's the third one third one third one, which.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Is it's wild to me because the amount of Harry
Potter books or or that I've been asked to sign
or gryffind or ties that I've been given, and every
time I kind of feel the need to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Say you know I'm not in this.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I did an interview I did like a morning show
in LA a few months ago for the music and
we were about to play a song. She was like,
loved you and Harry Potter. Sorry, gonna stop you. That
wasn't in Harry Potter.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Very clear.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
But I think it's a fan casting that's been going
on for literally decades.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It must feel good knowing that the fans want that
to happen.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Well, I think I think it started off as something
that I've come to understand after because it's been around
so many years, that they wanted to do a kind
of Marauders prequel Terry pots And they had an idea
of like three or four actors they wanted in their heads.
I think Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor Johnson and myself.
They had the idea that that would that those would
(38:32):
be the actors to play those characters young. But now
we're all the same age that those characters were in
the original movies. So yeah, it's sort of twenty years
too late for their original for their original plan, but
I know they're making a new TV show version of
the of those stories. So I mean, I've just always
been a fan of read the books and listen to
(38:53):
Stephen Fryer read them on tape sometimes so good to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Help me go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's something that you know,
if the opportunity arose. I think there are some really
wonderful characters in those in those stories, but you know
they've also been told so beautifully already, you know, on film,
on audiobook already.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So you know, who knows.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, you never know what can happen, You never know.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Strange, not against it.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I love I mostly read fantasy, yeah, if I'm reading
for pleasure, not scripts and not kind of like you know,
some kind of like worthy adaptation. Yeah, I often read
fantasy as well. So I'm like, I'm just like a fan,
(39:45):
which is sort of a good thing really because I
think a lot of my support network online and at
concerts and people are going to see my movies are
also kind of like fantasy book readers.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So if you could develop any fantasy book into a project,
a series of film, what would you what would you pick?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Oh? I I there was.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Not necessarily for myself, but I remember reading I would
like to see a film of of this book called
the Name of the Wind. Sir Patrick Rothfuss story, and
I just think it's a really really cool, well told
story the first books, but like like a young young
(40:29):
young man who finds himself in this kind of like
he kind of works his way through very very very
tough times to find himself in a kind of alchemist's school.
But it's it's a it's a it's a sort of
a slightly harder edged version of one of those stories.
(40:50):
And it flashes forward to that character as as a
as a grown man who's like keeping his past a secret,
and it just really well.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
You, well, we'll add you in. Well yeah, like nice,
try saying I don't need to be in it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
But no, I would just like to see it.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Honestly, that character just sort of sits behind a bar
wistfully for the entire first book. So okay, yeah, no,
but it's just that I would like to see I
would like to see it for sure, let's.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
See if that happens. And to be fair, also the
shadow and Bone if there will be another season did
come up quite a bit as well, So I'm not
surprised you're here. My characters dead, so stranger things have happened.
It's true, stranger things have happened, man, and.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
It wouldn't be the first time I've come back from
the dead.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But we go, there, we go, Ben, I I could
talk to you for four more hours. I mean, what
a pleasure this has been. But as we wrap up,
the name of the show, it's called I've never said
this before?
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Oh yes, I completely forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah part of it. Yes, yes, So I end every
episode with asking my guests that question of what is
one thing you've never said before? And that was kind
of born, you know from I work a lot of
red carpets. I work a lot of junkets. You're no
stranger to them. Three minutes, six minutes, if you're lucky,
you get with somebody to have a conversation, and it's
(42:02):
very hard to have a real conversation in that environments,
mainly sound.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
That was the project, that was the kind of birth
of that.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah. I saw people longing to want to talk about
more and not having time to do it. And it
was just like a little look in their eyes where
they would start telling a story and then get cut
off and we have to go. And so I said,
you know what, I want to show where people can
come on and we can talk for more than six minutes.
But also in the conversation with that question and whatever
that means to you, I'm wondering if there is something
(42:30):
you've never said before that you want to say today.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Well, I was thinking about it a little bit over
the last few days, and we, as I kind of expected,
having listened to your show, we kind of almost touched
on it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Already, which was.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
This idea of the sort of very self critical voice
in your head, which can be extremely motivating, but it's
also at the end of the day, I think quite
a poisonous. Quite poisonous can be quite a poisonous thing.
And I've been kind of great for it through my
twenties in terms of fueling my ambition, but I think
(43:08):
I've never really talked like publicly about feeling that that
voice and that part of myself kind of started winning
a little bit through my thirties, and instead of kind
of becoming more confident with things and more free and
not only as an actor or a creative person, but
also just like in my life, I think it got
(43:30):
a bit of a strangle hold on me, and sort
of that was something to kind of be negotiated, and
I think like trying to focus on the things that
you are good at and the things that you are
proud of yourself for becomes harder and harder, with a
kind of a voice screaming at you in a way
that if a stranger talked to you in that way,
(43:53):
either no longer speak to them, more punched them in
the face.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
And I think that I listened to a few things,
interviews with other people and read different books about things,
but the idea of like talking to yourself as gently
as you would as gently as you would advise your
own daughter or your own best friend. And I think
realizing that one of the things I might not necessarily
(44:17):
be my own favorite actor, or I might not be
you know, I'm not even the best singer in my
own band. Those things are just you can accept some
of those things as true without being really critical of yourself.
But I think I am really good at surrounding myself
with kind, talented, loving, you know, human beings and bringing
(44:43):
people together in that kind of a way as well.
I think is something that I have been really proud of,
And like being a good friend to people is something
that I realized. I think I am and so practicing
like being a better friend to myself is the thing.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Is my is my thing.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I haven't said out loud before that I that I
like is something that I have to like practice and
very very recently, as in less you know, as in
a month ish ago, I've started like if I'm feeling like,
you know, because taking on you know, I think with
like the fires in La which were very close to
my home, and like mounting this entire tour and you know,
(45:27):
I know everyone is always juggling a billion things, but
it started making me feel like very panicky in a
moment where I should have been very excited about starting
a tours. And I started, at the suggestion of someone
that I love, so you know, suggested writing to yourself
like as a like, if you feel panicky, start you know,
(45:49):
right to yourself, as if you were your own best friend,
what would you say to yourself in that moment? And
I was, you know, part of me bulks at things
like that. I think being raised by therapists and stuff
any kind of like tool always feels like a bit
icky and a bit like because I feel like if
I start to address things that I feel are a
problem for me, then then there's something wrong with me,
(46:11):
and then I have to accept that, you know whatever.
But actually I've been finding very very useful.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
But well it helps that self talk, right, Like you
were very critical of yourself. Your self talk wasn't great.
So doing that forces you to flip the script, literally
flip the script and address yourself in a way that
you would speak to anybody else.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Goes back to that the blank page. And I think
that it can be that blank page. You can put
on that blank page whatever you choose to put on it.
And the thing that I haven't like said probably before
it is just like just how terrible I can I
have the capacity to be to myself, but like learning
(46:52):
to negotiate that and like very much like it's very
much like a present thing.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
That I'm doing, but a working progress.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Think I think a lot of people, a lot of
people are in the same are in that same boat.
So you know, it might be kind of interesting to
hear from someone who you know, you might make certain
you might make certain presumptions about what their life might
be like, but you never quite know how the cogs
(47:23):
in someone's head work.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Hmm, that's certainly true. I really appreciate you sharing that.
I think a lot of people, to your point, look
at somebody and perhaps think they seemingly float through life
with no worries or stress or you know, or problems
with themselves, and that's just not true. And I think
that's a really important point to make, especially as the
(47:47):
social media side of the world we live in only
gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and people portray one
thing online, but you don't know what the truth is
behind that. And I think for you to say, like listen, man,
sometimes I really am terrible to myself and I'm working
on it, and I'm not fully there yet.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Well any part of.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Certainly an actor, and I think it is just that
people see you see the polished and edited version in
a movie, and then you see on stage, you see
the part that you've been literally building up to all
day and doing sound checks and warm ups and rehearsing
and and then even just like emotional preparation through the
(48:24):
day of like okay, it's like, you know, you've got
to get through the nerves, and you've got to build
up to the thing, and you've got to try to
be your most confident and relaxed and you know that's
then that's the version that you're presented with. And just
remembering that we're all kind of we're all made it
the same stuff and we all kind of work in
(48:45):
similar ways. I think is like important to acknowledge, and
obviously people do it all the time, but that's that
was one of my small ones.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Thank you for sharing that.
I know. I got to get you out of here.
You're a rock star on tour, you have a lot
going on, so I'm going to make this really quick.
My last, last, last question. Do you feel like, with
that all being said, you are worthy?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
I'm not quite sure what that means, worthy of what.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I'm worthy of being here, worthy of the success you've had,
worthy of what you've built.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
I I mean, I suppose if this feels like a
really like honest kind of conversation, I suppose I suppose
if I if I'm being honest, not really, because there
are so many people in the world doing so many things.
We were just discussing today about all these visiting all
these different cities, and we go there for half a
(49:40):
day or a day, and you might go and get
a coffee from somewhere and someone is like really nice
or kind to you in a particular coffee shop, and
you're like, oh, and they're they're they're here all the time,
being this way, and we're just sort of like passing through.
I actually called my you know, setting up like a
production company. I called it sounder. I don't know if
(50:00):
you've know that familiar with.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
That word, but it was.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
I think it's like, was a relatively new word and dictionary,
meaning that feeling that you get when you pass by
strangers that their life is just as full and dense
and intricate as yours. They have their dreams, they have
their fears, they have their the things that they love
about themselves, the things that they hate about themselves, that
everyone's life is just as full and rich and meaningful
(50:25):
as anyone else's. And I think that I have reached
a place where I'm really like grateful and really yeah, grateful,
I think is a really good word. That probably is
that I'm really grateful for like the kind of life
that I have and to be able to do things
that I really am passionate about and love to do
most of the time. And that makes me feel incredibly lucky.
(50:50):
But I'm also very aware of how many people I
know that are just as talented, if not more talented,
and just as worthy of having that kind of experience
and don't get to have it as often or at all,
or don't have the opportunity to have it, And so
it's very difficult for me to say like I, to
say I deserve it in any way feels it doesn't
(51:14):
feel quite doesn't sit quite quite right with me. But equally,
I don't feel like I. Equally I don't feel like
I don't because I believe that I am someone who
works hard, someone who's worked hard to be better at
the things that they do, someone who has some innate
skill sets, and first and foremost like someone who believes
(51:36):
themselves to be a good man. And therefore therefore I
am or I am, and I'm very grateful and happy
about it. But worthy, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
It's an interesting word, but I think you answer that beautifully,
and for what it's worth, I think you are very worthy.
I so enjoy this conversation, Ben. Like I said, your
music is sensational. I hope everybody goes and listens to
your album on repeat. Tell everybody one more time. The
name how to listen all of it.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
The album is called Where the Light Gets In and
you can find it on the Spotify, Apple Music, anyway
that you listen to music.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
I appreciate you checking out.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Keep making more and we're ready for it. Thank you,
my friend, thank you. I've Never Said This Before is
hosted by me, Tommy Dedario. This podcast is executive produced
by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio and by me Tommy, with
editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've Never Said This Before is
part of the Elvis Duran podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts.
(52:39):
For more, rate review and subscribe to our show and
if you liked this episode, tell your friends. Until next time,
I'm Tommy Dederio.
Hey, guys, welcome to I've never said this before with me,
Tommy di Dario. I am so excited to share this
conversation with you with one of the most thoughtful and
brilliant humans I've had the pleasure of chatting with the
very talented actor and singer Ben Barnes is hanging out
with me today. So on the acting side, Ben has
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become known as the King of Fantasy. He starred as
Prince Caspian and the Chronicles of Narnia franchise, then he
went on to do Dorian Gray, Killing Bono, Westworld, The Marvels,
The Punisher, and of course play the fan favorite villain
in the wildly popular Netflix series Shadow and Bone. And
because his talent can't be contained to just one art form,
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he is also a brilliant singer and songwriter. His debut album,
Where the Light Gets In is out right now, and
let me tell you m his lyrics are magical. He
connects to the human spirit in such a way that's
gonna leave you feeling seen and heard and like your voice,
your life journey truly matters. That's the magic of Ben Barnes.
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And he was so kind to invite me to his
New York City performance at Webster Hall where, oh man,
the only way I can describe his show is that
it was electric. Today we are celebrating all of the
things that come together to make Ben Barnes who he
truly is, the man behind some of your favorite roles
and the man behind the music. So let's see if
today we can get Ben to say something that he
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has never said before. Ben Barnes, how you doing, my man?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Very well? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I am so happy to have you here. Welcome to
New York. I know you've been on a whirldwind tour.
You don't even probably know what city you're in right now.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yeah, I definitely have almost gone on stage and done
that spinal tap reference of Hello Cleveland. We've never been
anywhere in Italy, but it has been. It's been really,
really fun, magical.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Congratulations. We have so much to get into. I was
listening to your album the other day and it's fantastic.
I'm a sucker for drama and soulful lyrics and real
connection in music, and I'm probably one of the rare
people who can listen to that type of music in
the gym when I'm working out, like I don't need
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like a banger, I don't need like the beats like
I like to envision what I'm listening to and create
the story as I'm working out, and your album is
very much that.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I like, something kind of filmic and.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I do I do together, I really do. And I thought,
I think what you did with that is brilliant. We're
going to dive into it. But I find your story
so fascinating. So at nineteen, as she began writing music
right and kind of started working with producers or your
teen years.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I had a very short foray into into music. When
I was nineteen, I was I was signed to Simon Fuller,
who had created the Spice Girls.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yes and name Drop.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We were working on a well. I mention it only
because it kind of provides balance to the story, which
is that it only lasted a few weeks and I
was recording kind of like jazz standards. I think you
thought it might be an interesting idea to have a
teenager singing kind of like rap pack music essentially, and
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there was sort of lots of big ideas for it,
but then it just very quickly kind of fell by
the wayside as I came to understand a lot of
those projects do and over the last twenty years of
working in entertainment, I now fully understand how things come
and go and they fall apart. But at the time,
when you're nineteen and aspirational and every next step you
take you think is going to be the step which
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takes you up the golden escalator to the place that
you've dreamed of, I think it was more difficult to accept.
I think I think you get better at enduring rejection
and enduring not every being the moment as you get
on in this career, because it's not a smooth ride.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
For anybody, right, right, And then you kind of transition
and had this amazing career and continue to have an
amazing career in the acting world, becoming a king of
a fantasy and that genre right and really doing it
for over two decades. And then suddenly now you're in
this beautiful era with your music. So what made you say, Okay,
you know what it's time for my music, like, I
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need to go revisit that at this point in my career.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I think it was a combination of a couple of things.
I think initially I found that being on different films
and TV shows I was getting itchy to have a
little bit more control and a little bit more say,
and invest a little bit more of myself in the
scripts and in the characters that I was working on.
But there has to be an acceptance when you're an
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actor that somebody else has written this script, somebody else
is producing, somebody else's designing the costume, somebody else is directing,
and their vision might not be exactly aligned with yours
for any particular project. And so I think you can
go to the writers you know as often as you
want and say I don't think I would say this
line exactly this way, and you could switch three words around,
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but actually it's not garnering any kind of real control.
And I think for a lot of creative people, releasing
control of a creative project whilst during the midst of
it is a very difficult thing. And I think I
was yearning to inject something of myself and to sew
something of myself into a lot of these characters. But
then you know, the last particularly the last six or
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seven years, I've been playing a lot of psychopaths and
murderers and liars, and there wasn't very much room for
negotiating myself into these characters, and so I think part
of it was realizing that if you have something to
say in the world, or you want to share something
of yourself in the world, or you want to kind
of offer up something into the creative universe, that you
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have to start with a blank piece of paper and
it has to be on your terms. But that means
that it's entirely on your shoulders as well, and anything
that kind of comes of it that feels successful will
be you know, you don't have to credit anybody else.
But equally, if it doesn't kind of go the way
that you'd hoped, it's nobody's fault but your own. And
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so I think it's harder to kind of take up
that mantle of the blank piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Is historically scary.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, So I think that was the first thing, and
the second thing was really I think when the pandemic
struck and people were given you know, everyone was given
two things. A lot of extra time to muse and
to think on what their dreams and goals and aspirations
might be for the rest of their life given the opportunity,
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And I think that second bit was important that everyone
was kind of faced with the mortality of themselves and
the people that they care about, and there's an insistence
that you reprioritize. For me, that meant going back twenty
years to the thing that I really wanted to spend
a lot of time doing, and the thing i'd all
through high school put all of my energy into, which
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was singing and making music and making music with groups
and bands of other people. And coming back to that,
and I think i'd just been a very private person
through my acting career. I didn't like sharing a lot
in interviews. I didn't like giving up like what I
deemed to be sort of sacred parts of my own life.
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You hired behind a character and you pretend to be that.
But I actually released some of that, I think during
my thirties, and actually doing the music was the final
piece of that puzzle to really realize that there wasn't
anything to be afraid of. People's judgment is not something
to fear, because they're going to do it regardless of
what you do spend your time doing so, I think
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I projected forward to the eighty year old version of
myself at the beginning of the pandemic and thought, will
that man be proud of the way I've lived my
life and the way I've done this. And one of
the answers was the fact that you love music so
much and you enjoyed doing it so much, and you
feel like you have at least some skill in this
area and have the opportunity to and you didn't do
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it for fear of judgment.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
That would not make me proud.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So that was like a big motivator as well.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So would you say when you were ready to release
your music and put it out into the world, even
though you had been known predominantly as an actor, were
you able to push through that anxiety knowing that this
would make you happy in the future looking at your
future self, or did you still have some anxiety saying, Okay,
I'm about to put this all out there.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It was, It was in steps. It was incremental. I
think there was more than one aspect to it. I
was afraid that people would dig into the songs and
the lyrics and try and kind of insinuate things.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
About my life life.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Also, I was afraid that people wouldn't necessarily take me
as seriously as an actor if I was also trying
to do this thing.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean, we grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
You know. I think in the era of watching like
a lot of massive pop stars try their hand at
acting in movies and stuff to usually pretty disastrous to
pretty disastrous effect, And I remember feeling judgment of that, thinking,
stay in your lane, like you're like a world superstar
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at doing this. Why are you pretending that just anyone
can be an actor just because they can read? And
I think I had concerned that people might feel the
same the other way around, but they also might judge
the kind of music that I wanted to put out,
because you don't really know what kind of music you
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put out.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I think, unless you're sort of.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Plagiarizing something, you don't really know what kind of music
you put you're going to put out until you finished it,
right Because with my music, for example, I'm obsessed with
with kind of nineteen seventies music, soulomotown, a lot of
those kind of like rock bands from that era, and
I think all of those things that I've listened to
have kind of infused everything that I want to make.
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But it's all passed through the filter of my experience,
and it's passed through it's passed through my vocal cords,
and it's passed through the fingers of the people playing
on the album and everything that they've ever listened to,
and so it becomes this completely different and new thing,
no matter how hard you try to make it sound
like something that you love. And so I think I
had fear that I wouldn't maybe even like what I
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ended up making.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And then where would I be?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And also I knew that, you know, if I put
on a show, even if I put it on in
a place where there was only one hundred people, there
would be one hundred phones filming it and it would
end up.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Online and you know, millions of people would see it.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
So I think I think there was I definitely put
pressure on myself, But that's something that I've spent the
last few years trying to work on doing differently anyway
to release myself of that pressure in that judgment, because
in the end, we're all floating through space on a rock,
So what does it really matter? But I think, you know,
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I'm someone to whom everything has always mattered pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, yeah, Well what I love is that you did it.
You didn't let that dissuade you and say, you know what, Ah,
I'm just going to keep acting and stay in that lane,
and you followed through. And I know you had an
EP of about five songs a few years ago, and
this is your debut album, and you followed through and
you did it. And I'm very interested with humanity and
with people. You know, when you reach a certain point
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in your life. I just turned thirty nine, and people
think that, you know, you hear forty, and it's like, oh, no,
you can't do something new, or you can't do something
you're not known for. And yes, I'm a host, I'm
an interviewer, but there are other things outside of this
that I'm trying to do and get made and happen
that is not related to this. And so many people
would look at that and say, well good luck, bro,
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Like you're gonna be forty next year. You think you
can just do something in a totally different world than
the one you're known for, and it's like, fuck, yeah
you can, Like, yes you can, and why not go
for it? And I like that you have that mentality too.
You're like, I'm granted you have a background, but you
know you didn't say to the point you just made Nope,
I'm not going to do it because the world might
not want it, or I have success in one lane
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like you're doing it.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
How do you feel about forty outside of professional endeavor, Like.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh, I think it's young, Like for me, I'm not.
I think age is such an interesting person because I'm
at the age now where I'll be sitting across from
somebody and my age will come up and they'll be like,
you're thirty nine. No, I'm like, well, you know, you
saying that implies that that's like some ancient age, Like
I know you mean well, And I don't take it personally,
but it's just such a funny concept to me, because
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you know, it's just the implication of that. And probably
when I was twenty eight I thought that too, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So I remember being thirty nine and having this kind
of like cold dread of forty hit it. And then
I remember to about two days after my fortieth birthday,
I had an audition and I walked into a room
and the casting director sort of chatted to me for
a minute, and then she looked down at my resume
or whatever she was holding, and she was like, oh, oh,
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you're forty, right, And this sort of smile crept across
my face because I realized that the character that I
was going in for was like a really interesting character,
and you could tell there was a sort of a
level of, I don't know if quite respect is quite
the right word, but a level of a level of
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appreciation of lived experience that maybe I might have it
in me too to be this. And then and after
that moment, I sort of never look back about the aging.
And every night on stage I have a song called
called Someday on the album about sort of not allowing
people to hold you back from your dreams. But it's
a really sort of head Noddy Dancy kind of song,
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and I play it last on tour and I talk about,
you know, I talk to the audience saying, if you
take one thing away from this show, don't let people
stand in the way of spending your precious time on
this planet doing the things that you love to do.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Whatever those are, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And if I can stand up here at forty three
and sort of be near the beginning of a pop,
you know, pop music career, then you two can get
out and do whatever the thing is that you've been
dreaming about doing, and it doesn't have to be on
some grand scale. And it's interesting how that was clearly
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not something I set out to do to make people
feel like they could have space or opportunity or permission
to go and do creative things or physical things or
intellectual things that they have put off doing. But in
response to the EP that I put out, I think
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I do tend to write songs that are essentially about hope.
I think all actually all great art in terms of
like films, TV shows, whatever, essentially when you distill them down.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
There really about hopefulness.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
But I find it very difficult not to write about
that thematically. And I think that one of the upshots
of putting out the EP, which I really hadn't seen,
was lots of people saying this song made me want
to go and do this, And then you realize, once
you put music out into the world, it immediately becomes
not about you. And people always used to say that
(15:32):
to me about films, and I've said in interviews many
years ago that I think, you know, a film is
basically just a collection of scenes edited together until someone
who has had nothing to do with the film watches it,
and then it becomes a film because then there's an
organic and true reaction to what someone has made. Then
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it's really a film when you've given it over to
someone else. But I didn't really think about it with
music until I was putting it out. But I think
it's even more true and strong when it comes to
a song because you think of all the songs that
you've ever loved. You're not thinking about the experience of
the sing out. You're not thinking about the experience of
the songwriter. You're thinking about how that music affects you,
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how it connects to you.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
How it relates to your life.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
You know, when I try to think of a different
example when I talk about this, because I've had this
conversation with bandmates and friends and people I've written songs with.
But you know, if you listen to Prince sing I
just want your extra time and your kiss, You're not
thinking whose extra time does Prince want?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
You're thinking whose extra time do I want?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Whom?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Who comes into my mind when I listen to this song?
And I think it's so immediate when you're singing songs,
particularly when you're singing live for someone, and the reaction
is so immediate. They're looking up at you and they're
having their own experience that is not yours. And I
have to remind myself. I get very nervous before shows
because it feels like when you've got a thousand, two
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thousand people watching you see songs that you wrote alone
in a room, it feels quite raw. But then I
remind myself what it feels like to go to a
concert and how I have no judgment or expectation of
what's about to happen on a stage. I just think, oh,
hope it's good, and then I'm in my own emotional
experience of listening to a song. You know, I've definitely
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like cried at concerts before where where.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I'm in my own head about my own stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
But there's something about the core progressional a particular lyric
that it's like struck me.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's got nothing to do with a person who's delivering it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Like I said earlier, this album, man, I mean, it's
just the lyrically. It's beautiful. I think it's just beautiful.
It's your debut album.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I mean so much.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
You just say that in particular because I don't let
anyone else write obviously lyrics.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
I do do get music.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I did get music support on the album because I'd
written all the songs myself with the EP, and musically,
I think it's a really good thing to kind of collaborate,
But songs feel like babies, and if you let someone
else sort of mess with the lyrics, it feels like
it's maybe not yours anymore. I know a lot of
people don't feel that way, but for me, yea, words
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have always been my main tool. And I think for
all the things I was afraid of in putting out
something new creatively, there was also rewards to be found
along the way in terms of finding things that you're
I think it's hard to learn new things in your
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thirties and forties, but to find those little things that
you are sort of organically good at that you didn't
necessarily know you were, it was like a real, really
unexpected reward of this kind of process. And I would
find that I would write songs with people and they
would help me so much, and they would understand things
that I never have a hope of understanding in terms
(19:00):
of music itself. But then afterwards they might say that
was great, can you help me with the lyrics for
this song that I'm writing? And you know, I realize
I have a facility with that, and like a real
passion a real passion for like finding little lyrical hooks
for songs that sound like phrases or idioms or sayings
or whatever, but are actually fresh and new to you.
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And it's something that I've discovered that I really really
love to do.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, I mean the messages and the lyrics on this
album you speak about so much. I love the title
of the album too. I think it's so fantastic and
and just poetic and very on theme with you know
what you write in the collection you put together Where
the Light Gets In, of course is the name for
everybody listening. You talk about everything from anxiety to letting
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go to you know, being loved and the right to
be loved and be loved as you say, and in
the so much you cover in such a collection of music.
So for you, what was the main thing you were
hoping to achieve with this album collectively?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
I think I wanted it to feel honest and authentic
to my lived experience. And I think that goes all
the way from very exciting kind of fizzy feelings that
you have when you first meet someone in a romantic way,
all the way through to like considering the mortality of
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your parents and trying to wrestle with the idea of
them not being around at some point through to you know,
kind of nostalgically looking back at friendships that have been
fallen by the wayside and you're not quite sure why,
or regretting that you didn't love someone in a certain
kind of way, or wishing you could have loved them differently.
All these all these different kinds of things that make us,
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that make us who we are, and all those decisions
that you have made your life that have led you
to where you are, and kind of like I think
it was aligned very much with where I was in
my life a few years ago, trying to just sort
of accept all those things and realize that every decision
you've ever made has brought you to where you are,
and if you don't regret where you are, I shouldn't
regret those decisions. And I think that once i'd written
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that song where the Light Gets In, which I wrote
that's the only song I wrote with two of the
band members of Maroon five, because I had this little
hook lyrically already, but I just I didn't have an
idea of what it sounded like. I had some other
songs in my head that were had the warmth that
I wanted that song to have, but I didn't know
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where to go with it, and they very graciously agreed
to help me write that one song, and once I'd written,
I knew it had to be the title of the album.
But then it started me thinking about the Japanese are
of Kincigi, where if you break something, if something ceramic breaks,
you fix it using gold.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm sure you've seen those.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Like cracked gold cera mixed before, and that notion, that
concept that something could break and then you could fix
it and make it more precious than it was before
you broke it. I think that's just every person I
know over the age of twenty. It's the story is
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that you go through things, and you make choices, and
things happen to you, and you can either let those
weigh you down or you can fight through to a
point where those things actually make you, know, make you
who you are, not necessarily harder or stronger, but just
who you are. And sometimes sometimes strong is about acceptance
(22:44):
rather than fight.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Sometimes strong is about acceptance rather than fight.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
This is what happens there.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I just said that, and I haven't said that before,
and now I feel like I want to write it
in my phone in case it's.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yet him and.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Somebody wrote that down. Example of how how my songs start.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
By the way, that's a that it's usually just chatting
with friends or other musics or whatever, and someone something,
either I say something or someone else says something three
words and you're like, wait, but see, you've just shown
me that you could be a lyricist because your eyes
went up and left and you went wait.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
The way that you listen is like so it's like
such a huge part of being able to make things.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, no, I heard immediately that that resonates with me.
That's that's pretty cool. That's that's going to be something
mark my words. Oh yeah. There's so many songs I
love on this I I particularly love slow it Down.
I think as a little bit of a hopeless romantic
I connected with that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I was about to say, you can tell what kind
of a person someone is by which almost I should start. Actually,
I should do like a like a quizz thing online,
you know, like one of those like personality quizzes. You
listen to the songs and then you pick your favorite.
It tells you what kind of person you are, because
if slow It Down your favorite song on the record.
You're definitely hopeless romantic because it's the only like pure
(24:05):
love song. It's the only song with no tension in it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, you must be too if you're writing that song.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, well that's true, but I also write the all
the other ones.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So all right, right, right, right, true, fair enough, but.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, absolutely no, definitively from from when I was a kid,
you know, any sort of really romantic kind of films, novels, poems,
I've always definitely kind of gravitated towards that, And yeah,
slow It Down is the only.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Like put it on a song for everybody listening, put
it on for your partner. You will win Brownie points
for the next six months.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I was at a show the other day and I
do a thing in the show where I say a
quote from a film and try to get people to
guess what film it's from.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, do you want to do it?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Oh my god, oh god, okay, fine, fine, fine, do
not judge me if I don't know, help my friend
in the corner, and I.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Felt you can have Okay.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
When I'm about to play that song, I get someone
from the audience to tell me what movie the following
quotes from life moves pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
If you don't start to look around once in a while,
you might miss it.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Oh my god, I should know this. It sounds so
familiar that life means pretty fast. If you give me
the decade it's from.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's from the eighties, from the it is.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's not the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
You're very close. It's got some of the same actors.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's I feel like it's that. Oh my god, it's
not sixteen care Yes, did you look that up online? Actually,
because I watched that recently, Oh my god, Okay, And
that I.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Had all these scratchings from different like honestly, like a
couple of lines from a birthday card I wrote someone,
a couple of lines from like a poem.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
I was sort of muddling with that. I never really
did anything with.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
All these different kind of like I had like a
list of things that made it into the lyrics of those.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Songs.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I think I'd written like share your baby names with me,
stand up family graves with me, and I'd written like
that as a little couplet of like, you know, the
most romantic thing you can do and then the most
kind of you know, the two things the two different
ends of the spectrum of like what you would want
a partner to be there for you with be there
(26:35):
with you four.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I've been sleeping on a bus and then I couldn't
find the hook for the song. And then I.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
We watched Fresh Buder's Day Off, and life Moves pretty
Fast was just those words. I was like, that's what
it is. So I just kind of borrowed those few words,
and then life moves pretty fast with you, I think
finally found someone to slow it down.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
I think you're making everybody listening to this episode swoon
with these lyrics.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Well, it's just such a I like they're beautiful, they are.
I like songs.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I like songs that I like feel really specific, and
I think that's such a specific feeling. It's not like
I hope I find someone with whom I fall, you know,
ahead of heels and love and feel fireworks or you know.
I it's it's a very specific thing. I hope I'm
you know, I hope I find someone, and I hope
(27:33):
I'm in a position to appreciate that when I meet
someone with whom time feels just that bit slower because
life just racist past you two to realize that that
is like equally important, if not more than someone with
whom you know.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It feels like the fireworks all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's a stunning song. Every song
is is stunning for a different reason. I know you
have a video dropping very soon for one minute more.
Oh yes, which I got to say see early it
was beautiful. So this song is an interesting one. It's
coming out of Valentine's say the video correct, And that
(28:16):
one is I referenced earlier about letting go a little bit, right,
So talk to me about that that one.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, it's interesting because sometimes you start writing a song
about one thing and then it sort of feels like
it starts to be about something else, but you kind
of keep it a secret. And I think, yeah, it's
it's a sort of deeply romantic song on one level
about being very in love with someone and them not
(28:44):
being in a position or having the tools to love
you back how you need to be loved, and so
you both know on some level that you have to
say goodbye to it, and maybe you've already had the
conversation but you just haven't quite decided to say and
you're just you're dragging you're dragging your feet essentially because
(29:07):
because you know, there's been something wonderful about it. So
on the surface, it was about that. But then as
I started kind of toying with it more, I was
thinking about it from other perspectives, about how all the
different relationships in my life I think being quite transient
as an actor as well. Sometimes, you know, you work
(29:28):
with people very intently for months on end, and then
the months go by really quickly. And even being on
this tour right now, you know, we're almost finished with
the American leg of the tour, and I'm so grateful
that we have the Europe leg of the tour coming,
because if you told me that it was the very
last show tomorrow, then I would be just short because
(29:53):
it's felt such precious time and I just like, just
one more show, just one more moment together doing this
thing because it feels precious. And then I sort of
extrapolated it further to like, you know, honestly, I was thinking,
you know, my mum has been navigating cancer for a decade,
(30:18):
and she's like an extraordinary human being, but there are
times when we when we were kind of told that,
you know, some of the treatments she was having were
going to be difficult, and there was maybe some hard
conversations to have in advance of having those surgeries or
those treatments, and.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
You know, I remember kind.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Of like wailing to the sky, just just please one,
you know, just one more day, one more year, one
more you know, and I think, you know, this is
when I started to realize that those kind of songs
will mean something different to every person who kind of
listens to it. And you ask me what I hope
(31:03):
it is for the songs. I hope that no one
cares what they're about for me. I hope that they
start to have meaning for someone else. Doesn't have to
be important. Meaning could just be a nice moment of like,
oh my, you know, partner and I listened to Slow
it Down. We felt really cozy and that was really nice.
(31:23):
But it also could be like people come up to
IT shows and you realize they've been listening to a
song from your EP for years as they're kind of
like happy song or whatever it might be, and you know,
it doesn't have to be on a Taylor Swift level.
It doesn't have to be millions of people in the
world doing it can be three hundred people. It could
be seven people, you know, And I'm very fortunate that
(31:46):
because I've done what I've done as an actor for
the last twenty years, that there are people who will
show up for me and people support me, and then
hopefully when they do that, they're just rewarding it for them.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Well, they're also showing up for you because you put
out material resonates if you put out garbage. They want
to be shown, you know, to be a fair.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
So that's actually the best answer to that question, which
I am going to steal and use in other interviews,
But like my hope is that it resonates is a
really good word, is that it resonates with people and
just they keep a piece of it with them as well.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You know, Ben, I have to say, it's hard to
imagine you at a point of your life where you
weren't this open and just kind of vulnerable, because I
know I was.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
With my you know, I raised by you know, my
extraordinary um to talk about is it a psychotherapist, Yeah,
my dad's a psychiatrist. I was was very open with them.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
But I'm sure when you hit the spotlight and you
got really big in Hollywood as an actor and suddenly
this exposure happened where everybody wants to know something about
you and is interested in your life and the spotlight
is on you. I imagine that was a bit weird
at first.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
That was weird, but I think it also started, if
i'm really also, I think it started before that as well.
And like in school, I didn't really have a lot
of friends at school, and I didn't really enjoy school
very much, and I felt like if you shared things
and were open in that kind of environment, it was
it wasn't something that was valued, and it was certainly
(33:17):
you know, it's just like can be weaponized. And so
I think I was very open with my family and
with my friends that I was really close to, and
I've always been very open and vulnerable with them. But
I think I kind of took the that sort of
like school life into when I first started doing films
and stuff, and you know, I grew up in the
(33:39):
UK and the tabloid press there is like pretty can
be pretty acute, and and you know, they started asking questions.
In the first few interviews I ever had, I thought,
what are you're asking me this for?
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Like what would be an example of that question? I
don't know, just like just intrusive.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, just just like started with questions about maybe, you know, yeah,
what your parents do for a living, or asking about
who you're dating or how long you've been together or
whatever those things are. And it was just like it
just felt like crazy intrusive to ask that stuff before
you ask about.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
The film you've just made or something. And it just
it wasn't you know.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Of course, I realized it can be far worse than that,
you know, I know it can be devastating, but it
just it just it just shored up the walls of
privacy and thought a lot of the actors I really
admire don't really you don't really know much about them.
There's an element of mystery to them. And I just
sort of made this decision that, like, I guess I
just won't necessarily share that much. But I realized this
(34:37):
is like, this is now completely on my terms.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yes, and you have the power.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
This is the stuff that I am choosing to share,
and you can choose to read it however you want
or make it about you or whatever whatever it is.
But I'm still not you know, I'm still not necessarily
sharing like details of how how how I live my
life when I'm not working or making something right. But
(35:06):
I do feel now that there is nothing. I used
to be anxious that people might ask me certain things
or whatever, and now I'm not afraid of any question.
And actually doing music, releasing music, playing music for people
in particular, was one of the really big catalysts for
feeling that way and letting go after you know, almost
(35:26):
forty years of that kind of fear of fear of judgment,
and it's it's and it's it's made its way into
my acting too, Like going back on sets and things,
I feel less afraid of whether people will.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Accept a certain character or what if they don't, you know,
like the show, or you.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Know, just wrestling with those things. And I think because
some of it has been useful and motivating, some of
that self critical thinking has been motivating, but I think
I think in the end, understanding that it's been more
detrimental than than than than motivating was an important thing too.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
For me to get to.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Blown away by what you've done musically. I've got to
ask you an acting question on behalf of all the fans.
When I announced you as my guest, I got a
lot of people writing in about one particular thing I
wonder if you know what I'm going to.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Ask you, well, it's it's it's one of three things.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It's either.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Will there be a third season of Shadow and Bone
because I think the people who love fantasy stuff really
love fantasy stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I often get.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Is there would there be another life for the Billy
Russo character that I played on The Punisher Marvel Show,
because John Bunta, who played the Punisher and that is
playing that character again on the Dad Devil Show. And
that's definitely one of the characters that I've that I
loved playing the most. And really it's just interesting that
(37:08):
different kinds of people obviously respond to Marvel and the
Punisher has different fans from Narnia.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
You know, it's no surprise.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
But and then the third one is that the third
thing it's likely to be about, especially if it was
on the internet, is like.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Harry Potter fan casting.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
You nailed it. It's the third one third one third one, which.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Is it's wild to me because the amount of Harry
Potter books or or that I've been asked to sign
or gryffind or ties that I've been given, and every
time I kind of feel the need to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Say you know I'm not in this.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I did an interview I did like a morning show
in LA a few months ago for the music and
we were about to play a song. She was like,
loved you and Harry Potter. Sorry, gonna stop you. That
wasn't in Harry Potter.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Very clear.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
But I think it's a fan casting that's been going
on for literally decades.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
It must feel good knowing that the fans want that
to happen.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Well, I think I think it started off as something
that I've come to understand after because it's been around
so many years, that they wanted to do a kind
of Marauders prequel Terry pots And they had an idea
of like three or four actors they wanted in their heads.
I think Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor Johnson and myself.
They had the idea that that would that those would
(38:32):
be the actors to play those characters young. But now
we're all the same age that those characters were in
the original movies. So yeah, it's sort of twenty years
too late for their original for their original plan, but
I know they're making a new TV show version of
the of those stories. So I mean, I've just always
been a fan of read the books and listen to
(38:53):
Stephen Fryer read them on tape sometimes so good to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Help me go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's something that you know,
if the opportunity arose. I think there are some really
wonderful characters in those in those stories, but you know
they've also been told so beautifully already, you know, on film,
on audiobook already.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So you know, who knows.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, you never know what can happen, You never know.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Strange, not against it.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I love I mostly read fantasy, yeah, if I'm reading
for pleasure, not scripts and not kind of like you know,
some kind of like worthy adaptation. Yeah, I often read
fantasy as well. So I'm like, I'm just like a fan,
(39:45):
which is sort of a good thing really because I
think a lot of my support network online and at
concerts and people are going to see my movies are
also kind of like fantasy book readers.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So if you could develop any fantasy book into a project,
a series of film, what would you what would you pick?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Oh? I I there was.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Not necessarily for myself, but I remember reading I would
like to see a film of of this book called
the Name of the Wind. Sir Patrick Rothfuss story, and
I just think it's a really really cool, well told
story the first books, but like like a young young
(40:29):
young man who finds himself in this kind of like
he kind of works his way through very very very
tough times to find himself in a kind of alchemist's school.
But it's it's a it's a it's a sort of
a slightly harder edged version of one of those stories.
(40:50):
And it flashes forward to that character as as a
as a grown man who's like keeping his past a secret,
and it just really well.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
You, well, we'll add you in. Well yeah, like nice,
try saying I don't need to be in it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
But no, I would just like to see it.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Honestly, that character just sort of sits behind a bar
wistfully for the entire first book. So okay, yeah, no,
but it's just that I would like to see I
would like to see it for sure, let's.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
See if that happens. And to be fair, also the
shadow and Bone if there will be another season did
come up quite a bit as well, So I'm not
surprised you're here. My characters dead, so stranger things have happened.
It's true, stranger things have happened, man, and.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
It wouldn't be the first time I've come back from
the dead.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
But we go, there, we go, Ben, I I could
talk to you for four more hours. I mean, what
a pleasure this has been. But as we wrap up,
the name of the show, it's called I've never said
this before?
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Oh yes, I completely forgot about that.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah part of it. Yes, yes, So I end every
episode with asking my guests that question of what is
one thing you've never said before? And that was kind
of born, you know from I work a lot of
red carpets. I work a lot of junkets. You're no
stranger to them. Three minutes, six minutes, if you're lucky,
you get with somebody to have a conversation, and it's
(42:02):
very hard to have a real conversation in that environments,
mainly sound.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
That was the project, that was the kind of birth
of that.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah. I saw people longing to want to talk about
more and not having time to do it. And it
was just like a little look in their eyes where
they would start telling a story and then get cut
off and we have to go. And so I said,
you know what, I want to show where people can
come on and we can talk for more than six minutes.
But also in the conversation with that question and whatever
that means to you, I'm wondering if there is something
(42:30):
you've never said before that you want to say today.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Well, I was thinking about it a little bit over
the last few days, and we, as I kind of expected,
having listened to your show, we kind of almost touched
on it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Already, which was.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
This idea of the sort of very self critical voice
in your head, which can be extremely motivating, but it's
also at the end of the day, I think quite
a poisonous. Quite poisonous can be quite a poisonous thing.
And I've been kind of great for it through my
twenties in terms of fueling my ambition, but I think
(43:08):
I've never really talked like publicly about feeling that that
voice and that part of myself kind of started winning
a little bit through my thirties, and instead of kind
of becoming more confident with things and more free and
not only as an actor or a creative person, but
also just like in my life, I think it got
(43:30):
a bit of a strangle hold on me, and sort
of that was something to kind of be negotiated, and
I think like trying to focus on the things that
you are good at and the things that you are
proud of yourself for becomes harder and harder, with a
kind of a voice screaming at you in a way
that if a stranger talked to you in that way,
(43:53):
either no longer speak to them, more punched them in
the face.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
And I think that I listened to a few things,
interviews with other people and read different books about things,
but the idea of like talking to yourself as gently
as you would as gently as you would advise your
own daughter or your own best friend. And I think
realizing that one of the things I might not necessarily
(44:17):
be my own favorite actor, or I might not be
you know, I'm not even the best singer in my
own band. Those things are just you can accept some
of those things as true without being really critical of yourself.
But I think I am really good at surrounding myself
with kind, talented, loving, you know, human beings and bringing
(44:43):
people together in that kind of a way as well.
I think is something that I have been really proud of,
And like being a good friend to people is something
that I realized. I think I am and so practicing
like being a better friend to myself is the thing.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Is my is my thing.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I haven't said out loud before that I that I
like is something that I have to like practice and
very very recently, as in less you know, as in
a month ish ago, I've started like if I'm feeling like,
you know, because taking on you know, I think with
like the fires in La which were very close to
my home, and like mounting this entire tour and you know,
(45:27):
I know everyone is always juggling a billion things, but
it started making me feel like very panicky in a
moment where I should have been very excited about starting
a tours. And I started, at the suggestion of someone
that I love, so you know, suggested writing to yourself
like as a like, if you feel panicky, start you know,
(45:49):
right to yourself, as if you were your own best friend,
what would you say to yourself in that moment? And
I was, you know, part of me bulks at things
like that. I think being raised by therapists and stuff
any kind of like tool always feels like a bit
icky and a bit like because I feel like if
I start to address things that I feel are a
problem for me, then then there's something wrong with me,
(46:11):
and then I have to accept that, you know whatever.
But actually I've been finding very very useful.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
But well it helps that self talk, right, Like you
were very critical of yourself. Your self talk wasn't great.
So doing that forces you to flip the script, literally
flip the script and address yourself in a way that
you would speak to anybody else.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Goes back to that the blank page. And I think
that it can be that blank page. You can put
on that blank page whatever you choose to put on it.
And the thing that I haven't like said probably before
it is just like just how terrible I can I
have the capacity to be to myself, but like learning
(46:52):
to negotiate that and like very much like it's very
much like a present thing.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
That I'm doing, but a working progress.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah, but I.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Think I think a lot of people, a lot of
people are in the same are in that same boat.
So you know, it might be kind of interesting to
hear from someone who you know, you might make certain
you might make certain presumptions about what their life might
be like, but you never quite know how the cogs
(47:23):
in someone's head work.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Hmm, that's certainly true. I really appreciate you sharing that.
I think a lot of people, to your point, look
at somebody and perhaps think they seemingly float through life
with no worries or stress or you know, or problems
with themselves, and that's just not true. And I think
that's a really important point to make, especially as the
(47:47):
social media side of the world we live in only
gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and people portray one
thing online, but you don't know what the truth is
behind that. And I think for you to say, like listen, man,
sometimes I really am terrible to myself and I'm working
on it, and I'm not fully there yet.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Well any part of.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Certainly an actor, and I think it is just that
people see you see the polished and edited version in
a movie, and then you see on stage, you see
the part that you've been literally building up to all
day and doing sound checks and warm ups and rehearsing
and and then even just like emotional preparation through the
(48:24):
day of like okay, it's like, you know, you've got
to get through the nerves, and you've got to build
up to the thing, and you've got to try to
be your most confident and relaxed and you know that's
then that's the version that you're presented with. And just
remembering that we're all kind of we're all made it
the same stuff and we all kind of work in
(48:45):
similar ways. I think is like important to acknowledge, and
obviously people do it all the time, but that's that
was one of my small ones.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Thank you for sharing that.
I know. I got to get you out of here.
You're a rock star on tour, you have a lot
going on, so I'm going to make this really quick.
My last, last, last question. Do you feel like, with
that all being said, you are worthy?
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
I'm not quite sure what that means, worthy of what.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I'm worthy of being here, worthy of the success you've had,
worthy of what you've built.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
I I mean, I suppose if this feels like a
really like honest kind of conversation, I suppose I suppose
if I if I'm being honest, not really, because there
are so many people in the world doing so many things.
We were just discussing today about all these visiting all
these different cities, and we go there for half a
(49:40):
day or a day, and you might go and get
a coffee from somewhere and someone is like really nice
or kind to you in a particular coffee shop, and
you're like, oh, and they're they're they're here all the time,
being this way, and we're just sort of like passing through.
I actually called my you know, setting up like a
production company. I called it sounder. I don't know if
(50:00):
you've know that familiar with.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
That word, but it was.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
I think it's like, was a relatively new word and dictionary,
meaning that feeling that you get when you pass by
strangers that their life is just as full and dense
and intricate as yours. They have their dreams, they have
their fears, they have their the things that they love
about themselves, the things that they hate about themselves, that
everyone's life is just as full and rich and meaningful
(50:25):
as anyone else's. And I think that I have reached
a place where I'm really like grateful and really yeah, grateful,
I think is a really good word. That probably is
that I'm really grateful for like the kind of life
that I have and to be able to do things
that I really am passionate about and love to do
most of the time. And that makes me feel incredibly lucky.
(50:50):
But I'm also very aware of how many people I
know that are just as talented, if not more talented,
and just as worthy of having that kind of experience
and don't get to have it as often or at all,
or don't have the opportunity to have it, And so
it's very difficult for me to say like I, to
say I deserve it in any way feels it doesn't
(51:14):
feel quite doesn't sit quite quite right with me. But equally,
I don't feel like I. Equally I don't feel like
I don't because I believe that I am someone who
works hard, someone who's worked hard to be better at
the things that they do, someone who has some innate
skill sets, and first and foremost like someone who believes
(51:36):
themselves to be a good man. And therefore therefore I
am or I am, and I'm very grateful and happy
about it. But worthy, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
It's an interesting word, but I think you answer that beautifully,
and for what it's worth, I think you are very worthy.
I so enjoy this conversation, Ben. Like I said, your
music is sensational. I hope everybody goes and listens to
your album on repeat. Tell everybody one more time. The
name how to listen all of it.
Speaker 3 (52:07):
The album is called Where the Light Gets In and
you can find it on the Spotify, Apple Music, anyway
that you listen to music.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
I appreciate you checking out.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Keep making more and we're ready for it. Thank you,
my friend, thank you. I've Never Said This Before is
hosted by me, Tommy Dedario. This podcast is executive produced
by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio and by me Tommy, with
editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've Never Said This Before is
part of the Elvis Duran podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts.
(52:39):
For more, rate review and subscribe to our show and
if you liked this episode, tell your friends. Until next time,
I'm Tommy Dederio.
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