The actor, Toby Jones, is coming to Suffolk for the Flipside Festival at the end of this month. Here, he shares his love for the town and the impact of what is turning out to be the role of his lifetime...
Toby Jones has a face that is so familiar, although for years you might not have been able to quite place where you knew it from.
That has all changed now.
He may have starred alongside Captain America, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, travelled in time with Doctor Who, and solved mysteries with Sherlock and John Le Carre, but it’s through his most recent role as a real-life hero, a man whose only superpower is dogged determination, that award-winning actor Toby Jones has attracted the most attention.
‘The impact has been unprecedented,’ Toby says of the ITV drama, ‘The Post Office and Mr Bates’, in which he played the eponymous public hero.
It aired before Christmas but the story is still very much at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.
Over four episodes it charted the impact of the Horizon IT scandal - which remains unresolved despite the problems first being identified more than 20 years ago.
The programmes drew an audience of 13.1 million and the story rose to the top of the news and political agenda, prompting a change in legislation and driving public opinion.
‘No one could have predicted it,’ says Toby. ‘Computer software malfunction isn’t an obvious thing to make a drama about. And I have to be honest - I knew the Post Office was part of the news cycle but it hadn’t really landed with me. I feel very guilty about that because the injustice was so clear. But we seem to process the news as stories now rather than facts. The script, then, was compelling, shocking and accessible.’
It followed the stories of a number of the postmasters and particularly the instigator of their campaign against their employer, the Post Office, Alan Bates.
‘Alan is someone who doesn’t seem to be subject to the same forces as the rest of us,’ says Toby. ‘His sense of duty and ability to follow things through are values I remember being lectured about. They’re unfashionable now and stand in stark contrast with what we’ve been living with in government for some time.
The public inquiry is ongoing and the 900 postmasters affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and redress.
‘The situation is so appalling. It’s so unthinkable what they’ve been through,’ Toby says, and so, instead of stepping away from the character at the end of the role as he might typically do, he has felt a responsibility to remain identified with it.
‘I don’t have a choice but to stay loyal, both to the project and to my relationship with Alan and the sub-postmasters,’ he says. ‘I consult Alan regularly to see what I can do to keep the issue alive. These days, with 24 hour news and short memories, it’s important that we try and surf the wave of attention that it’s got. For me as an actor, I’ve got to hold on with this particular project. I am very proud and honoured to be able to do that.’
Consequently he is continuing to give interviews about it and has spoken at festivals and events throughout the country.
Later this month, Toby will be at the Flipside Festival in Framlingham contributing to this year’s talks, interviews and poetry reading.
‘For some reason people want to hear from actors,’ he says. ‘And actors are in this invidious position of wanting to publicise what they’re doing but at the same time feeling it compromises what they do. What draws me to the job is disappearing into other characters.’
From a family of actors – his father was Freddie Jones, known for his role in ‘The Elephant Many’ and who latterly starred in ‘Emmerdale’ for many years, and Toby’s two brothers are in the industry – he chose to train in Paris at the Jacques Lecoq school of physical theatre.
Though it is enthralling to hear him talk about the techniques and skills he learnt, and the craft of theatre and performance generally, he still seems slightly bashful when referring to his own work and achievements.
‘As I get older the basic challenge of playing another person becomes more and more daunting,’ he says. ‘Seeing someone so different from myself and having to try and find a way in is what keeps me interested, but the challenge seems to get stiffer rather than easier.’
And how difficult is it playing a real person?
‘One of the first lessons as an actor is that even if you are playing a fictitious role, there is a strange bond of responsibility to defend the character’s interests,’ he says.
Of course that becomes more intense when that person is living. And for Toby there is an immediate reaction of ‘What? I don’t look anything like that!’ he says.
‘One definition of being an actor is that you have to look like an awful lot of people. My job is to make myself feel more like that person.’
Getting to know Alan Bates initially proved difficult, though, so Toby spoke to MP James Arbuthnot who had worked closely with the man and he said: ‘Every minute I spend with Alan Bates is an improvement of my life’.
This extraordinary acclamation brought Toby close to tears when he recalled it once more while speaking at the Hay Festival earlier this year.
Nevertheless Toby says: ‘I suspect Alan is not unique. I suspect there are a lot of people who work with dignity and modesty and humbleness in this country. There’s something about our culture that doesn’t celebrate that.
‘But Alan wasn’t looking to be singled out. He had the skill base to be a representative and he wasn’t intimidated by the challenge - and that is unique.’
So Toby hopes to remind us of Alan and the other sub-postmasters at Flipside.
He will be in conversation about this drama and the role of art and performance generally in encouraging, energising and empowering the individual, in a programme curated by filmmaker Gareth Evans.
‘I’ve been friends with Gareth for quite a long time,’ Toby says.
They first worked together 10 years ago on a film about the 18th century Northamptonshire poet John Clare.
‘Gareth is such an innovative and unique producer that he almost singlehandedly seems to know anyone and everyone who is trying to keep culture alive, in London and beyond.’
Now in its 11th year, Flipside has moved to a new venue at the Old Theatre in Church Street, Framlingham, and Toby is looking forward to returning to the town.
It’s where he filmed three series of the gentle TV comedy ‘Detectorists’, written by and co-starring Mackenzie Crook – another surprise success – and Toby remembers the sun was always shining.
‘Framlingham seems to be the absolute epitome of an English small town,’ he says.
‘It seems to have everything – a castle, the market, the mere, the pub, the village hall - and I know that’s been replaced because people frequently offer me bits of the wall!
'It’s got scale but also it has an intimacy so feels very friendly and local.
‘And there always seemed to be somewhere new to walk when I’d take myself off, muttering my lines to myself in the evening. I became really fond of it. And, as Mackenzie used to say, there’s actually no danger of us being disturbed. There’s someone far more famous than us living there!’
So where will we see Toby next? Always mindful of doing something new and different with each role, this summer he stars with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in a heist drama.
‘To me that kind of contrast is mission accomplished,’ he says. ‘That’s all I can hope for.’
* Toby Jones will be speaking at the Flipside Festival in Framlingham on September 28 www.flipsideuk.org
