An article on Matthew Rhys featuring quotes from Luke Macfarlane
So, after almost a little over a month, I finally am going to post this article that member, Sherine, gave the link to in the chatbox. This article is mainly over Matthew Rhys, but it contains some great quotes from Luke about Matthew.
Check it out!
(I’ll be highlighting all of Luke’s quotes in gold….just because I can….)
Source: Telegraph.Co.Uk
Matthew Rhys on Brothers and Sisters
The Welsh actor discusses moving from Cardiff to California and starring in the hit US drama series.
By Neil Midgley
Published: 10:37AM GMT 21 Jan 2010
“Security will direct you to the Zorro parking structure,” says the email from the PR, explaining how to get to the set of the hit ABC show Brothers & Sisters. This is a Disney studio lot in Burbank, California: generously landscaped and sun-drenched, with its own gas station and murals featuring Donald Duck. It’s a long way – both literally and metaphorically – from the south Wales childhood of Matthew Rhys.
“I love and embrace the cultural differences,” says Rhys – now almost a California native, after four years’ worth of Brothers & Sisters (shown here on More4). “In some ways, they’re so profoundly different from Britain. In other ways, very similar.”
Rhys plays Kevin Walker, a glossily gay Californian in his mid-thirties, and one of the siblings of the show’s title. He’s sitting in a Disney conference room joshing with actor Luke Macfarlane, who plays his on-screen husband Scotty. Though Rhys’s American accent never slips on-screen, his voice now is straight from the valleys. “When I speak to people from Britain, that’s when I feel like a fake, speaking with an American accent,” he says, slightly sheepishly.
Macfarlane, who hails from Canada, joins in. “Matthew’s also exceptionally talented at all accents,” he says archly.
“Yes. Even neighbourhoods of Canada,” says Rhys.
“Not just neighbourhoods – specific hockey teams,” quips Macfarlane.
The pair’s good-natured off-screen banter is exactly how fans of the show would hope. Brothers & Sisters has no time-travelling cops, no jets crashing on desert islands. It rivets more than 10million American viewers with nothing more than the intertwined stories of one family. Warm, prosperous and sentimental, the show – and its high-octane, often tear-jerking emotion – is kept from descending into soap opera not just by polished scriptwriting, but by a classy cast: Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe and, crucially, Sally Field as materfamilias Nora Walker. On Facebook, there’s a “Which Walker are you?” quiz – and, quips Macfarlane, “everyone just keeps taking it until they get Nora.”
As British viewers start season four tonight, they will catch up with Kevin and Scotty’s newest storyline: the quest for a baby. “We’re lucky that that storyline is relatively uncharted,” says Rhys. “The whole journey of going about it makes very interesting TV.”
“And so do the different ways one goes about it – adoption versus surrogacy,” adds Macfarlane.
Along with the gay couple on ABC’s new sitcom Modern Family, Kevin and Scotty are blazing a trail for gay parenting on American primetime television. But, says Rhys, he doesn’t feel like a “poster child” for gay rights. “The press we’ve had has been very positive,” he says. “A very healthy, very nice response – that what we’re doing is on the right track.”
Macfarlane agrees. “The cultural significance is always surprising,” he says. “We just show up and do the work, and they tell us it’s groundbreaking – but it doesn’t necessarily feel groundbreaking.” Certainly Brothers & Sisters doesn’t trumpet itself as a genre-altering show. It is executive produced by Ken Olin, who appeared on screen as self-obsessed ad exec Michael Steadman in the Eighties-zeitgeist series thirtysomething. Brothers & Sisters reflects a more mature version of the same sensibility, with enviable suburban houses and beautiful knitwear as much on show as Rhys’s American accent.
Rhys himself is evidently having the time of his life. “I feel comfortable here primarily because I think Los Angeles is made up of people who don’t come from here, so you can find kindred spirits very easily,” he says. “It’s a town of gypsies.”
But Rhys has a more versatile CV than some TV actors, having played Dylan Thomas in the 2008 film The Edge of Love – and opposite Kathleen Turner in the West End version of The Graduate. “I definitely want to go back to the theatre. It is hard work, it is repetitive, but it is intensely rewarding,” he says.
His career as a chameleon extends even to talking to journalists. “You play to whatever publication you’re being interviewed by,” he says cheerily. So who is he being today, for The Daily Telegraph. “Upright Tory. Bring back Maggie!” So… does he hunt and shoot and fish? “I do, yes. I actually do! Well, I don’t hunt on horseback. In Wales, it’s a little more practical. It’s vermin control.” As Rhys is called back to the cavernous sound stage, it’s hard not to think: you can take the boy out of Cardiff…
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BROTHERS & SISTERS




about 6 months ago
Thanks KC!
I had fun reading that article again…and I still love this line:
He’s sitting in a Disney conference room joshing with actor Luke Macfarlane, who plays his on-screen husband Scotty.
Never fails to make me smile.
about 6 months ago
Gotta love Luke’s answer. I wonder if this interview was done at the same time frame as AfterElton? It seems so since the environment is in the same conference room setting.
about 6 months ago
Thanks a lot KC!
I love this article and I love Luke’s answers!
about 6 months ago
I think it was in the same time-frame as the AE-one, because this one came around the same time as AE announcing they had their interview and would post it… centuries later. (Sorry, but it was a LONG wait!)
about 6 months ago
@Marea:
I think so. When Michael asked me if AfterElton’s was the first interview out between Matthew & Luke, I told him, “no,” and linked him this article. It is why Michael never wrote something like “first interview with Matthew & Luke” in his article.
Timing just sucks.
about 6 months ago
Great interview/article.
Too bad no photos were actually taken from these interviews of Luke & Matthew.
about 6 months ago
I agree, rabt16. I would have love to see a picture or two from those interviews..
about 6 months ago
@Kong…Did Michael take any pics at all from that AE interview? I have the same wish as rabt16 and Marea.
about 6 months ago
If he has not posted any, then I doubt it.