CultBox caught up with Welsh actor Iwan Rheon for an exclusive chat about playing the evil Ramsay Bolton, his new album and the return of ITV sitcom Vicious…
Now, you’ve got your debut album due out?
“Yeah! It comes out on the 20th of April. It’s pretty exciting!
It’s called Dinard, is that right?
“Dinard, yeah it’s a place in Northern France in Brittany.”
What can you tell us about the songs?
“First of all, I just really always wanted to make an album. I’ve always been into music and playing songs and stuff. It’s not a new thing I’m doing, but I’ve made three EPs and released them digitally and then I just wanted to make a full length album.
“I mean it’s kinda a collection of songs that were mostly written on acoustic, a couple are piano-led, but I mean yeah it’s kinda a folk album. There’s also very produced songs and I also recorded some songs completely stripped down with just one microphone and acoustic and voice.
“I’m really, really proud of it and I feel really chuffed that I’ve made my first album and that it’s being released, it’s really cool!”
I was listening to the track ‘Tongue Tied’ on your website earlier. It’s a really good track, I really enjoyed the melody and how the vocals compliment it.
“Yeah, that’s a song that’s been completely redone for the album. That early recording, you know, we did a very basic acoustic recording for my first EP which was titled ‘Tongue Tied’, but yeah that song I’ve always wanted to make into a full band piece… like there’s a fiddler on it now and stuff… it’s kind of inspired by ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan.”
It all sounds quite exciting!
“Yeah, I’m excited!”
Do you have any favourite tracks from the album?
“I don’t know….a song called ‘Courthouse’ which I really like, which is kind of a bit of an older song, but then we’ve completely redone it and the same for a song called ‘Feel It Coming’ where my brother, Aled, sings on it as well which created a Rheon chorus.
“And yeah we’re sort of using all our voices in layering it and layering it and then yeah so it’s kinda like this weird bit in the middle and he’s saying backing vocals, but yeah there’s a lot gone into this album which we really enjoyed and it was kind of made completely creatively free, there was no pressures, nobody saying we had to do anything it was just three of us in a room and it was like: ‘right, what are we going to do with this song?’ ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’
“Yeah, it was a really amazing experience.”
Do you have any plans to maybe tour the album?
“Well, I’d love to yeah but it’s just a timing thing. I don’t really have the time because of various filming commitments. To do a tour you’d have to take out quite a long time of the year, but I can’t really do that because of, you know, but that’s cool.
“I hope we do a couple of gigs if I can and, you know, whenever there’s an opportunity maybe do some more gigs and just try and do some live stuff because I’ve always played with just me on my own acoustic so for this record I wanted to do it with a band. And I think it needs to have a band behind it.”
What musical influences do you think you’ve had?
“I don’t know, I mean quite a variety really. I mean getting into Radiohead was probably one of the main points, I think. The way that they stretch a song, some of the chords that they used when I was a young kid learning the guitar. You know, I was like: ‘what the hell is this?’ I think it made me think in a different way of how to approach a song, I suppose.
“And Dylan, as well…it’s difficult to say who you’re influences are because I don’t know whether you can hear it in the music but it’s just personal things.”
What can you say about your future acting projects?
“I just finished this film called Sum1 which is like a genre film that was shot in Germany which will be coming out next year, I think – and yeah that was an experience. Basically I’m on my own for the entire film … I mean after there’s Game of Thrones Season 6, which I’m hopefully in!”
If you could appear in any show or film and play any character you chose what would it be and who?
“Oh, that’s a good question. I always wanted to play Bilbo Baggins, I was really gutted .. I just thought ‘I’m Frodo actually’ every time everyone was like ‘oh, you’re too young’. I mean I was still in school when Lord of the Rings came out. Yeah that was always a part that I’d desperately love, I was such a huge fan of the book when I was a kid.”
Would you like to do a theatre run in the West End?
“I’d love to do theatre, yeah, I’d love to do some theatre. I wanna get back on stage, it’s been too long now, but again it’s just difficult balancing the time because it depends…a run in the West End would be difficult because I am tied to Game of Thrones which is a wonderful thing but constricts the annual calendar.
“To try and fit in a play can be quite difficult. It can be done it just needs to all work perfectly together so that it happens. Yeah, I mean it’s definitely something I’m really, really up for.”
I suppose that’s the difficulty with being in a long-running show, you get tied down.
“That’s basically the nature of the beast. You know, you’ve got a fantastic job but then it stops you from potentially doing other things but, you know, you can’t have everything in life and you’ve gotta be grateful for what you’ve got.”
> Download Iwan’s album on Amazon.
> Buy the complete Season 1-4 boxset on Amazon.
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