By "It’s kind of like, eps three and four are like someone shooting a gun at you and it hitting you and you’re like, 'Fuck!' And then ep five is like someone getting a knife and just repeatedly fucking stabbing you. You know what I mean? That’s the only way I can explain it."
Callum Scott Howells is in his parents' kitchen in Tonyrefail, in South Wales' Rhondda Valley, and his grey cockapoo Dewi is snoozing at his feet. He's rarely less than totally buoyant and energetic, and even reliving the twists of Russell T Davies' new drama series, It's a Sin, can't put a dent in his mood: the above précis is delivered with a cackle.
And fair enough. The brilliant, moving, crushing and – despite Howells' description – very funny It's a Sin is a hell of show to make your TV debut in. Well, It's a Sin isn't quite Howells's TV debut. He did Soccer AM the previous weekend with his Cardiff City hero Joe Ledley, and he's still buzzing.
"Every Saturday morning it’d be on in my house," he says, eyes wide, "and I’d come down and have a bacon butty and watch the whole thing. So to be on it is amazing. I just loved it."
It's a Sin follows a group of young men who escape into London in the Eighties and discover freedom, friendship, parties, and a lot of sex as they embrace the capital's gay scene, living together in a flat they rechristen the 'Pink Palace'. As the decade wears on, though, the spectre of the Aids epidemic looms larger and darker; fear, paranoia and disbelief start to spread.
There's Ritchie (Olly Alexander), a would-be actor fresh off the Isle of Wight ferry; Roscoe (Omari Douglas), who ditches the conservative family trying to exorcise him; Ritchie's classmate and all-round level head Jill (Lydia West); aloof Ash (Nathanial Curtis); Scottish punk Gregory (David Carlyle), also known as Gloria; and there's Howells' timid, sweet Colin, fondly renamed Gladys by his new friends after Hi-De-Hi's Gladys Pugh.
"He's an 18 year old boy from the South Wales valleys who moves to London," Howells says. "He's like a little Dick Whittington isn’t he, in a way – he goes to London where the streets are paved with gold."
Howells himself has stayed with his parents in Wales rather than heading for the bright lights after filming wrapped last January, hanging out with Dewi and spending a lot of time on the PS4.
"I’m 21, but really, on the inside, I’m about 13, 14," Howells laughs. "I'm so childish."
It's a Sin, though, is a coming-of-age for him. Alongside Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Colin's mentor Henry, the pair tell two of It's a Sin's weightiest stories with subtlety. He's on the precipice of something very big indeed. Of more immediate concern this morning, however, is the fact that Cardiff's manager Neil Harris seems to be on the way out.
"At this rate," he says, "to be honest, I'd rather have Neil Patrick Harris."
You’ve said before that you know so many Colins in Wales. What did you mean by that?
In Wales it’s really interesting – and not just in Wales, in any small town in a valley, or somewhere that’s not metropolitan or a city which is culturally diverse, it’s really interesting to express oneself in terms of being different. I mean that in any sense. In terms of Colin going to London and is able to be himself and truly himself, I know so many people who’ve done that, and that’s their story. It’s nowhere near the same, but there’s similar things in their stories to Colin’s. You know, I never moved to London properly, I lived in London when I was 16 for six months, but I was in a show and I was 16, I couldn’t really go out drinking or anything. But I know people who moved to London indefinitely and now love their lives, because they’ve finally been able to be who they truly are. Whereas I moved to Cardiff and for me it was a different story. So that’s why I say I know loads of Colins: they come in the form of my friends and mutual friends.
Did you draw on anything specific in your own childhood in rural Wales?
Oh definitely. Like, every time I went to London it’s just the bright lights: you’re like, flipping heck, this is huge, a huge place that’s just so different. It is, it’s so different you can’t even begin to explain. So for Colin it’s all about his innocence and his naivety and the wide-eyed sort of taking it all in, and I drew on all that stuff of going to London when I was young.
When you first got the script through, what stood out about it and Russell T Davies’s writing?
For me, it was how quick it was. What I love about Russell’s work is he doesn’t hang about, he gets straight in there. For me that makes the script, even to read, electric. The pulse to Russell’s work is something that is just something I’ve never seen before in any scripts I’ve read. Particularly towards the end of ep one where they all go to their [job] interviews and it’s like: interview with Roscoe! Henry! Ritchie! Henry! And that whole bit where there’s this juxtaposition of characters saying what they want to do and everything they want to achieve in their lives, and where they’d be happy to be in 10 years’ time, and right next to those scenes you’ve got one of the central characters of episode one literally dead, and the treatment of his body. There’s something so dark about that. People watching it, I hope that’s a scene they look back on and go [he exhales sharply]. You know what I mean? That was the scene was the thing that made me fall hook line and sinker with the writing. I’ve been in awe of Russell’s work all my life.
It’s your first TV gig, and you were working with a lot of other TV newcomers too. What was that experience like for all of you?
Aw, it was amazing. Honestly, from the read-through day, I remember in [Salford TV production hub] MediaCity and we all came out the lift and we all just clicked. It was that thing of, we were thrown into it so much that we just fell in love with each other. Just like the characters – I hate to sound clichéd, but that’s literally what happened. We’re all just the best of friends. We’ve got a group chat called the Pink Palace. That’s amazing – that’s something we’ll share forever now, and it feels like it’s ours. And it’s thanks to Russell: Russell wrote the script, Russell created the characters, Russell created this place called the Pink Palace. So I love that the Pink Palace is a real place as well, and the legacy lives on, in the form of a series and a WhatsApp group chat [he cackles].
Who’s most active on the group chat?
I’ve gotta say, Olly Alexander is one to post in the chat a lot. We’re all just silly, see. We’re all just plonkers really.
What kind of prep and research did you do ahead of playing Colin, particularly on the Aids epidemic?
I watched a lot of Margaret Thatcher’s speeches, I watched her ‘inalienable right’ speech. [In October, 1987, Thatcher told the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool: "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay." The infamous and homophobic Section 28 legislation banning local authorities from "promoting homosexuality" followed a year later.] I watched the John Hurt advert [the terrifying 1987 ‘Monolith’ Aids awareness ad directed by Nicolas Roeg and scored by Hans Zimmer, with the tagline 'Don’t die of ignorance']. That was a mad experience, watching that.
The biggest one was watching a documentary called Horizon. There’s an episode called ‘Killer in the Village’ set in Greenwich Village, and it’s all about when Aids – well, it wasn’t called Aids at the time, it wasn’t even called HIV, it was called HTLV3, that type of thing – and there’s one incredible moment in the documentary where they’re trying to explore what this new virus that’s killing all these people could be. The narrator of the documentary goes, "Perhaps it’s a virus?" Like, fuck! You watch that and you go: bloody hell. This is where they were at. And it was important to watch that because Russell begins the show in 1981, really early on, and even in the show with Henry saying, "The doctors are saying it’s psittacosis". It’s mad when you consider, from that point, where we end up.
You wrapped last year. Has the pandemic changed how you watch It’s a Sin?
I think it’s massively changed it. With Covid, I lost two of the most important people in my life to it, which was really huge for me. It was a really formative time. That took a really long time, during lockdown and stuff. When I got the role and when I was filming, they were there with me, my grandparents. They were there all the way through and they would call me every day and make sure I’m OK. It’s such a complex thing. They were with me right throughout that time and right after we wrapped was when all this kind of stuff happened. They pretty much caught it and passed away straight away. So because I was filming I couldn’t be with them and I couldn’t see them as much as I wanted to. So it’s this really complex thing, and I have to think about that. But you know, I know they’re with me now, and they’ll be watching the show in some way. [He laughs.] Do you know what I mean? Up in the sky with their coffees and their bloody toast with salted butter and all that sort of stuff. That’s something that I’ve got to think about or I just get too upset.
It is what it is; so many people have lost people during this time and we’ve all gotta have each other’s backs, right? I’m not a big fan of anyone being nasty to anyone, but in this time we’ve all gotta be nice to each other. No-one knows what the next day’s going to hold. We literally don’t. One day someone says something on telly that changes the attitude of the whole nation, isn’t it? Who knew that politicians could have so much power in this day and age, and they can literally say, ‘We’re gonna open this back up tomorrow’, and the mood of the nation just completely changes. People get excited, in a day and age where going out for a walk is classed as an event. When retail opens, that’s gonna be mad. It’ll be like going to Thorpe Park.
The party scenes look very convincingly fun, I was very jealous.
Oh me too, I’m with you there. This Friday when the show comes out, all I want to do is go out and get drunk, you know what I mean? I just want to go out clubbing and dance the night away. We’re so lucky we filmed those scenes right before lockdown because, you know, we can hold onto those and go, ‘Oh, at least we partied before all this shit happened.’ Those party scenes were amazing – I remember the Heaven sequence in episode two, where Olly’s doing his big powerhouse of a speech. When we were dancing the music was pumping – it was loud and it was just… you have no choice but to throw yourself into it. In ep one, when Colin starts dancing to that song ‘Ne Ne Na Na Na Na Nu Nu’ by Bad Manners, our director Peter [Hoar] said, “How loud do you want the music?” And I said, 'Aw, fucking as loud as it can be!' Because it really helps you go for it. Music is the lifeblood of the show, and it helps drive the narrative through.
Did you get a starter pack of Eighties hits?
Yeah, we had a week’s rehearsal with Peter and Russell, and we all checked in with music we thought we should listen to throughout the show. The big one that came along was ‘Gloria’ [by Laura Brannigan]. It was really important to put ‘Gloria’ at the end of ep two – that’s Gloria’s episode. I feel like eps one and two are gonna be the sort of Covid-related episodes, where people can be like, "Fuck! Oh my gosh, look that happened now!" You know what I mean? Like with Colin, before he goes in [to visit a character in hospital] the nurse is like, you have to wear this mask, you have to put this gown on. Let me tell you something, right. I haven’t really told anyone this but it’s interesting.
When my grandfather died, one person in the family was allowed to go in and see him, so my family suggested me. We were best friends, me and my grandfather, he supported everything I did. I went into the hospital and there was this sort of like weird parallel with what happens with Colin and exactly what happened with me when I went to visit my grandfather: the nurse was like, you have to wear this mask, you have to wear a faceguard, you have to wear a gown, you have to wear gloves. It was literally the most out-of-body experience I’ve had in my life. Mad, it was just mad. That’s why I think people will watch it, and especially people who’ve had people who’ve been ill with Covid, and, God forbid, lost people. They’ll probably relate to it and that’s what makes it timely, in a way. Yes, it’s about a very important period of history that we need to talk about, but also it’s a period in history where we can look back and think, ‘Fuck – this is the last pandemic that happened’.
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