RED MAN
hot’, so at the actor’s own suggestion, he took his
shirt off. It was never even in the script, then?
‘No, I just thought it was kind of silly that he
would scythe wearing it...’ Hang on, what?
‘I know, I know,’ he shakes his head, laughing.
‘It was completely self-inflicted.’
In February, Turner wrapped up filming the
series for good. When I ask if he felt sad to leave it
behind (after all, it has been five years of his life),
he claims he’s still not really thought about it: ‘I’m
not very good at that.’ What, feelings? He laughs.
‘It’s probably natural for me to bury things, move
on.’ So far, he has resisted the urge to hurl himself
into another project. In fact, he hasn’t been doing
very much at all: ‘I’ve just been
reading scripts, chilling a bit.’
I wonder if he’s had a lot of offers
of work. ‘Yeah, there’s been stuff.
When you finish something, you tend
to get a lot of offers, but sometimes it’s
not that imaginative,’ he says. ‘After
Being Human [in which he played
a vampire], I got offered a lot of
vampires. So, we’ll see...’
Right now, he’s enjoying the
time out. His girlfriend of two years,
American actress Caitlin Fitzgerald, lives in New
York, so he’s been able to fly between their homes
in Brooklyn and London more freely. He loves
Brooklyn (‘it’s really cool’), and tells me he’s been
renting a space at an artist’s studio to paint. What
does he paint? ‘Oh, just abstract stuff – I’m not
very good! But it’s something I really enjoy doing.’
Given that Cornish mining probably doesn’t
translate so well outside the UK, I suggest it must
be a little easier to go incognito there than it is
in Britain. ‘Actually, the show’s travelled quite
well in America.’ He’s nodding now. ‘Yeah, yeah,
yeah.’ So had his girlfriend seen Poldark before
they met? ‘Ha ha! No. God, no.’
While a lot of actors will remark that they never
wanted to be famous, with Turner it at least seems
to ring true. Raised by an electrician father and
accountant mother, he hadn’t the faintest idea
what he wanted to do until he was 17 and walked
past a sign outside a drama school. After signing
up, he realised he loved acting. ‘Like, really loved
it. It was such a surprise and so out of character
for me... Like, what a weirdo,’ he laughs.
Now he’s grateful that his way into the industry
was as random as that. ‘I’m really thankful because
if I’d thought it was my destiny from the beginning
or it had been my childhood dream, it would have
been very disappointing if it hadn’t worked out,’
he says. As timing would have it, the day he
moved to London to act full-time was also the day
he found out he’d landed his role on Being Human,
so he never really experienced a demoralising
period when he was out of work. At the time, he
was living in a flat in Camden. ‘I mean, we were
still broke – it was me and my girlfriend at the
time, but we were young and on Camden High
Street. It was exactly where we wanted to be.’
Nowadays, he says, he’s much less of a party
guy. ‘In fact, the older I’m getting, I’m realising
how bad I am at keeping in touch with people,’ he
admits. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t ‘do’ social
media. ‘I mean, until recently, I’d never used
WhatsApp,’ he says nonchalantly. I’m sorry, what?
‘Yep! I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, I
didn’t really know it was a “thing”...
Then the cast of The Lieutenant
Of Inishmore started this group; you
know, “Where are we going after the
show?” Now I think it’s brilliant.
I can talk to anyone! But it’s unusual
for me to be part of something like
that.’ Not that he’s a hermit by any
stretch; he has a pretty active social
life. When he’s at home in Dublin, his
big thing is hosting snooker nights;
in fact, snooker was his passion as
a kid, and it’s a hobby he still loves. ‘My absolute
hero is Ken Doherty, which probably won’t mean
anything to most people.’ (1997 world snooker
champion; Irish... I had to google him.)
His other talent as a child was ballroom dancing,
which he did competitively between the ages of
10 and 16, but I’ve read that he doesn’t like talking
about that very much. ‘Ha ha! I suppose if you
don’t know that world, it can sound a bit strange.’
Does he still dance? ‘Yeah, a little bit. I might
do it at weddings...’ More of a performance then?
‘I don’t know!’ More laughter follows. ‘It’s hard
not to do the whole thing...’ We laugh about
whether he still practises his moves at home,
about whether you should gently ease a new
partner into the tango or go in cold (the latter, he
thinks), before chat turns to the fact he’s currently
renovating an 1840s townhouse in London...
Tomorrow, he’s expecting a delivery of some
furniture: a French antique dining table and set of
benches for his kitchen. As it turns out, they’re the
same table and chairs he’s been using for years, in
Ross Poldark’s house. ‘I don’t think our producer
knows it yet, but the art department is dropping
them round,’ he reveals. It’s something Turner’s
been planning for a while, although he couldn’t
let anyone in on the secret until the set’s shutters
finally came down. He grins. ‘A lot of big scenes
have happened around that table, you know?
After five years, it sort of means something.’‘I PAINT
ABSTRACT
STUFF. I’M
NOT VERY
GOOD!’
Poldark returns to BBC One this July