British-born actor relates to cop character’s soft side

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This article was published 16/08/2012 (5110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There’s a scene in the new series Copper in which actor Tom Weston-Jones, as Kevin Corcoran, a tough New York cop in the 1860s, stumbles on a child prostitute in a decrepit barn.

While chaos, violence and mayhem thunder outside, inside this rugged lawman finds a tenderness he’s never known.

It’s a feeling new to Weston-Jones himself. “It’s a quality of myself I don’t think I realized I had until starting to film Copper, in a way,” he says, in a crowded hotel restaurant here.

“I’m quite a sensitive person. And I didn’t really know that until recently. I felt I was a bit of a bumbler. I always use humour as a defence mechanism, but… I am crippled by certain things. I cry all the time when I watch films; I’m a baby.”

He also credits the acting of young Kiara Glasco, who plays the girl. “I think there’s something about Kiara,” he says. “She gave a performance that is so achingly truthful, and she was brilliant in it.”

As for Weston-Jones, truth is his metier. “I think I’m a really bad liar, but there are certain actors who are really amazing at lying, at covering themselves. Like Tom Hardy is an amazing actor at manipulating himself and putting truth in the form of a lie. But for me, I kind of like to sit naked and just kind of be there and have the truth come through.”

Copper, BBC America’s first original scripted show, was created by Will Rokos and Tom Fontana (Oz). It’s set in New York City’s rough-and-tumble Five Points district, post-Civil War. Weston-Jones plays an Irish immigrant who’s keeping the peace while trying to solve the mystery of his wife’s disappearance.

Weston-Jones wasn’t one of those wunderkinds who knew he wanted to act while still a toddler. “I felt like I was a jack-of-all-trades because I loved art and music as well as drama. I played the saxophone, guitar and stuff.

“I had all these different interests so I didn’t really realize 100 per cent that I wanted to be an actor until midway through drama school. That’s when I went: ‘This is actually incredibly important. This is what I want to do.’ It hits people differently sometimes.”

While he was born in Britain, Weston-Jones grew up in Dubai, where both his parents were teachers. He attended the school at which they both taught.

Because he is dyslexic he didn’t learn Arabic, the native tongue there.

“I was taken out of Arabic lessons to go to English. So I learned to speak it as it’s written, but I don’t know a lot of the words. I think it’s a really beautiful language. It’s such a different alphabet and so much more about symbols than the romance languages.”

He left Dubai when he was 17. “I loved growing up there as a kid but as time went by, I kind of wanted to get out of there. It’s quite a small bubble, and I don’t have a lot in common with a lot of the things that Dubai excels in, like shopping and money. I’m not really all that interested in a career in that kind of thing, so I’m glad I got out of there.”

Struggling in the acting world often makes for determined cynics. With Weston-Jones it’s just the opposite. “I used to be quite a cynical person, a person who thought they were set in reality and was really interested in science and things like that. In the last couple of years I’ve had my ideas tested on what I think religion is, what I think belief is and that kind of thing.”

Leaning forward on his forearms, he says, “Now I think I have more of an open mind in terms that not everything is obvious. And not everything is set in stone. I remember being in Sunday school as a kid and I had to give a dirham (Arabic coin) in a hat. And I asked where the money goes. And the Sunday school teacher said, ‘It goes to God,’ and I could tell she was lying.

“I think it affected me in a very weird way, because you pigeonhole yourself if you don’t believe in anything. I think science, in a way, can help people learn that there are so many possibilities out there and anything is possible. The last couple of years, just meeting different people and meeting friends and talking about things changed me. I like that way of thinking. That’s a shift that’s happened over the years.”

Weston-Jones has a girlfriend who is also an actor, though he declines to name her. “People say, ‘I don’t know how you could go out with another actor.’ Well, you fall in love with someone. You don’t have a criterion as to who they are or what they do. You just fall in love with them.”

Still, marriage is way down the line, he thinks.

“Though I have been getting broody lately. I think it’s because I want a dog. I want something to look after. Something not necessarily to make my own, but to have purpose with.”

Copper premieres Sunday, Aug. 26, on Showcase.

 

— McClatchy-Tribune News Service