Tom Cullen: ‘I don’t take responsibility of queer storytelling lightly’

Luke Evans and Tom Cullen first met outside an audition for the same movie – but only one of them got a part.

The film was 2011’s Blitz. ‘We bonded over the fact we’re both Welsh,’ Cullen recalls. ‘Luke got the part but Aidan Gillen got mine. I’d just left drama school and it was one of my first auditions for a film. I’ve never watched it…’

We’re speaking on the set of ITV’s The Party where Cullen’s career has come full circle. He’s starring opposite Evans in the adaptation of Elizabeth Day’s 2017 novel which follows journalist Martin Gilmour (played by Evans) whose life has been ruled by his friendship with Conservative MP and aristocrat Ben Fitzmaurice (Cullen).

They’re bonded by an inherent attraction to each other and the shared trauma of an incident that took place at university.

It’s a story that plays into almost every anxiety imaginable; a masterclass in betrayal, class disparity and unrequited love. Their relationship is fizzing with sexual electricity and ripping with secrets, which begin to unravel over the course of the titular party.

Cullen has been immersed in the LGBTQ+ community for years, has surrounded himself with its members and leant into those relationships to explore this extraordinarily complicated relationship and Martin’s turmoil with his sexuality authentically.

‘I’ve got a lot of friends who have gone through different experiences of that spectrum,’ he says.

‘Some have found it easier to be their authentic self, some haven’t, and I talk to them, and I’ve been there on those journeys with them.

‘Then I have to attach it to my own self because this is also a story about the trauma that is passed down through generations, and I really understand that, I’ve experienced that.’

Earlier that day, Evans – who is responsible for bringing the show to life as executive producer – told us Cullen was his first choice to play Ben from the get-go. ‘He’s just mesmerising as Ben, and that’s exactly what we needed,’ he enthused.

‘Being there with Luke, an openly gay man, I was really touched that he asked me and wanted me to be part of it,’ said Cullen. ‘I’m on him a lot, and leaning on my friends, and I don’t hold it lightly. I feel that responsibility.’

The Party is very much an exploration of Martin’s gay trauma; his entire life defined by his infatuation for Ben. Author Day, too, knew that writing that experience which is so unique to the LGBTQ+ community needed to be handled with care, but drew on her own experiences of being an English little girl growing up in Ireland and feeling like an outsider.

‘My outsidership was different from Martin’s,’ she acknowledged. ‘It was 1982 and the height of the Troubles, and it was a tough time to speak with an English accent so I ended up speaking less and listening more, and I got a bit bullied at school.

‘I ended up getting a scholarship like Martin to a boarding school in England, and from day one I was accepted because of the way that I spoke. But I still didn’t fit in because I hadn’t grown up knowing the codes of behaviour, and so those experiences with Martin are very much from my life, and I also wanted to explore how Martin, through his sexuality, is an outsider to himself in many ways, because he’s in denial about it for much of the party.

‘He doesn’t fully want to admit that he’s in love with his best friend, and there was something there that interested me about someone who not only feels like an outsider in society, but feels like they don’t fully know themselves.’

There’s a scene in The Party where Martin has a sexual encounter with a waiter. Day remembers a male author friend reading that scene and asking, ‘How do you know what it’s like to have a blowjob?’

‘It’s just the power of imagination. Being an author is about flexing that imaginative muscle, and having a degree of empathy, even if you’re not immediately like the character, and it’s what I want readers and viewers to do too – to have that empathy for people who might superficially seem unlikable, or as if they’re not the same as you, or they’re acting in different ways, and to understand why they’re doing that, and to understand their history of damage, and how, if we understand that, there’s hope for us all.

‘I really believe that kind of radical empathy can save the world.’

The Party launches this Sunday at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.