I’ve had many theological discussions with Reverend Richard Coles,” a grinning Matthew Lewis tells me. The actor, once the bumbling and endearing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, is leaning in, visibly scintillated by the thought of a good existential debate. He had plenty of opportunities for them while playing a rector in the TV adaptation of Coles’s best-selling mystery novel, Murder Before Evensong. Set in 1980s rural England, the story follows Canon Daniel Clement, a young cleric living with his mother, who becomes embroiled in a murder investigation after a man is violently killed in his parish church. The script is laced with Coles’s trademark blend of humour and theology that made him a fixture on panel shows like Have I Got News for You. Lewis, however, is a “dyed-in-the-wool” atheist. “I can’t deny it,” he admits. “And yet, I’m very much drawn to the mysticism and the ritual [of organised religion]. I wish it were true because I love it. I love all that esoteric mystery and stuff.”
Murder Before Evensong, on Channel 5 in the UK and Acorn TV in the US, is the kind of cosy crime caper that harks back to the bucolic idyll of village life. There is a lord of the manor (played by TV’s go-to posh guy Adam James), a journo for the local paper, and a surly groundskeeper. “I’ve never lived that life,” Lewis says of village fêtes and cricket on the green. “It’s nonsense! And yet there’s a part of me that’s quite sad that no longer exists. I guess it’s just in our DNA as Englishmen.”
Lewis, now 36, was born in Leeds, his mother a magistrate, his father a computer engineer. He began acting professionally aged five before being sent to a Catholic secondary school in West Yorkshire. “I was quite well versed in Catholicism, but not very much at all in Church of England,” he tells me. To brush up, the actor attended sermons in local parishes up and down the country. He was surprised to find that the priests were largely liberal-minded, “which I quite enjoyed,” he says, “and their congregations didn’t seem to mind very much either”. It’s clear he has huge admiration for Coles, one of the progressive reverends who, he believes, “dragged the church, kicking and screaming in some cases, into the 21st century… To have the opportunity to play one of them, albeit a fictional one on screen, that’s a real treat for me.”
Since leaving the world of Harry Potter behind at the age of 22 in 2011, Lewis has played a fitness-obsessed boyfriend in the 2016 romance Me Before You, a soldier with more bravado than sense in the BBC sitcom Bluestone 42, a deskbound detective in Ripper Street, and a calculating estate manager in All Creatures Great and Small. In a Guardian review of the New Zealand comedy Baby Done (2020), in which he played a broody father-to-be, he was described as delivering “another thoroughly likeable performance as an unremarkable, everyday sort of character”. He might struggle to dispel such characterisations in Murder Before Evensong – Canon Daniel is softly spoken and not exactly a force of nature – however, the six-episode series gives him room to stretch, and he is quietly compelling as he swings between doubt and conviction.
Of course, moving on from Neville was never going to be an easy feat. In 2015, he tore up preconceptions anyone might have had of him as the goofy young wizard, appearing half-naked on the cover of Attitude magazine, abs rippling and tighty-whities bulging. He was training for his role in Me Before You and “hadn’t had a carb in about four months”, he remembers, grimacing slightly. It felt like a physical declaration that he was no longer the cherubic Hogwarts schoolboy. Was it? He pauses. “I mean, certainly I wanted to come away from Neville,” he admits. “I guess my team and I thought, should we do some kind of photo shoot to showcase the difference in who I am now, 10 years later, to hopefully give casting directors a blank slate, which I could then bounce off of.” He insists the plan was never to take his clothes off for the shoot, but “it just kind of went that way”. He flashes another grin.
Alas, the racy cover proved there would be no escape for Lewis. “You’ll Neville believe it! Newly ripped Harry Potter star shows his impressive six pack,” crowed the Daily Mail. Even Potter author JK Rowling couldn’t help but wade in. “Warn me next time, for God’s sake,” she scolded Lewis on Twitter. “I think that’s one thing, if anything, that I learnt from that,” says the actor. “It is what it is. You’re not getting away from it, and that’s fine, as long as people keep giving you work and it’s not actually impacting you professionally, so what? Here I am, 10 years after that, still working. Put it this way, I’m not in a position to whip my shirt off and do another one right now, I can tell you that.”
When we speak, Lewis is at home in Florida. He met his American wife, Angela, whom he married in 2018, when she was working at an event at Universal Studios in Orlando, the home of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. He has a stubbled jaw and bleach-blonde highlights running through his hair. Some of the Longbottian stuttering remains, though only because there are so many thoughts struggling to coalesce in his mind at once. They eventually erupt from his mouth in a thick Yorkshire drawl. “I’ve kind of had this weird thing throughout my life, where things that I like somehow have a habit of creeping into my life,” he tells me. “For example, Harry Potter. I was a huge fan of the books before I got involved in the films. I’m a big Leeds United fan and I’ve somehow ended up hosting the club’s podcast for four years.” He was “completely enamoured” by Coles when he chanced upon him on Have I Got News For You one night, and so when he received the script based on his book, he knew, “I’m probably gonna get this.” Could it be divine intervention, I tease. He glances at a conspicuous silver chalice on a shelf behind him. “‘Perhaps!’ he said, with the cup of Christ over his shoulder.”
![‘I’m very much drawn to the mysticism and the ritual [of organised religion],’ says Lewis](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/09/25/11/23/MBE_101_RV_0123_0103_RT.jpg)
Such providence has landed Lewis his first lead role in a major TV series with Murder Before Evensong. He admits he felt pressure to set the tone for the rest of the cast on set. “Being a lead actor is more than just performance; it comes with a degree of leadership,” he says. Fortunately, he had excellent role models to draw from. He cites Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, who “would spend more time with the crew than anyone else” and “make sure everyone was happy and comfortable, even when he was really focused on what he was doing”. His Ripper Street co-star Matthew McFadyen is another. “I don’t even know if Matthew knows the impact that he had on me during those two years that I spent with him,” Lewis says. Ultimately, he wants his set to be somewhere where actors can experiment, even if they fall short of the mark. “You can shoot for the stars, and if you fail, it’s fine,” is his mantra. “I see some actors with different approaches, whatever, I’m sure they’re all tortured geniuses. But if you’re not having fun, what are you doing? Like, it’s a stupid job. We put on stupid clothes for a living. Get the stick out your arse and just enjoy yourself!”
A new trio of young leads will soon emerge in the highly anticipated TV adaptation of Rowling’s Harry Potter saga for HBO. Lewis is reluctant to speak about the new iteration, though. “I haven’t really thought about the series as a whole at all, really, and I’ll probably have to pay my therapist for a double session when I finally do think about it,” he jokes. Neville, too, will be reincarnated, but Lewis has not reached out to Rory Wilmot, the 10-year-old cast in his former role, with advice. However, he’s pleased that the child actor hails from the same neck of the woods as him. “I feel quite humbled in that Neville is now canon Yorkshire. Whether that’s a tribute to me or not, I don’t know, I’m gonna say that it is. But the last thing [the new cast] needs is for has-beens wading in, just let them cook.”
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This next generation of Hogwarts stars will face a level of scrutiny the original cast never had to deal with, thanks to the controversy surrounding Rowling and her outspoken views on transgender rights. It’s a topic that makes every former Potter actor bristle as they reconcile with the author who has given them so much, yet indisputably muddied her legacy and that of the films. Lewis told the i in 2021 that he believes everyone should be “entitled to be whoever they want to be”, but questioned whether the debate needed the opinion of another straight white man. His answer is just as measured when I ask if he would work with the embattled novelist again. “I think that it would largely depend on what the project is,” he says. “I guess that every case has to be taken on its merits.” He has deliberately been off social media for over a year now and admits he is happily out the loop. “I’d have to have a conversation about the things that you’re referring to, and I’d want to make sure I was totally comfortable squaring it with my own beliefs and opinions before moving forward.”
It’s a thorny subject, but one that Lewis believes is a fair cop, comparing it to the scrutiny footballers face when moving to Saudi Arabia for vast paycheques. “I don’t think I should be a role model for anyone, frankly, but I am aware that, for better or worse, people may see me as that, and so I don’t think it’s unfair to ask these questions.” He might be a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, but in moments like this, Lewis sounds not unlike Canon Daniel himself, who reflects in Coles’s novel: “We are imperfect people called to perfection, so get used to failure.”
‘Murder Before Evensong’ begins on Channel 5 at 9pm on 7 October, and airs now on Acorn TV in the US
