Actor Michael Sheen says he initially turned down his role of former prime minister Sir Tony Blair in the Channel 4 drama The Deal having already accepted another job.
Sheen, 56, said he rejected the 2003 role which he went on to reprise for 2006 film The Queen and 2010 film The Special Relationship, as he had agreed to play Emperor Caligula on stage at the same time.
He told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs he later agreed to both, working either end of the day and travelling between them by motorcycle.
The Welshman said he was “exhausted, but I have a really strong memory of being on the back of the motorbike whizzing through central London, going past Rada”, his old acting school.
Sheen, from Port Talbot, explained how he would run off set, and “wet my hair so there wasn’t Blair hair any more, put a helmet on, get on the back of a motorbike, where someone would then ride me across London to the theatre, where I would get off and by the time I took the helmet off, my hair had gone all curly again”.
“And then (I’d) go into the theatre and play Caligula and then get up the next morning and do that over and over.”
He added: “If someone had come up to me when I was at Rada and said, ‘one day, you will be playing Tony Blair in a drama for Stephen Frears in the day, and going and playing Caligula at the Donmar theatre at night, I mean, I can’t imagine anything better.
“I remember thinking being tired is a very small price to play.”
He also explained the way in which he was initially approached and asked to play the Blair role.
“I went to go and see a play I remember, when I was back in London for a little bit, and whilst I was there, a lady came up to me who I’d never met before, in the interval.
“And she said, ‘I’m working on a love story about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and casting it, and I think you should play Tony Blair’, and I just thought she was a mad woman, ‘what are you talking about?’, and this was The Deal.
“I was committed to doing a play, and I said, ‘well, I can’t do it because I’m doing this play’, and everyone was like, ‘well, you need to not do that play’.”
Sheen said everything was worked out so he could play Caligula “at night and filming The Deal in the day” so “someone would run on to the set and say, ‘right, you’ve got to go now… and I would run off” and jump on to his motorcycle taxi.
Sheen’s song choices on Desert Island Discs included Ultravox’s Vienna, Talk Talk’s Desire and the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter.
