Iwan Rheon takes a gamble in ‘Those About To Die’.

Iwan Rheon made his screen debut in the long-running Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm before training at LAMDA and embarking on a career as an award-winning stage actor. Cast in the Channel 4 series Misfits, he reached a wider audience, consolidating his reputation with the role of Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones. He is now starring in a spectacular new series set among the gladiators of ancient Rome, Those About to Die, which premieres on Peacock and Amazon Prime this month.

One word that comes up repeatedly in descriptions of Those About to Die is epic. “Yeah, it’s Roland Emmerich, you know what I mean? He likes very big, wide camera lenses, he likes to see the world, that’s his style,” Rheon observes. Emmerich directs half the episodes, with Marco Kreuzpaintner taking the helm for the other five. “Marco and Roland are very, very different directors. Marco likes to talk about the scene a lot, whereas Roland’s more like, ‘Right, let’s just shoot it.’ With Roland, you get very few notes, but then a couple of absolute gems. But I think that’s part of the fun of being an actor: you get to work with these different people who have got completely different methods.”

Together, Emmerich and Kreuzpaintner aimed to create a visual extravaganza without sacrificing authenticity for spectacle. “Obviously, we’re using technology, like using a 3D map of Rome as a backdrop for some of the scenes, but then also using lots of practical sets. And Roland and Marco wanted it to be lit naturally by what would have lit the world of Rome: so that’s fire, sun, moon. By doing that, it’s difficult to light, so whereas I came in expecting it to be at least two cameras rolling, it was usually one because to light that specifically is much harder.”

“when you’re sitting outside in a field in Northern Ireland, freezing your knackers off, you fancy a nice warm rehearsal room and a cup of tea”

— Rheon

Rheon plays Tenax, an ambitious underworld boss who profits from gambling on the gladiatorial games. From his first appearance as a sinister silhouetted figure, he deepens into a more complex character. “There’s no clear goodies and baddies situation. I think that’s the cool thing about him: he’s not a villain but he’s not your traditional hero.” A plebeian fighting for power in a rigidly hierarchical society, Tenax acts as the audience’s guide to life in imperial Rome. “He’s involved in everything: the stables and the races, the charioteers, the emperor’s son, it all goes through him. He’s had to scramble all the way from the bottom. Society is based on what family you’re born into, so there’s a very small elite group of people, the patricians, who run everything. He looks at them and he hates them – but he also wants to be them. It’s very relatable, I think: he sees them as this bunch of idiots, but he loves playing with them. And because he’s a smart guy, he could easily, as we see, hold his own against these aristocratic people.”

With a career that has spanned big-budget television series, small indie films and musical theatre, Rheon clearly enjoys variety in his working life. “Often, as in life, when you’re doing one, you fancy doing the other. When you’re three months into a run in the theatre, you’re like, ‘Oh, it would be fun to go and film something’; or when you’re sitting outside in a field in Northern Ireland, freezing your knackers off, you fancy a nice warm rehearsal room and a cup of tea. The important thing for me is to get to do as much different stuff as possible. I also really enjoy doing a low-budget film because I like the challenge of that and the camaraderie that comes with it. You’re all, ‘Come on, let’s get this over the line!’”

Rheon’s first taste of being onstage was as lead singer in a band when he was 16, and music has been a big part of his life ever since. A drum and bass fan in his teens, he eventually relinquished his DJing aspirations for more traditional songwriting. “I got decks and all that stuff. I really got into it for a period but then I moved and didn’t have much space. I had this sort of multitrack to record demos on, and a couple of guitars, a bass guitar and a keyboard and that kind of stuff. I had to choose, because I didn’t have enough space for both, so I sacked off the decks unfortunately, and that was the end of my DJing career. Who knows what could have been?!”

Having recorded three EPs and an album as a solo artist in the 2010s, Rheon has recently been working on his second album. His music has inevitably evolved over the intervening years, during which his life has been transformed by fame and fatherhood. “These [songs] are probably a bit more grown-up and reflective. I also think I’m a better songwriter now.” Although he wrote the songs on an acoustic guitar with the intention of creating “something quite folky”, the recording process took him in a different direction as he began trying out keyboard sounds and introducing electronic elements. “There’s some more synthetic styles, and some more layered backing vocals and stuff. It was just me and my mate Chris, we experimented a bit more and spent a lot of time doing that. It was a really enjoyable process because I was involved in every stage. It’s a long process, but it’s fun.”

Recording was already underway in early 2023 before Rheon was summoned to Rome to start filming Those About to Die. It wasn’t until November, when shooting was completed, that his focus could switch back to the album. “When I came back it was like, ‘Right, come on – let’s crack on with this, let’s finish this record.’” Rheon says that a lull in acting roles has come at just the right time for him to bring to fruition the music that got sidelined in the recent busy years. “The industry’s very quiet at the moment, so I’m really lucky that I have a different focus, and I just switched to that. So that’s really exciting now – for the next couple of months, the album just needs to be mixed and mastered, and then make some artwork and content, as it’s now called! Bring it out and maybe do some gigs, and then just see what happens …”

Those About To Die is available to stream July 18th.

Author: Rachel Goodyear