- The Diplomat star Rufus Sewell has played the antagonist in movies like The Legend of Zorro and Helen of Troy, starred as Prince Andrew in Netflix’s Scoop and portrayed a noncommittal love interest in The Holiday
- Sewell tells PEOPLE he’s tried to “make the best of the same kind of category of part” throughout his career
- Heading into The Diplomat’s second season, Sewell says he feels “safe” for the “only time” in his career
Rufus Sewell doesn’t think he has the swag of a lot of the bad guys he’s played.
“I’m not naturally assured,” Sewell, 57, tells PEOPLE. “I actually have a frenetic nervous, people-pleasing disposition. I’m not a cool guy. I’m quite warm.”
Still, the British actor has found himself playing a lot of not-so-angelic characters, including his latest roles as Prince Andrew in Scoop and Hal Wyler in The Diplomat.
“When I first started working, the kind of roles that I usually did were very, very, very far from me,” Sewell says. “When I left drama school, I’d always played little old men and a hunchback. That’s how it made my mark. There was a long period when I would be sent a lot of, if not evil, kind of stoic and silent personages.”
Sewell didn’t think those roles played to his strengths, though.
“That category of part didn’t actually suit what I was best at,” Sewell says. “But it kind of suited the shape of my face, so I kept my mouth shut. It’s only ever been irritating when people who should know better in the industry send me scripts according to something that I really struggled to do.”
The Emmy nominee feels like he started to see a shift after he starred in 1994’s Middlemarch, “where I was playing someone my age who didn’t have a hunchback, who wasn’t like a pervert or a weirdo or psychopath,” says Sewell, who’s also been the antagonist in Bless the Child, Helen of Troy, The Illusionist, A Knight’s Tale and The Legend of Zorro. “Then people started to see me a certain way, and I just went in the opposite direction for a long time.”
Sewell shares that when he did take on villainous roles, he felt like he “could do something different” with them. “It felt like I was trying to make the best of the same kind of category of part for a long time,” he continues.
The father of two says he found playing Prince Andrew “easier, in a way” than previous roles because “there wasn’t any expectation that it was my kind of thing.”
“I think the opposite is often true with parts that I’m casting because of other parts that I’ve told,” Sewell says. “People might think that things are just what I’m like when really it takes a lot of work.”
Sewell confesses he hasn’t gotten “anywhere near” the kinds of roles he really wants to take on. “I suppose you could say I love it when people think they’re miscasting me,” he says. “I really, really enjoyed doing theater and comedy, and Hal has a bit of both. That’s why it’s so much fun, because it’s got a bit of everything.”
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Hence why, ahead of the release of The Diplomat’s second season, Sewell says he feels secure in his career for the first time.
“This is the only time, really, that I feel safe during a long-term series,” he adds. “It’s only the third show I’ve ever done that has had a possibility of continuing, the third long-term thing I’ve ever done. There’s an anxiety that you need to keep an eye on the writing because it could change, the voices could change so it makes for periods when you don’t sleep in the same way. Now I look forward to getting scripts because I don’t care what happens story-wise because I completely trust that what the show is.”
Despite more than 30 years in Hollywood, Sewell says he doesn’t always get recognized while out and about, for which he considers himself “quite lucky.”
“I get recognized a lot in the couple of months after something I’m in has been out, and then it just kind of recedes, which is very nice,” he says. “You get people coming up and saying nice things, but it doesn’t really hinder my progress around town. What happens more often, which I always try to be nice about, is when people come up and ask me to tell them where they know me from.”
Sewell can usually guess. “I can often tell if maybe people recognize me as Jasper from The Holiday or if they’re gonna recognize me from The Man in the High Castle where I play an American Nazi,” he says. “But most of the time I fail to come up with what they know me from and I send them on their way as in as friendly a fashion as I can. But it doesn’t bother me at all.”
In fact, being unrecognizable to many makes it easy for Sewell to enjoy his favorite type of day off: grabbing a coffee and diving into a good book.
“I always have a pile of books that I read one after another. If I did have time off, I like to find little cafes and where I can just sit in the corner,” Sewell, who’s currently filming The Diplomat season 3 in New York City, says. “That’s why it’s quite nice that most people don’t recognize me. That’s totally fine.”
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The Diplomat season 2 premieres Thursday, Oct. 31, on Netflix.
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