Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Luke Evans (Part One)

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

This week, we’re in London’s St James’s Park with Luke Evans!Raymond and Luke pretty much fell in love with each other from the moment they met - Ray spent the entire walk cradled in Luke’s arms… lucky Raymond, eh?! Growing up, Luke had a collection of cats and an aviary of birds with his parents, who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. He opens up about how that affected his childhood, and how it feels to have written about it in his autobiography. He tells us how he came to terms with his sexuality in a religion which had no tolerance for homosexuality, and his rather brilliant grandma! You can get your copy of Luke’s brilliant book Boy From The Valleys here!Follow @TheRealLukeEvans on Instagram Keep up with all things Luke at lukeevansofficial.com Follow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I'm roughly the size of a barge. Anyway, I did that note, and Hugh Jack will turn to me and went, very good. Made my night. This week on Walking the Dog, Raymond and I went for a stroll in London, St James's Park, with one of my favourite movie stars, Luke Evans. Luke's show business career began in musical theatre before he got his big Hollywood break in the film Clash of the Titans. And since then, you've seen him star in films like The Hobbit, Dracula, Unlellan.

told and the Fast and Furious franchise. He was also very memorably, of course, Gaston in Disney's live action Beauty and the Beast. And I don't know if it was that incredible voice or his ridiculous big screen charisma, but the man genuinely managed to turn me into a bit of a Gaston apologist. Luke is one of the most charming people you could ever hope to meet in person. Like a lot of movie stars, he's got this incredibly sort of magnetic aura around him. But unlike a lot of movie stars, he's unbelievably grounded and funny and open about who he is. And we had a fascinating chat about his childhood growing up in Wales in a Jehovah's Witness community

and the impact that had on him is he tried to wrestle with his identity as a gay man and the faith he'd been born into. It's something he discusses with incredible honesty in his brilliant new memoir, Boy from the Valley's, which is so beautifully written and very powerful and moving too. So I cannot recommend it more. you will absolutely love it. And I can guarantee you're also going to fall hopelessly in love with Luke.

Almost as much as he fell for Raymond, he literally scooped him up in his coat and cuddled him for the entire walk. It was the kind of bromance someone needs to make a movie about. I really hope you enjoy my chat with Luke. I'll stop talking now and hand over to the wonderful man himself. Here's Luke and Ray Ray. Luke, you've completely fallen in love with Raymond, haven't you? Oh, he's gorgeous.

Look at his fur It's just the cutest thing ever Right, let's get going on our walk I don't think he wants to walk I think he's happy in my arms At the moment I should say everyone I'm with I mean I'm so thrilled to be with this man

I'm with the very wonderful Luke Evans and It's really been The minute you set eyes on Raymond You've kind of fallen for him Haven't you Look at his little face He's a tiny little munchkin

covered in gorgeous two-tone hair. He's got two-tone hair. Actually, Luke, we prefer on. Thousands of pounds for this kind of hair. He's born with it. He's literally sitting in my hand. He's tiny. God, I love it.

It's like the perfect afternoon. Thank you so much for coming on walking the dog. Well, I love the idea of this. Do you? Literally couldn't think of anything better. And the gods are on our side. it's not raining. Well, you're one of the gods, as we know.

Apollo, I believe. Twice, darling. Zeus and Apollo. Not just once, but twice. There ain't many Welsh men who've played two Greek gods. I feel a bit like I'm walking with a Greek god. Walking with you, Luke Evans. I honestly feel like your force field is rubbing off on me,

and I'm at least 10% better looking when I'm standing next to you. Oh, stop it. I think Raymond's helping us both. Raymond, what a name for you. Well, we're going to talk about your wonderful book, which I've just devoured. Boy from the Ballies, and it's so brilliant. But congratulations, I want to get that out the way with, because I know when you've written a book, there's that thing of, is it okay?

Well, it's the first time I've ever done it, and possibly the last. But, you know, it's something that I didn't think I would ever do, and it's taken like two years almost since the idea to spend. I think 10 months writing it to, you know, it's just a long process to get to the day of release. But yeah, it's been a really enjoyable and a very different experience to anything I've ever done before. And we're going to talk about that, but I want to go back to your childhood, because handily, we talk about your childhood and, you know, your trajectory a lot on this podcast. And you've neatly done all my homework for me in this fabulous book. When you were growing up, were you a dog family?

So all I wanted was a dog. Yeah, but we had cats. I don't know why we had cats. My mom never had a cat. My dad didn't have a cat. But then the first cat we ever had was called Pussy. And he was an old moggy. And he basically,

He didn't really like human beings, but then we just had cats. They're quite independent, but they're sweet. And then when I left home at 16, within a year, my parents had bought a dog. Sorry, look, I got distracted because there's children. I'd never seen so many children doing a double take. It was like, is Gaston holding a shih Tzu? That happens a lot with kids. No, my niece was very jealous.

I have to say, she went, oh my God, I can't believe it. It's on fair. You're going to hang up with Gaston. Oh, you should have brought her alarm. I know. So... You're very comfortable in my eyes. Can I just say at this point? Luke Evans has not put Raymond down.

This is a first. He's just cuddling him... Oh, my God. It's just adorable. His cashmere coat. His little bum and his two back feet are sitting comfortably in the palm of my left hand. And his fur is draped over my right arm with his two little paws. And he's just facing out like he's... leading the charge. It's quite beautiful.

Are you okay carrying in? Absolutely. Oh my, I love this. So yeah, so growing up. To never had a dog. I've never had a dog. But you had a sort of aviary of birds. Did, yes. And you had as you say, pussy and fluffy?

Oh my god. So it was pussy, tigger, fluffy, polly, suttie, tuppens. I've very tamed these geese. aren't they, Lou? I know. I'm glad you're holding Mayland. Yes, I'm sort of glad Raymond's up here as well. Do you think they might have designs on him? Well, they're about five times the size of Raymond. Yeah, but I feel very safe with you around. That's all right. Most people do at this point. And one thing that you write about in your book, which I was so fascinated by,

because I actually didn't know this about you, and I suspect a lot of people didn't, was that You grew up with your dad, David and Mum Yvonne in the valleys in Wales and they were Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes. So they found the religion when they were in their teenage years. Yeah. And yeah, it just seemed to work for them. And then they had me very young. My mum was 19.

My dad was 21. Yeah, they were completely into it. They studied the Bible and then I came along and I was brought up within the religion. Yeah. And it was fascinating. I think you write about it really well because it's not in a, you know, a lot of people are fascinated by it because they don't know much about it. But I thought you wrote about it brilliantly because you were very honest about it. But there was no judgment if that makes sense, you know?

Yes. Well, it's funny because obviously I've talked about this experience. of mine personally many, many times. But I'm now telling it to a worldwide audience. And I thought about how I tell the story. And I thought, well, I'm not going to change a single thing about how I tell the story, because it is 100% truth of my experience. It's how it was.

And of course, there are painful moments in this story. But I also... don't have, I just don't have anger. I don't feel angry. I mean, there were points when I possibly did that I was, there was the threat of losing my mum and dad, but I wasn't angry with my mum and dad. I was angry with the religion, but, you know, somehow we navigated it and it didn't, it didn't, no, I didn't lose them. You got through it. And you, and you, but it meant, presumably that would have given you a sense of difference, wouldn't it, when you you were growing up because you know all this stuff like you tell this really quite a sweet

poignant story I found it a bit heartbreaking when you're in class and every what you suddenly say I think it's April the 15th April the 15th yeah and you say I remember it's my birthday I remember it so well it was in Aberbar Gide primary school which doesn't the this the building doesn't even exist anymore and I remember I remember it so well I just came out with Oh, yeah, it's my birthday today. Because we should say Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays. They don't celebrate birthdays. They don't, no.

There's no cakes. There's no happy birthday song. There's no party. There's no presents. There's nothing. It's just another day. You acknowledge it yourself privately, but there's no celebration of it. So it would have been very easy for me to have gone to school that morning

without us acknowledging that it was the day I was born. You know, if you want to be different, even if that was the only difference, that would have been enough for kids to go, who's this weirdo? Like, what is he? And that's what it was like all the time. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's lots of pigeons. Don't worry, Raymond, I've got you. You see, when Luke Heaven says that, I believe him. But yeah, and things obviously like Christmas and Easter, and all those holidays you didn't celebrate. But you would get dressed very smartly, wouldn't you? And you would spend a lot of your weekends going around door to door.

We'd spend like an hour on the morning, every Saturday and Sunday in the morning knocking people's doors. Yeah. I used to hate it. Did you? I hated it so much. My mum and dad were brilliant at it. And they used to love it.

I literally hated it. I sort of was, I knew that they wouldn't want to listen. and they didn't want to open their door on a Saturday morning, especially in the winter months. You know, they're letting all the heat out of the house. You know, the front door's open, and you can smell the toast being, you know, in the toaster. And you can hear going live on in the background

and I'd be standing outside in them cold, like, with my tap shoes on. That you have to read the book to understand why I say tap shoes. You know, in my suit, just wanting that hour to be over. But it wasn't, you know, it was an obligation that witnesses have to do. They have to knock doors and give everybody the opportunity to convert before Armageddon. And that's this thing that they really believe, don't know, this idea that... The end of the world is coming. Well, this system of things, not the end of the world as in like everybody's going to die,

but the end of this kind of existence, where the world is right now, God's going to step in. but you know. And so you were, I'm imagining you as a little boy and I've seen the pictures because your dad was, oh, someone just got, oh, you're okay. Someone just got bit by birth. He is feeding them. What do you expect?

Don't mess with heavens. Your dad was super handsome, wasn't he? Oh yeah. A real, was he kind of, was he? Oh yeah, all the girls wanted him, yeah. But he was an unusual, creature because he was quite quiet. He was quite private.

But he had a sense of style. And he used to wear his monkey boots and his flares. And he was into motorbikes. And he had a three wheeler. He had a thing called a bond bug. And they were only came in Tangerine Orange. And they were three wheeler cars. And you could drive one with a motorbike license.

And he had one of those. I mean, he was always, yeah, he was a bit of a style icon in the valleys. He is so comfy in my arms. He's tiny. I'm going to take his, he's so committed to staying there now. I'm taking the lead off. That's it. He's like so comfy.

Do you know, he stopped shivering. He's been really not. He hasn't been shivered or anything. But he's been really out of sorts, Luke, because of the fireworks, he hates it. Oh, yeah. So this has been a tonic for him. Do me a favor. Can you go in my right hand pocket and just get me my vapstick?

He's so small, I can carry him with one arm. He's like a little teddy bit. The impression I'm getting of you, Luke, is, Really, other parents would have said, he's a good little boy. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Well-behaved, well-dressed. Yeah, they brought me up with manners.

Yeah. I was, being an only child, of course I had friends in the church, you know, in the Kingdom Hall. They were friends of mine. But I was around adults a lot. And I liked listening to adults' conversations. I had a very old auntie that was the big. I wrote my dad up, Lala, and we'd spend every Saturday with her. So I would often listen to her stories and her songs,

and she was born in 1914. And so, you know, she'd been through two world wars, and she'd never have kids of her own, and I was like the apple of her eye. I was sort of godson, a grandson in a way, even though technically I wasn't. So yeah, I knew how to be, I didn't mind being an adult company. I was very respectful.

I mean, I was also a pain in the ass. It was also like a proper... I was a little bugger, yeah. Were you in what way? I was just chatty and, you know, I could run rings around my man and dad very, very easily. I'd drive them up the wall. And then I had this eating problem where I didn't like...

I literally wouldn't eat anything that normal kids would eat. And that went on for years and years and years. And I think... really tested my mother's patients. And imagine, when I was like seven, my man was 26. I sometimes have moments during the last 30 years,

40 years, and I get to a certain age and I'm like, at this age, my mother had a 10-year-old me. How, I can't even, I couldn't even look after myself or worry about somebody else. And there was my mum at that very young age looking after quite a boisterous, opinionated kid, you know.

It just was that was the way it was. But yeah. Do you think it's interesting with the food thing, isn't it? Because often that is linked to control. And forgive the armchair psychology. Go on. But I wonder if there was a sense of knowing that you'd been raised in this quite controlled environment, where there are a lot of rules with that religion, aren't there?

And things you can't do. You know, food maybe feels like the one area where you can assert your own autonomy. Wow. I had never thought about that. I had to say that when the food thing started, I was so young, I didn't know about rules or anything. Yeah. So I don't know whether that would have been the reason.

I think it was just, it was just basically the taste. I mean, carrots would make me gip. How about you, Raymond? Carrots do the same thing to you, darling? No, they literally make me want to, like, there's the smell of one. Really? Yes, and I had the same with, with peas and oh it's just random baked beans I couldn't touch baked beans and fried eggs

and you have this fabulous grandmother your maternal grandmother Lala yeah she used to put Fargash in her heel oh no that's my nan yeah nana enid and she would she sounds a bit like sort of Catherine Tate's nan she was a bit she yeah she was a little bit yeah yeah yeah she what sort of things would she say Luke she would say oh she I mean we were at a wedding one so And I said, oh, the bride looks nice, didn't she, Nan? And my nan went, she looks like a pig in a wig. It's like, and I won't tell you who that person who was getting married was, but they were quite closely related to my nan.

My nan would just say whatever she felt. And it was what made her the woman she was. She'd been through a lot. She'd reared six kids. and she smoked like a chimney. She loved a Mars bar and a tree bore extra strong mint, but she could tell her story like no one else. She'd have everyone from the kids to the adults

crying in laughter at stories. I remember before, a couple of years before she, we found, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And she just, she never drank, hated alcohol. but she would tell her story like it was just phenomenal to be around I just love it her storytelling was just incredible

one other thing you write about Luke in this book which really touched me actually and I think you write about it so honestly is this sense of being different and those difficult feelings you were having when you realised you were coming to terms with your own sexuality and obviously again

in the religion that you happen to be born into there's not a lot of tolerance for that, is there? Zero tolerance. Yeah, and that was tough. Well, imagine. Imagine knowing you're different, not being able to talk to anybody about what these feelings are

and why I feel different, having to work it out all on my own at like 8, 9, 10, then realizing that what it is that made me different was something that my mom and dad and the religion that we went to the church of three times a week, drilled into us that, you know, men who lie with men, it's in the Bible,

are as bad as murderers, adulterers, and they were going to die at Armageddon. And that was my introduction to how I was feeling. It's a terrible, scary thing. So I just kept it to myself. And somehow... my own voice or whatever voice that was in my head saying everything was going to be all right or you just kept me going yeah but that must have been so difficult and you talk about you know going to this book shop which was really life-changing for you because you discover all this literature and you know

I found this really this actually broke my eyes and tears really yeah just this idea you talk about when you go there and you buy these books separately because you don't want to bring them home. I'm actually welling off a bit now thinking about it. Because it's just so, it's like I think how young you were and having to feel shame over that. Yeah. Well, I just didn't have anyone else to, I couldn't ask anyone. I couldn't tell my friends because they were all witnesses. And so that bookshop chest, it was everything. It answered questions it allowed me I just for the first time I realized you know I wasn't on my own that there were other people older than me of course but they

were adults and they were they were they were happy and I mean the big moment for me was meeting the Samaritan which was a counselor when I was 14 15 I was tried to go to a psychologist because I I wanted them to help me and I couldn't speak to anybody in my, that I knew because they were all witnesses. And she offered a 14-week course for 300 pounds a session. I was like, I can't afford that. I'm 15 years old. So she gave me the number to a Samaritan.

I called and he was just about to close up for the evening in Cardiff and I went to his place where he was, you know, just like, you know, Samaritans. They helped with everybody. he happened to be a gay man and I told him my story and I felt very lost and I don't know where I was going and I can't tell anyone and I don't know whether I have to change

I don't know how to do this and he reassured me that I wasn't on my own and that there was nothing wrong with me and I never I spoke to that man that once and I went home with a little tiny little flame

that I kept alive knowing that I was wasn't wrong. I wasn't broken. I was actually totally fine and I was going to be okay. Thank God for that man.

And you weren't able initially you sort of your well your mum found out, didn't she? Well I told her yeah. Yeah. I mean they found the books. Yeah. But we didn't really talk about it after that.

Yeah, did you just not discuss it after that? No, which was not helpful for me. I felt even more depressed and frustrated. But I understand if you, you know, for them to have acknowledged it meant an unraveling of everything that we knew. And it's better just to hope it goes away, which sometimes things do, but most of the time they don't. And I suppose what's complicated as well, according to their beliefs,

there's an element, you know, you're damned. Yes, yeah, exactly right. It's very, very complicated. And at that age, it's not like you have a friendship support network outside, all you have is your mum and dad and your friends. And the thought of losing them, at that age, you shouldn't be thinking of any of those things really. And I had to. So I just stayed quiet and just got on with what I had until I knew I could leave home at 16. and you did, didn't you?

I did exactly what I planned. And you started this whole new life and you... Yeah, slowly. I met new people and got a job and they introduced me to other friends and I slowly built up a little network of people. One thing I was really interested in about you and it was this pattern that kept emerging

was how you're very committed to kind of self-betterment and I mean that in a very complimentary way that you would say, right, It's fascinating to me. You met all these, introduced to this new crowd of people through someone you're dating. And they're a bit older and quite cultured. And I love this.

You said, I got a thesaurus. Yeah. Yeah, still have it. They'd sit there and they'd say words and I'd be like, oh my God, that's amazing. I know what they're saying, but I've never heard that word. And I'd be like, I need to understand, like, there are other words to say things.

and I just knew that my vocabulary was too small. And I wanted to better myself, my vocabulary, my way of communicating. And I wanted to sound better read than I was. No one read in my house. We only read the Bible. So my parents used to struggle to read. So there was no stories in the evening. They'd tell a story, but it'd come from their head.

you know, it wouldn't be from a book. The only reading I would do would be from the Bible, and that's a certain way of writing. Yeah, I thought a thesaurus, and started to build up my words. I love that, though, because you could have, do you know what you mean? Often you might come across people like that

and think that, you know, often that does happen when you're from a different world, and you might feel resentful. Oh, no. Do you know what I mean? But you're very... No, I had ambition. Yeah, you did. Were you very ambitious? Very. First time we ever came to London, I was about nine or ten with a family from Hemelhamstead. They brought us on the underground, the overground, then the underground. We popped up in Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus. I looked at this city and I was like, I'm going to live here one day. And then off we trotted back to our little terraced house, three up, two down, little terrace garden. And I thought,

This is their life, but it's not mine. And I know I'm not going to be happy here. And when I'm old enough, I'm going to leave. And that's basically what I did. And you did? I did. I really hope you loved part one of this week's Walking the Dog. If you want to hear the second part of our chat,

it'll be out on Thursday. So whatever you do, don't miss it. And remember to subscribe so you can join us on our walks every week.