I recently (re)watched all three seasons of Victoria [2016-2019] and was reminded that Tom Hughes (i) is extremely handsome, and (ii) has never been featured in my Period Drama Boyfriend series. This oversight is especially egregious because Hughes is one of those actors who’s done more period dramas than contemporary roles, so I knew I had to rectify it immediately. So I did my, ahem, homework and I present:
Birthday: April 18 (Aries)
Middle Name: None as far as I can tell — and can I take a moment to say how rare it is to find another person who (like me) doesn’t have a middle name? Especially a British person. Just an observation.
Posh: No, which is also rare for a British actor. Though he did graduate from RADA, which is a fancy drama school, afaik. Fun fact: he was the guitarist in an indie band at one point. Also seems to have a decent singing voice, judging from a snippet in Victoria.
Height: 6’1 (according to Google)
Fave period drama: Hughes has a small but pivotal supporting role in Dancing on the Edge, but he’s brilliant in it and the mini-series itself is also brilliant, and full of incredible performances (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew Goode, Anthony Head, Jacqueline Bisset, Joanna Vanderham, and more). It tells the story of a black jazz band in 1930s London, its rise and downfall thanks to a series of tragic events. It’s one of my fave period dramas set in that era, and I’ve rewatched it several times.
Sexiest period drama role: Prince Albert in Victoria (especially Season 1), hands down. Surprisingly, it’s one of his few “swoony” roles, although Albert is too complicated a character to consider a straightforward romantic hero. [I actually thought the series did a decent job of showing the complexities of a marriage, and how there’s no ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ only multifaceted, flawed humans. That’s not to say that it was an accurate historical portrayal necessarily, only an interesting portrayal of a marriage based on Victoria & Albert’s.]
Interestingly, Hughes has tended to play a lot of characters with a dark side — not straight up villains, but not conventional heroes either. There’s a sort of slippery moral ambiguity he nails really well, where you can’t be sure, when he turns up on screen, whether his character is going to end up doing the right thing, or something that’ll break your heart. Based on some of the interviews I’ve read, I think he enjoys exploring morally grey characters, which has undoubtedly influenced his career choices.
I’ll add an honourable mention here to The Laureate, in which Hughes plays poet and writer Robert Graves during a period of his life when he was recovering from PTSD (WWI) and became involved in a complicated relationship with two women. [Which resulted in a major scandal in the 1930s. I had no idea Graves’ life was such a rollercoaster. I’m def on the lookout for a biography now.] The movie isn’t sexy/romantic as such, but it’s a very broody role and an excellent performance.
I also think his character in The Game (a Cold Era spy thriller series) could be a contender in this category but, alas, I have not managed to track that down to watch. Yet.
Austen adaptation: None. It came down to timing, I think. Hughes was too young during the 2000s era of Austen adaptations and he’s now probably too old for all the new ones being rolled out. Ten years ago, I could have seen him playing Willoughby easily.
Murder mystery cameos: Hughes played Michael Rogers in the “Endless Night” episode of Marple, and he was brilliant in it. That episode stayed with me for a long time. It’s definitely one of Christie’s darker stories, and I love it. He was also in The Lady Vanishes, which is a period mystery thriller involving the disappearance of an elderly woman on a train. He plays an engineer/fellow passenger who offers to help the female protagonist who is trying to find the missing woman.
Fave contemporary role: This one’s tough because I honestly haven’t seen more than a couple, so I’ll go with Silk, an older British legal drama series. The first season (in which he appears) is excellent, and definitely worth a watch for the performances of the lead actors, Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry Jones (another Period Drama Boyfriend). Hughes plays Nick, an articling student — coincidentally, alongside a very young Natalie Dormer, who is also really good; it’s a small part, but it was my first time seeing him on screen and he made enough of an impression that I remembered it years later.
Least romantic role: Wikipedia reminded me of this one. He played the abusive boyfriend of Domhnall Gleeson’s character’s sister in About Time. I really enjoyed that movie, but I do not remember Hughes in it at all.
Watch at your own risk: It pains me to say this but … A Discovery of Witches season 2. Hughes plays Kit Marlowe which, on one hand, is great casting and, on the other hand, a total missed opportunity because, guyssss, the writing is so bad. I loved the books, but the show really dropped the ball after season 1. I mean, when you have daemon Kit Marlowe (who is in love with a vampire who is in love with a witch) played by Tom “Brooding is my middle name” Hughes and somehow you make it super boring … you done messed up.
Happy period drama watching, loves!