Photo: Cal-lum Scott Howells as Owen.- The Way
community.The military is brought in.Wales is locked down. Overnight,Welsh citizens become outlaws.
SHOWBIZ TV The Way:
The Way follows an ordinary family, the Driscolls, caught up in the turmoil and forced to go on the run – Mum Dee – Keeping Faith’s Mali Harries; Dad Geoff – Gavin and Stacey’s Steffan Rhodri; elder daughter Thea – The Pact’s Sophie Melville; and son Owen – It’s A Sin’s Callum Scott Howells. Sheen also appears in a cameo as Geoff’s dad. A dynamic creative partnership, Sheen teamed up with documentary legend Adam Curtis and Quiz writer James Graham for the project. Conceived in 2017, it has become alarmingly prescient in the years since. “The reason we set it in Port Talbot was because of a lot of the anxieties around heavy industry,” explains Sheen, 55. “We’ve known the direction of travel with the steelworks but obviously you hope against hope that things are going to turn around and it’s going to change. “The first line of the piece is:‘It happened at the steelworks,’” he continues, “and we couldn’t have imagined that literally in the weeks before coming out, this would happen. It’s obviously a fictional story, but at the same time, it hopefully gives voice to the town, the community, the feelings there. It’s not just a news item.This is the life behind it.These are the people.This is the community.” Many of the extras were drawn from the local community itself, integral to the electricity of the riot and town hall scenes. “They make all the difference in terms of making it believable,” Sheen says. It is a deeply personal undertaking for Sheen; Port Talbot his hometown, and this is the actor’s first pitch at directing. “It feels like such a personal project,” he says. “Obviously, it’s set in the town that I grew up in, that I live in again now. It’s
Michael Sheen hopes The Way ‘gives voice’ to Port Talbot and ‘the feelings there’ By Jessica Rawnsley, PA The furnace rises high into the overcast sky above Port Talbot, steam billowing across the landscape. Its outline has long been synonymous with the Welsh industrial town. Almost since the town’s inception, the steelworks has been the axis around which everything revolves – a source of pride and nostalgia, employing thousands of residents, propping up the local community and contributing billions to the Welsh economy. Once a booming steel town, Port Talbot is now an emblem of the UK’s fading industrial past. The threat of closure has loomed since the 1980s – when protests last flared over job cuts. And discontent is beginning to bubble again today. Last year, it was announced that parts of the steelworks would be shuttered to facilitate a transformation of the existing blast furnaces to zero-emission, electric furnaces, precipitating thousands of job losses. The move was met with fury and fear among the local community.There have been bursts of protest since; industrial action has been threatened. The Way, an explosive new BBC drama and Michael Sheen’s directorial debut, envisions a Port Talbot that erupts in the face of closures – sparking blazes across the rest of Wales and transforming the country into a revolutionary furnace. Protests spiral into violence and envelop the entire
78 | mccarthyholden.co.uk
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting