A mere three minutes into our interview, Tom Ellis tells me that my phone is definitely listening to me.
The actor, who’s starring as a rule-breaking agent in the FBI spin-off CIA, has been, rather aptly, gaining intel from former operatives to prepare for the role – and it seems those conversations were simultaneously illuminating and incredibly unsettling.
“When your algorithm starts bringing things up, you’re like, ‘Hold on, I was just talking about that. Is my phone listening to me?’ And, by the way, yes, your phone is listening to you. This is the another thing I learned from CIA. You can’t hide a thing,” he warns.
“Technology and and information is what they deal in primarily – and there’s no hiding place, even if we’re led to believe by companies that certain things are secure. They are not, is what I found out. If people want to find out stuff about you and they’ve got the right tech at their disposal, they can.”
Has that not made him terrified of technology? “I just don’t talk about anything at all anymore,” he jokes. “It’s just silence or sport.”
The series, CIA, created by US TV legend Dick Wolf, sees Ellis take on the role of Colin Glass, a loose cannon agent, who’s required to team up with rule-following FBI agent William ‘Bill’ Randall Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss) to investigate domestic terrorist threats.
“Dick Wolf’s company came to me about doing it – I was very intrigued, and so I started doing a bit of deep diving,” he recalls.
“Lots of things resonated with me, and we spoke to these advisors who were ex-CIA operatives who came into the writers’ room when we were first doing the show. Several things struck me – one is that I can’t believe some of the operations that actually happened and the lives that these people have to live.
Tom Ellis as Colin Glass in CIA. Mark Schafer/CBS
“One of the big things was also how incredibly lonely an existence it is. You can’t talk to anyone about it. Some people have partners who don’t even know that they’re doing what they do, and a lot of them don’t even have partners because it’s just not even worth it. You have to be a controlled sociopath to work in this kind of environment, basically. It’s a dark, murky, voyeuristic world, and it was just really interesting territory to explore.”
While Ellis has made his name in the US over the past 10 years (with CIA being the latest example), he still has an “innate Britishness”, as he calls it. Born to religious parents (his dad is a Baptist pastor), he grew up in Sheffield and often returns to see his family there.
In many of his projects, he’s still asked to use his own accent, most recently in CIA, despite the character initially being written with an American accent. While he was prepared to go “all in on American”, Ellis’s first meeting with Wolf resulted in the producer declaring his accent “so damn charming” and deciding the character should be English as a result.
To British audiences, Ellis is also still widely recognised as Gary Preston, the love interest in Miranda Hart’s beloved sitcom, which began in 2009. While comedian Hart stepped away from the public eye for a few years (later opening up about her battle with Lyme disease and chronic illness), she and Ellis have stayed in touch for all those years, and he remains fiercely loyal to her.
“I haven’t seen her in person for a few years, but we FaceTime and text from time to time, and we talk about whether there should be any more Miranda at some point in the future,” he says.
“If we ever end up revisiting Miranda and Gary and where they are in life, I of course will be on board for it. But I’ll be on board for it because Miranda’s got to a place where she feels she’s been able to write something that’s worthy of revisiting, which is one thing I’ve always loved about her.
“She wrote every episode of that show, all of it came out of her head. There were times where the BBC tried to help her out with other writers, but it just didn’t work because it was so unique to her voice. That’s why there are only 20 episodes of Miranda, but they’re 20 brilliant episodes.”
It was after Miranda ended in 2015 that Ellis moved to the US – but there’s plenty he misses about UK culture: “The banter, the wit, the puns, the way we communicate with each other in the UK.
“But I get my fixes from listening to The Rest Is Football, The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Entertainment – Goalhanger basically keeps my innate Britishness in me at the moment! I listen to Romesh [Ranganathan] and Louis Theroux, and Desert Island Discs. I miss how we converse with each other. They can be quite literal in the States!”
Despite his love for his home country, with his move to the US came one of Ellis’s biggest roles to date – Lucifer, the beloved fantasy series that sees the devil (played by Ellis) abandon Hell to run a Los Angeles nightclub. Along the way, Lucifer becomes a consultant for the LAPD and (spoiler alert!) falls for his intriguing partner, Detective Chloe Decker (played by Lauren German).
But what was it like for someone who grew up in the church to take on the role of the devil?
“It’s bad to admit, but there was zero hesitation,” Ellis recalls.
Tom Ellis as Lucifer and Lauren German as Chloe in Lucifer. John P Fleenor/Netflix
“My dad was a Baptist pastor, but we never talked about Hell. We never talked about the punitive side of religion. It was about peace, kindness, understanding, tolerance, loving thy neighbour, and all of those things. It was a very positive experience in that sense.
“So, doing a show about the devil, I had no hesitation calling my dad and saying, ‘Hey, Dad, I’ve got an amazing job.’ He was like, ‘Great, what is it?’ I said, ‘I’m playing the devil,’ and he just laughed. And that’s what I expected, that he would just take it in the sense of humour that it was meant to be.”
Perhaps more concerning was how the American audience might react – but Ellis’s upbringing became something of a secret weapon.
“It was nice to have that on standby for when I was doing press in America when the first season came out because I’m not naive enough to think there wouldn’t be some haters out there. And there were. When they’d go, ‘Why are you doing a show about the devil and glorifying evil?’ – they hadn’t watched the show for starters, which I think says a lot more about those people than it does about our show.
“But to be able to respond with, ‘Well, I grew up in the church, my dad’s a Baptist pastor, and he thinks it’s cool…’ And the truth is that the majority of people don’t have a problem with it because they take it in the sense it was meant to be, which is a story about a fictional – or non-fictional character, depending on what your stance is – and just putting a twist on it. Taking the most irredeemable character in history and putting them on a path of redemption, I don’t think that’s that bad.
“The greatest thing is that, as the show went on, I started to get messages from people of faith and leaders, not just in the church, but in other faiths as well, who were loving the show and using the show for Bible study groups and discussions and sermons. We never intended that, but it had this deeper sense to it.”
Meaghan Oppenheimer and Tom Ellis Araya Doheny/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Foundation
From Miranda and Lucifer to CIA, a big theme across Ellis’s projects has been his incredible chemistry with a co-star – many of his characters rely on having a partner in crime. But that rings true in his real life too.
“My partner in crime is my partner in life, my wife Meaghan,” he explains.
“Obviously we have a deep love for each other, but we have a huge amount of respect for each other from the work side of things as well. We’ve worked together a couple of times, and it’s really interesting being with a writer and producer and someone who is on the other side of the curtain from acting. I’ve learnt a lot from her.”
So, what’s next for Ellis? CIA has already been renewed for a second season, with the actor teasing: “There is a big storyline that happens throughout season 1, to do with Colin’s character and what he was doing before he joined the CIA in New York, and where he was previously stationed. That comes to a head massively at the end of the first season.
“In season 2, we pick up where we left off with that cliffhanger. I love the fact that we’re doing a procedural show, but we have managed to bake in this serialised element to it as well, and we get to know our characters outside of the world that their profession is, and we get to go home with them and see the toll it takes on them.”
As for other roles? Once upon a time, Ellis mentioned he was keen to play the Doctor in Doctor Who. Now that the role’s open, does that still stand?
“Would they cast me as the Doctor these days?” he laughs. “I don’t know…”
He adds: “Whenever this show finishes, I’m really keen to go back to the theatre and check into acting rehab. It’s untouchable as an experience, and it’s my roots, and that’s what I love. I would love to do something on Broadway, come back and do something on the West End, and just get those muscles working again.
“Since living in America and realising how quaint Americans find British people, I would love to do something quintessentially British, but on the stage in New York. So I would love to do some Noel Coward or some Oscar Wilde – although he’s Irish. Something that is unapologetically British, but for an American audience.”
And if that’s not a perfect venture for Tom Ellis, truly, what is?
CIA is available to watch on Sky Witness and NOW.
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