The son of acting royalty Maggie Smith<\/a> and Robert Stephens, he wasn\u2019t even top of MGM\u2019s list; that was Sean Penn<\/a>. But eventually he landed the role of Gustav Graves, having initially been led into an oak-panelled room at EON\u2019s Piccadilly offices and handed a page of dialogue. \u201cRight,\u201d he remembers asking. \u201cDo you want me to do it in a Korean accent?\u201d They did not. <\/p>\n As happy as Stephens is to indulge my own fascination with Bond, we\u2019re here to talk about a revival of Peter Shaffer\u2019s classic 1973 play Equus, which he\u2019s starring in at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Meeting me in the bar of a hotel in east London, where he\u2019s deep in rehearsals, the 57-year-old is in a green army jacket; his hair is ginger-grey, his beard full, and his eyes \u2013 icy blue \u2013 unmistakeably his mother\u2019s. A world away from the characters he\u2019s often inhabited \u2013 whether laying on the sneer as Captain Flint in Starz\u2019s pirate caper Black Sails or the smirk as Rochester in 2006\u2019s Jane Eyre \u2013 he is open and likeable, warmth radiating from him in waves. Not a curled lip in sight. Then there\u2019s his laugh: big and sonorous, the only one I\u2019ve encountered that can unironically be described as a guffaw.<\/p>\n Anyway: Equus, the new production of which is directed by Lindsay Posner. Thrust back into the spotlight when Daniel Radcliffe starred in it in 2007, the play is about a disturbed stable boy whose pathological, erotic fixation with horses culminates in the blinding of six of them. It feels pretty timely: Adolescence and Richard Gadd\u2019s Baby Reindeer have made television drama the forum for searching conversations about damaged young men, mental health, and what society does to both. Shaffer got there first. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read it I was very surprised by how good it was,\u201d Stephens says. \u201cHow, still, it\u2019s quite shocking and disturbing.\u201d Stephens plays Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist trying to make sense of what happened in that stable. \u201cIt\u2019s like a thriller, a procedural, where Dysart is the detective,\u201d he says. \u201cBut at the same time you realise he\u2019s unravelling himself.\u201d The question at its centre \u2013 whether curing someone of their passion, however dangerous, is worth the cost of extinguishing it \u2013 has no clean answer. If anything, it sends Dysart into freefall about his own life\u2019s work. Stephens recognises the feeling. \u201cI\u2019m at a point in my career where I\u2019m fundamentally questioning what I\u2019m doing and what the purpose of it is.\u201d He laughs. \u201cActors do that quite regularly.\u201d <\/p>\n There are a lot of questions hovering over the theatre industry right now. Lesley Manville<\/a>, currently starring in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National, caused a minor kerfuffle last month when she went on Radio 4 to call out audience members for filming during the final bows. \u201cDon\u2019t just stick your phone in our face,\u201d she said. Does he have a view? \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a phone in your hand, you can\u2019t really clap,\u201d says Stephens. But the thing that really gets him is the disconnect. \u201cYou\u2019re living through this thing in a tangential way rather than a direct way. And yet we\u2019ve all got mindfulness apps on our phones.\u201d That guffaw again. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of crazy, isn\u2019t it?\u201d <\/p>\n His wife, the New Zealand-born actor Anna-Louise Plowman, recently saw John Proctor Is the Villain, Kimberly Belflower\u2019s vibrant hit that deconstructs The Crucible, and came back rhapsodising \u2013 not just about the play, but about the audience. \u201cShe said it was fantastic because it was packed with young people,\u201d he recalls. It was an experience, he adds, that\u2019s become quite rare \u2013 partly because of eye-watering ticket prices. On the topic of celebrity casting, where instead of employing a seasoned professional, a director will cast someone famous for the specific purpose of shifting seats \u2013 Cheryl in 2:22 A Ghost Story, anyone? \u2013 Stephens shrugs. \u201cIt\u2019s pragmatic,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s just the West End.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephens, who was born in London but raised in Canada then rural Sussex, speaks in a rich, plummy baritone that, for much of his career, has been both his calling card and his curse. In 2006, The Telegraph ran a piece about him headlined \u201cThe Perils of Being Posh on TV\u201d, in which Stephens reflected on public schoolboys often being cast as clowns or villains: \u201cTo be taken seriously at the moment, you have to be working class or have a working-class accent; otherwise, you are seen as a caricature,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Does he feel those perils are still real? \u201cI don\u2019t really…\u201d he trails off. \u201cThe irony for me is my parents both came from very much lower-middle-class, working-class families. My dad came from Bristol \u2013 his dad was a labourer; his mum was a charlady. My mum\u2019s dad came from Newcastle, her mother from Glasgow.\u201d Each generation was drilled to speak a certain way, and passed it down. \u201cAnd then you\u2019re trapped.\u201d I remind him of something he told The Telegraph in 2015 \u2013 that he didn\u2019t feel part of any class, particularly the aristocracy, and resented being stuck in \u201canachronistic aspic\u201d. He smiles. \u201cThat sounds good,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll claim that one.\u201d Look, he adds, it is what it is. \u201cI\u2019m 57 now, I don\u2019t give a s*** any more. Nobody is going to suddenly relook at Toby in a completely different way and think \u2018We\u2019re going to cast him.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n That Stephens is more blas\u00e9 these days may have something to do with his success in the US. While being a mainstay of British theatre \u2013 Ibsen, Pinter, Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, and more \u2013 he has also carved out a parallel career in major streaming series: Black Sails, Netflix\u2019s Lost in Space, and Disney+\u2019s Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In America, he says, nobody much cares about the cadence of your voice. \u201cThey let you be whoever you want \u2013 as long as you are good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n Most recently, Stephens was all cockney vernacular, effing and blinding as wide-boy boxing promoter Frank Warren in Giant, Rowan Athale\u2019s 2025 biopic of the Sheffield-born former world featherweight champion Prince Naseem Hamed and his trainer Brendan Ingle. The film saw Stephens reunited with the 007 he\u2019d been pitted against, Pierce Brosnan<\/a>. The two hadn\u2019t really connected on Die Another Day \u2013 Brosnan \u201chad a lot of stuff going on in his life\u201d \u2013 but during filming for Giant, things were different. \u201cI actually got to hang out with him a lot,\u201d says Stephens. \u201cI loved meeting and being with him again. We actually got on really well.\u201d<\/p>\n Die Another Day was of course Brosnan\u2019s final outing as Bond \u2013 a film that also featured an invisible car slipping and sliding like clear jelly through a grand, palatial igloo, along with a space laser named Icarus, and a CGI 007 para-surfing on an iceberg tsunami. Oh, and there was Madonna, delivering an indelibly janky theme tune and briefly appearing as a leather-corseted fencing instructor who dispenses lines like \u201cI see you handle your weapon well\u201d. One day, she arrived late for shooting. Brosnan, irritated, started humming her shiny Eighties banger \u201cLike a Virgin\u201d. \u201cShe got quite annoyed with him,\u201d Stephens recalls. \u201cIt was all an out-of-body experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephens still can\u2019t get over the national obsession with who will play Bond. \u201cIt\u2019s baffling,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of a crazy ritual we go through, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Who should succeed Daniel Craig<\/a>, then? I mention the favourites: Callum Turner<\/a>, Jacob Elordi <\/a>and Harris Dickinson<\/a>. He swerves the question. \u201cWell, whoever gets it, the reaction will be \u2018Oh my God, why?\u2019 Remember when Daniel Craig got it and everybody was like, \u2018Oh Jesus!\u2019, and he was brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephens is surprisingly relaxed when I ask about his famous parents. In the past, he\u2019s been very reticent \u2013 \u201cI\u2019d avoid mentioning them in interviews,\u201d he once admitted. \u201cMy mum understood, but it was hard for her not to be acknowledged by her son.\u201d Today, though, he\u2019s expansive. Dame Maggie Smith, prolific doyenne of stage and screen, died in 2024, aged 89, and the outpouring of love for this national treasure astonished him. \u201cShe never saw herself like that,\u201d he says. \u201cShe just completely unified everybody.\u201d He took his three now-teenage children, Eli, Tallulah and Kura, to see her final stage performance, as Goebbels\u2019s secretary in A German Life, Christopher Hampton\u2019s one-woman monologue, at the Bridge Theatre in 2019. \u201cI really wanted them to have that experience,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause I knew this was going to be it.\u201d Backstage afterwards, she opened the dressing room door. \u201cOnly you,\u201d she told him, \u201cwould bring your children to this.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Manor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Toby-Stephens-in-Jane-Eyre.jpeg\")
Manor born: Stephens and Ruth Wilson in \u2018Jane Eyre\u2019 (BBC)<\/p>\n![\"Giddy-up!](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Toby-Stephens-(Martin-Dysart)-credit-Manuel-Harlan.jpeg\")
Giddy-up! Stephens in rehearsals for the revival of \u2018Equus\u2019 (Manuel Harlan)<\/p>\n![\"Stellar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/LIS_108_SG_a00014R.jpeg\")
Stellar career: Stephens in Netflix series \u2018Lost in Space\u2019 (Netflix)<\/p>\n![\"\u2018You\u2019d](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/JCD4723766.jpeg\")
\u2018You\u2019d never get away with that now\u2019: Stephens as a North Korean general transmogrified into a swashbuckling insomniac English billionaire in \u2018Die Another Day\u2019 (20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n
![\"Following](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/51374836.jpg\")
Following in her footsteps: Stephens (right) and Chris Larkin with their mother, Dame Maggie Smith, in March 1971 (Getty)<\/p>\n