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I met Adam Rayner at the Television Critics Association press tour, which was earlier this year. So it was before I could see the pilot of the new summer drama “Tyrant.” Maybe I’ll see him again after a few more episodes air, but for now we learned about the new show from “Prisoners of War” creator Gideon Raff and Howard Gordon, the producer of the American adaptation, “Homeland.” Rayner stars as the “Tyrant” so we got the inside scoop on his rise to power. Rayner seemed very international in person, sporting a British accent and speaking French to the network team. CraveOnline: Tell us about your character on “Tyrant.” Adam Rayner: So my character on “Tyrant” is a chap called Barry Al Fayeed and he is the second son of a fictional Middle Eastern dictator. But, he has grown up since he was young in America. He’s trained as a doctor. He’s married a beautiful American girl, had two kids, so he’s very much an American. Is that Jennifer Finnigan playing your wife? That’s Jennifer Finnigan, exactly. But through a series of events, he’s drawn back to this country very much against his will and has to get involved in the politics over there. Bit by bit, he gives into the temptation to get involved and acquire power and ultimately ends up finding his inner tyrant. Is it a fictional country too? Yeah, you can say it’s loosely based on Syria or Jordan or various places. What can you tell us about the politics that suck him up? Well, what happens is the father who’s been in charge for 30 years or so dies. The heir, the older son, has various difficulties with assuming the mantle immediately. He’s quite unstable. His decision-making, he needs help basically and as a more stable influence, I’m drawn into this. We have to deal with all of the issues you would associate with unrest in a Middle Eastern country, be it the young secular revolutionaries demanding democracy or the Islamist movement, the disenfranchised women, all of that stuff. The army versus the regime versus the progressive elements, so hopefully the show will encompass all of those issues which are genuinely taking place in the Middle East. And then Barry, my character, will be in the middle of that trying to draw all these strings together and show that even if you come with these western values, it’s not as easy as it looks. You can’t just go over there and say, “Hey guys, let’s have democracy.” It’s sadly more complex than that. What is this country’s relationship with the rest of the world? It’s a good question, but I suspect, because it’s been a stable and secular dictatorship, it’s probably done various deals, particularly with the United States, as we’ve seen a lot of these leaders which have now of course disappeared or are in the process of disappearing, all had quite strong alliances with the United States. They were sort of marriages of convenience in order to maintain stability in the region and I would say this country probably has been following that model. Of course, that’s all about to be thrown into disarray with this father figure dying. Have you had to map out your performance pretty far in advance to gauge how he evolves into this tyrant? Only in the sense that I knew where it was going. I don’t know in what form or how long it’s going to take to get there but I knew that he was going to get there which meant doing something different at the beginning. So if you’re going to end up here, you don’t want to start here. You’ve got nowhere to go. In that sense I wanted to show that this didn’t come naturally to the guy. At the beginning he’s a mild mannered, quietly spoken, very quite sweet, just ordinary American guy with two kids and a mortgage and all the rest of it. In terms of how he gets to the tyrant, I don’t know yet because I haven’t read the script but I knew that I had to start in a very different place. How tyrannical do you think he’ll get in the first season? Oh, I think he’s going to get pretty nasty. The first season, that’s a good question. I think it’s going to have to start coming out, maybe towards the final few episodes. I think he gets pretty nasty. We’ll see that harder side towards the end of the first season I believe. Do you have a Middle Eastern background yourself? No, in a word. I don’t. I heard you speaking French before this interview. Are you British or French? I’m actually half Brit and half American. I have a British father and an American mother, but as far as I’m aware, no Middle Eastern blood. But in the show I’ve got an English mother so before everyone starts going, “Oh my God, how can this guy be playing an arab,” he’s actually only half Arabic. I was going to ask if you’re doing an accent, but are you just using your British voice? No, I’m doing my American accent because this guy has grown up in the United States. So he has no accent other than the American one.

CraveOnline: Do you think fans of “Homeland” are going to like “Tyrant” also? Will they go together well? Adan Rayner: Yes, I think they will. It’s a very different show in the sense that it’s not a spy thriller. Obviously, “Homeland” is not just a spy thriller. It’s more than that but “Tyrant” will be a bit more of a palace drama. It’ll be about the families but there will be political intrigue as well. I think the two shows will go together very well. It’s just they have emphasis in slightly different areas. How competitive was the audition for this part? Well, they saw a lot of people. They saw a lot of people. You do this job for a long time, it’s a bit like playing the lottery. You keep buying a ticket, you keep buying a ticket and if you’re very, very lucky, one day your number comes up. This was my lucky shot. I just happened to be the right guy for this part. I’ve been the wrong guy for most of the other ones. You’ve done a number of series, but could this be America’s introduction to you? Yeah, I’ve done shows that aired on American TV but none of them proved to be successful, so yes, no one here knows who I am. It’s exciting to be entering this market in a more serious way. You did a version of “The Saint” recently? I did. We did a pilot. That was a pilot for a series? Yeah, and at the point that I got involved in “Tyrant,” it had not yet gone to fruition into a series, so I moved on. What network was that going to be for? It was an independent so whilst I was involved, it was not sold to a network. What was that take on “The Saint?” Was it modern day? Yeah, it was modern day. It was great fun and it was a really good show. I don’t know why no one picked it up. Maybe because I was in it, but it was really good. It was all of the traditional elements of the character but put in a modern, very high tech context. It was good fun. Did you ever get to talk to Roger Moore about it? I did. I did a day’s filming with Roger Moore. He was going to be in it? He showed up right at the end of the pilot sort of handing over the Saint mantle to me, but it was great to do a day with him. Was he still playing Simon Templar? I guess. It was never quite explained. You never knew whether this was two Simon Templars we’re seeing or whether he was playing another character, but it was great to work with him. Maybe that would’ve been explained later on. Did you also do a Parkour movie with Taylor Lautner? Yeah, yeah, that’s coming out later this year. That was intense, running around on rooftops in 97 degrees New York last summer, but a good movie. I think it’s going to be really exciting. I think people are going to see a new side to Taylor. He’s fabulous in the movie and a fantastic athlete. He’s brilliant at all the Parkour. Are you doing Parkour also? I do a bit but not as much as him. The kid is good. He does it for real, but how much training did you have for Tracers? We did about a week running around in a gym. There’s only so much you can learn. I learned to run up a wall a bit and vault things, but Taylor’s really good at it. When I say we didn’t train much, that doesn’t mean we didn’t rehearse particular set pieces much. Of course, those get rehearsed and the stunt doubles rehearse those intimately. Although I did end up breaking my ankle on it so obviously something went wrong. What character do you play? I play the bad guy, a guy called Miller, who basically is drawing Taylor’s character into this world where they’re seemingly just a group that get together to practice Parkour in their spare time, but they’re actually using their skills for criminal activities.

DETAILS: You play a character born in the Middle East but living in America, and you yourself have dual citizenship in the U.K. and America. Did that help you in relating to the character and getting inside his head?
ADAM RAYNER: I wonder. . . It's hard to sort of analyze yourself in that way, but I suppose I have a slight sense of having two different sides or two homelands. So yes, I would say that— probably without even realizing it—it was helpful.

Adam Rayner Tyrant interview
English actor Adam Rayner has been on our screens in a number of shows including The Line of Beauty, Mistresses and Doctor Who.
For his latest role he’s playing the lead character of Bassam ‘Barry’ Al-Fayed in political thriller Tyrant. The show has already aired its first season in the US to much critical-acclaim and finally arrives in the UK this week.
We caught up with Adam to find out all about Tyrant, discuss the political nature of the storylines and to find out what it was like to film such a hard-hitting show.
Tyrant starts in the UK this week. What’s the show all about?
The basic premise is that you take the second son of a fictional Middle Eastern dictator who has turned his back on his background, moved to the States, trained as a doctor, married an all-American girl and had two kids. Through a family wedding he is drawn back to the country and through a series of events kept there. Initially reluctantly but bit-by-bit he is drawn back to the world that he has been trying to escape for 20 years, and possibly his own destiny and the realisation of who he really is is turned on its head.
Your character Barry aka Bassam, may not be quite as clean cut as you’re led to believe at the start of the first episode. That’s really explored in the opening episode isn’t it?
Yes. I hope that becomes clear and the full realisation of that journey takes the full season to really get a grip on. I hope that that is sufficiently suggested and made clear in the pilot. It is the idea that heroes are not as simple as they first seem and neither are militants. Here is a man that seems conflicted with himself and the world around him. He’s trying to be a good man and he’s trying to do the right thing but he’s going into a world where those concepts are fluid and extremely difficult to grasp with various shades of grey. He is a man who is struggling to figure out what his true destiny is.
Barry isn’t the only one in his family hiding secrets. We learn in the first episode that his son Sammy is hiding his true sexuality from his family. What can we expect from that storyline?
It certainly causes some problems. I have to say that some strands are picked up with great intensity and others aren’t. They go into that in some detail but the full implications of that is a slow burn. It might take beyond the first season to really see the implications of where that goes and Barry doesn’t even necessarily find out for a while.

What drew you to Tyrant in the first place?
I was just happy to get a call from these people. The pedigree of the writers and the producers is of a very high-end. I was just thrilled to get the call. Beyond that it was a fantastic script with a character you hope comes along in your career., someone who is deeply conflicted and yet compelled to engage decisively in the world around him. You just hope you get the call for a job like this a couple of times in your career and it’s one you really hope for.
Tyrant is a very brave show, particularly given the political climate in the world at the moment. Were you worried about the controversy that could bring?
I’m not really worried. It’s already been out in the States and it’s been extremely controversial. Some people loved it and some people hated it. I think you just have to embrace that. I’d rather be involved in a show that was polarising opinion and was original and challenging rather than another law/medical procedural show. It’s much more exciting even if you’re going to encounter some people that don’t buy into what you’re doing. It’s a much more exciting thing to inhabit.
What is it like filming some of the tougher and more violent scenes of the show?
Poor old Ashraf (who plays Barry’s brother Jamal) gets the brunt of that. I don’t do quite so much of that. It’s tough. Anything that’s physical and violent is hard. You’re on edge and it pushes you as a person closer to the area that the character inhabits. If you have to slam someone against a wall half-naked in a steam room tensions run high and you very much feel connected to what you’re doing. It’s exhausting and it can be stressful.
What’s been your favourite thing so far about being involved with Tyrant?
That’s a good question. My favourite thing has been engaging in the creative process of this brand new creature being born. Not to overstate my role but we discuss the scripts when they come in and I input to some degree. That sense of being at the beginning and involved with something that is wholly original has certainly been the most exciting thing.

Your character Barry is the lead but the show has a large ensemble. What has it been like to be a part of that?
Pretty much every show you look at these days has a large ensemble cast. For me it’s great because you get to work with a lot of great actors and different people so you never feel like you’re getting into a routine with new people popping up. There’s already a widespread of storylines to go back to. I think it can only be a good thing as long as it’s not pushed to the degree where the audience completely lose track of who they’re expected to be watching or interested in. It’s absolutely crucial in keeping the audience on their toes and interested to have a broad spread of storylines.
Why should viewers in the UK give Tyrant a go?
You should watch Tyrant because it’s unlike any show you’ve seen before. It’s the first time that the Middle East has been brought to life with an almost entirely Middle Eastern cast of characters telling a compelling story within that foreign environment but making it understandable for a Western audience. I would say tune in because it’s unlike any other show that people will have seen before.
What else do you have coming up at the moment?
I’m the bad guy in a Taylor Lautner movie, which will give everyone a laugh. We’re waiting to hear about a second season for Tyrant but until then I’m available for hire.
It must be looking promising for a second season as the first one has gone down so well in the US…
The figures have been very strong. It’s a tricky show to produce and we ran into problems in Israel at the end of the shoot with the tragedy of the conflict. I’m very optimistic but you never know.
Tyrant begins in the UK on Friday 12th September at 9pm on FOX.
- See more at: http://www.entertainment-focus.com/featured-slider/adam-rayner-tyrant-interview/#sthash.g2LTxGkl.dpuf

It’s been happening for the past few years: British actors are invading Hollywood.
英国演员攻陷好莱坞
From Damien Lewis and David Harewood on the Showtime counter-terrorism drama Homeland, to Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead, Charlie Hunnam on FX’s biker drama Sons of Anarchy and Matthew Rhys on FX’s The Americans.
By most accounts, the trend started with the Harry Potter films, for which author J.K. Rowling insisted that Warner Bros used British actors. Since then, it has become more common, especially in television.
The latest such British actor to invade Hollywood is Adam Rayner. After starring in the BBC drama Hunted (which was co-produced by US network Cinemax), he went on to star in a pilot for a rebooted version of The Saint and more recently landed the lead role in FX’s middle-eastern thriller Tyrant, which tells the story of the son of a dictator who returns home for a wedding with his American family and finds himself drawn into the workings of the turbulent Middle Eastern nation
Landing the lead was a real coup for Rayner, who himself admits that he’s “never really come up with a satisfactory answer” as to why British actors are suddenly invading Hollywood. He doesn’t think it’s a question of talent, however. “It’s certainly not that we are better actors”, he says, “there are some amazing American actors out there.”
That being said, FX and FX Productions did have a hard time casting the lead for Tyrant. They looked at numerous American actors and were stumped. They wanted an actor who both looked authentically Middle Eastern and could lead a prime-time US series, a seemingly impossible task until Adam Rayner come through the door.
And while certain corners bemoaned the invasion of Brits in Hollywood, casting a “foreign” actor as the lead made sense. After all, Tyrant certainly has an international flavour. It was directed by Brit David Yates (who coincidentally worked on the Harry Potter film series) and was shot largely in Israel, before moving to Turkey when the Gaza conflict erupted a couple of months ago.
Even so, it is still a decidedly US show, with a much larger budget than most British series. “In the US, you get a real sense that this is a real billion dollar business”, Rayner notes. “In the UK it always feels a little bit more of a cottage industry”.
The former Hunted co-star said that while bigger budgets bring a “different atmosphere to things”, at the end of the day it’s still about the finished product. Whether it’s the US’ bigger budgets and their “slick production lines” or the “group effort atmosphere” that arises from UK producers “putting the money where it counts”.
For his part, Adam Rayner said he really enjoyed his time on the show and appreciated the unmatched professionalism of the US crews. “I really loved working in the States because of the fantastic level of professionalism and enthusiasm. People really take pride in what they do on a film set no matter what their job is and that is unmatched by anyone else in the world.”

TVWise: Going back to one of your former projects, there are rumors of a Hunted spin-off on Cinemax. Would you be interested in coming back if that did happen?
Adam Rayner: I would certainly love to work with Frank [Spotnitz] again and I remember him mentioning that. He and I had lunch shortly before I did the Tyrant pilot and he gave me some wonderful advice. He’s a real mentor and I would jump at the chance to work with him again.
Hunted有希望复活？

Adam Rayner Talks TYRANT, Joining the Show, Playing an Arab Character, Shocking Moments, Shooting the Pilot in Morocco, and His Character’s Motives
Collider: First of all, I have to say that I really enjoyed Hunted.
ADAM RAYNER: Oh, did you? Thanks! That show was unlucky, in a way. In almost any other circumstance, it would have continued, certainly on Cinemax. They immediately wanted to do more, but the nature of the deal with BBC meant that it couldn’t go. But, I believe that Frank [Spotnitz] and Melissa [George] are developing a spin-off.
How did Tyrant come about?
RAYNER: I just got sent the script. I tend to be the solution to problems. I’m never the first person they come to. So, I got this script, and the character was an Arab in his 40s, and I just laughed and phoned my manager and said, “This is a waste of time.” And she said, “No, they’d like you to put yourself on tape for it.” I was literally hopping around my hotel room with a broken ankle – I had just broken my ankle, trying to be the bad guy in a Taylor Lautner movie – and I was trying to film myself while my girlfriend was reading the other lines on an iPad from London. It was crazy. But as soon as I read the script, apart from the fact that I thought there was no possibility of me getting the job, I knew that it was the one that we were all waiting for. If we do it right and people respond to it, this is the job that we all slog away for, for 10 years, to come along. It was a fabulous script and the character has such potential to be mined very deeply for so much.
And this is also a show that will spark conversation.
RAYNER: Yeah, exactly! It’s not just another cop show procedural. It’s something that could potentially be controversial, and is very apposite, as well. It’s amazing when your dreams come. If I could have chosen any show, this would have been it.
Were there nerves about the fact that you weren’t the description of the character?
RAYNER: Yeah, but it was dealt with very quickly, in the sense that there are Arabs that look like me. The Alawites often have blue eyes and light skin. Even beyond that, we’ve made it a part of the show and something of narrative interest, later on in the show. It was a mixed marriage. My character’s father married an English woman. And then, with the age thing, I’m a very young-ish looking 40-something. That’s TV, I guess.
Was part of the attraction to this the fact that Howard Gordon is so good with strong male characters?
RAYNER: Yes. Everything was good about this project. I was just thrilled to be invited to the party. Having seen, at close hand, how hard it is to get things right, I’ve come to see why he has had the success that he has.

What can you say about who your character, Barry Al-Fayeed, was before we meet him in the show?
RAYNER: He’s spent the last 15 years, or whatever, just being a doctor. Nothing fancy, he’s just a local pediatrician. He hasn’t got some huge private practice. He’s just an ordinary doctor with a wife, two kids and a dog. But, there’s obviously more to it than that. In pursuing this very archetypically Western life, he’s clearly running from something. And as the show progresses, we begin to see that, in a very real sense, he’s running from himself and his true nature, which is inextricably linked to the country he comes from. He never wants to go back there because it unlocks parts of himself that he’s desperately trying to keep at bay.
There are definitely some shocking moments, especially when you see one of the things he’s probably running from and the actions he took as a child. Did you see any of that coming from, while you read it?
RAYNER: No, that was a shock. I knew it must be going somewhere, and the title is a clue, but I was shocked. And then, even having read it and been in it, I was surprised when I watched it. There were things that I wasn’t expected from this guy. There’s plenty of stuff that I would have changed about my own performance, but it pleased me that there were surprises. That was good.
What can you say about the relationship between Barry and his brother, Jamal?
RAYNER: I feel like it might become the central relationship of the show. It’s deeply complex. It’s Cain and Abel stuff. They love each other. They hate each other. They rely on each other. They are rivals to each other, politically and sexually. And that’s tough to play. At any given moment, we tend to know what we’re doing with someone, or at least we think we do. It’s tough when you have a broad sweep of ambiguity in a relationship when you’re acting because you can’t just play nothing. You’ve gotta choose something, so it’s tough. But, if you can find your way through it, it is ultimately what real life is like. We rarely just hate people or love people. Normally, the people we have moments of the most impassioned hate for, it’s because we love them so much. The Barry-Jamal relationship is all of that complexity and passion, and it could go either way. They could form an unstoppable alliance or they could tear each other apart. It’s very primal. It’s very who’s the Alpha? At what point does Barry cease to see himself as subordinate, in some way, to his brother, and at what point does he consider himself to be the dominant force and the right man for the job. That’s great stuff to explore.
How was the experience of shooting this pilot in Morocco?
RAYNER: It’s an incredibly rich place to drop into and film in. I’ve never been to the Middle East, but I assume it has a similar flavor. In Tangier, you’re 20 miles from Spain. We shot a bit of Hunted in Tangier, and you are in a very, very different world. It’s very difficult to blend in over there. That sense of alienation, which was less relevant for Barry, but certainly for his wife and kids, it was perfect to dump them in that place, and then shoot this stuff because that was the situation they were in.
Did Barry’s family know anything about his family’s history?
RAYNER: The way we’ve envisioned it is that, in not wanting to explore these parts of himself, he puts it away in a box and locks it away, in a typical male, uncommunicative fashion. They’ve met, but in terms of the true nature of the dynamics and what went on when he was a boy, he wouldn’t have brought them into that. That creates problems in the marriage because his wife feels very much left out of that part of his life and history. And then, she begins to realize that there are perhaps unresolved feelings with this woman from his past. It’s all good stuff. It’s quite soapy, in the best possible way.
Do you think Barry really believed that he’d just go home to visit his family for this short amount of time, and then he’d go back to America and that would be it?
RAYNER: That’s a very good question, and maybe I don’t need to answer that. Obviously, he could have put his foot down and said, “Absolutely not! We’re not going.” But for some reason, he chose to acquiesce and go. Why did he do that? Maybe it is a self-fulfillment. There’s a sense in which he has to play it out and find out what his destiny is. Sometimes our motivations can be quite hazy, contradictory and multi-faceted, in real life, so I think it’s okay for that ambiguity to exist. We kid ourselves, and Barry is kidding himself about a lot in his life and hiding stuff within himself. He’s more likely than anyone to try to tell himself a story.
Tyrant airs on Tuesday nights on FX.
Read more at http://collider.com/adam-rayner-tyrant-interview/#U77xJ0kdIaQx33K1.99

Adam Rayner is hoping some of Gideon Raff*s magic dust will fall on him in *Tyrant*
Adam, whom British audiences last saw cuddling up to Melissa George in Frank Spotnitz*s *Hunted*, plays Bassam *Barry* Al-Fayeed, the son of a dictator, who has spent the last 20 years in America, creating a very Western life for himself and his family. When he is summoned home for his nephew*s wedding, he realises that there is no escaping the family secrets and national politics of his youth.
For Adam Rayner, who currently lives in Norfolk and waiting to be a father for the first time, this was a golden opportunity for a role that he didn*t think in a million years would be his.
Adam Rayner plays Barry, reunited with his family in the Middle East after building a life in America
"I was working in New York, and my agent persuaded me to put myself on tape to play… a 40-year-old Arab man," he laughs. "Well, obviously, that*s not going to happen. Except, somehow, it did, and here I am. As novel as the whole thing seems, from the moment we started filming, I felt very safe in Gideon*s hands. Look what he did with *Homeland*. Can*t argue with that."
He realises, however, that sneaking into the limelight, Lewis-style, might not be so easy this time around.
"I envy Damian that chance he had to be in something of that quality, but that no one really had any expectations of, and then knock them sideways," he confides. "With Gideon Raff*s record now, and the success of *Homeland*, I*ve got nowhere to hide."