Partys

The Party stars Luke Evans and Sarah Solemani play husband and wife in ITV’s gripping new five-part drama

The Party stars Luke Evans and Sarah Solemani have opened up about playing husband and wife in ITV’s gripping new drama.

The pair portray couple Martin Gilmour and Lucy Farni and Luke, who also serves as executive producer, originally conceived the idea of bringing Elizabeth Day’s widely praised novel to the small screen.

Showrunner and actress Sarah was subsequently approached by the team behind The Pembrokeshire Murders, World Productions, to adapt Elizabeth’s critically acclaimed novel of the same name.

Reflecting on his collaboration with Sarah, Luke said: “The wonderful part of this whole project, of course, is that very soon after she’d written a few episodes, she expressed an interest in playing Lucy.

“I thought it was just absolutely perfect. I thought, ‘What a brilliant thing. Now we’ll have the writer on set’.”, reports Wales Online.

“Any changes we want to make, or any conversations we want to have, there won’t be any phones being picked up. We can just literally go, ‘Sarah, what do you think of this?'”.

“That is exactly what happened. It was such a rewarding experience. She’s immensely talented in so many different ways, and it was just wonderful to see her just fill this character, and also to build this on-screen relationship together. I loved every day I was on set with Sarah. It was really special.”

Sarah has since spoken out about her own experience of collaborating with Luke on the project. She revealed: “It was wonderful. I hadn’t worked with him before.

“I was making a show with David E. Kelley, starring Nicole Kidman, and I asked Nicole about him because they had just done Nine Perfect Strangers together.

“I was really blown away by him in that – it was probably the performance that made me think ‘I would love to work with this actor’. And so, I asked Nicole about him, and she said he was not only just a brilliant actor, but he was great fun. That counts for a lot.

“When you’re jumping into bed with someone on a production and spending a lot of time together, it’s important to have a good vibe on set – and he really had that.

“So it was Nicole’s recommendation that made me trust that Luke would be excellent – and he was. He was very grateful for the scripts and really dedicated to making the best story we could.”

The Party continues on Tuesday, October 13 on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm

Welsh actor Luke Evans is currently starring in ITV psychological thriller The Party

Hollywood actor Luke Evans admits he was once ‘very isolated’.

The Welsh actor, now 47, has appeared in Hollywood films like Fast & Furious and Beauty And The Beast and TV dramas including The Pembrokeshire Murders. He can currently be seen in the latest ITV thriller The Party.

But the star, who was raised in Aberbargoed in the South Wales Valleys and started out in his career in West End musicals like Avenue Q and Miss Saigon, hasn’t had it easy and has previously spoken out about how he contemplated suicide during his teenage years.

As The Party, based on the novel by Elizabeth Day, unfolds on ITV and ITVX, we examine Luke’s life beyond the cameras.

Feeling ‘very isolated’

Luke has previously discussed reaching a “dark place” during his adolescence when he faced challenges growing up as gay while being part of the Jehovah’s Witness community, reports Wales Online.

In the third instalment of the BBC series, Alison Hammond’s Big Weekend, Luke revealed his experiences of bullying and the clash between his sexuality and faith, which led him to a “dark place” where he considered taking his own life.

“I knew I was different, I didn’t know I was gay,” he explained. “I just knew I was different from the ages of 7, 8, 9, you know, very young.”

He continued: “I also didn’t have anyone outside the religion to be able to confide in or ask what was wrong. I’ve been baptised in the religion and that meant if I chose to be openly gay, I would be cut-off from everyone and everything I knew.”

Luke acknowledged the situation was “very complicated” and “very confusing”. He said: “I felt very, very isolated.”

Alison then asked if he had reached a “dark place”, to which Luke replied with: “Oh god, yeah. My teenage years, when it was clear in my mind who I was, and I was just… I had no-one to talk to. It was a very difficult position, place to be. Yeah, I contemplated suicide for sure.”

Love life

Luke previously dated Spanish model and actor Jon Kortajarena. Jon has fronted advertising campaigns for prestigious brands including Just Cavalli, Versace, Giorgio Armani and Guerlain, and in 2009 Forbes placed him eighth on The World’s 10 Most Successful Male Models list.

Luke is currently in a relationship with entrepreneur Fran Tomas. Speaking previously to People magazine, Luke described his boyfriend, whom he has been with since 2021, as his “best friend”.

“We’re a great team in life. He’s my best friend. He’s the calm, deep waters, and I am the rushing, bubbly water. And between the two of us, we can solve anything,” he told the publication.

What is The Party about?

Elizabeth Day’s bestselling 2017 psychological thriller has been adapted into a five-part series following Martin Gilmour ( Luke Evans ), a scholarship pupil who escaped poverty to enter British high society after befriending the affluent, magnetic Ben Fitzmaurice at boarding school.

The delicate relationship shatters during Ben’s extravagant 40th birthday celebration at his newly acquired grand country manor. The following morning, Martin discovers himself inside a police station facing questioning over a disturbing incident that occurred overnight.

The Party is on ITV1 and ITVX

Andy Burnham has called on Green leader Zack Polanski to reverse a motion passed by members of his party declaring Zionism a form of racism.

The prime minister said the motion, approved on Sunday at the party’s conference in Brighton, was “completely wrong” and showed “terrible judgement”.

The motion defined Zionism as an ideology supporting “an ethnonationalist Jewish state” and backed a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”, which includes modern-day Israel.

In the wake of the vote, Polanski has said he would not accept anyone being excluded from the Green Party “because of the religious or communal body they are part of”.

The Green leader has declined media interviews since the motion was passed and did not answer questions from a BBC reporter about the motion ahead of Burnham’s comments.

It comes as polls close in Thursday’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election, in which Polanski is a candidate.

The motion has complicated the final days of Polanksi’s campaign in the contest, where the Greens have been looking to overturn a substantial Labour majority in the seat vacated by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

It has sparked days of controversy, with four of the five Green MPs opposing it, its co-deputy leaders split on supporting it, the Green deputy leader in Wales resigning, and condemnation from members and Green counterparts in Europe.

Polanski did not vote on the Zionism motion, having left the conference early to return to London for the by-election campaign.

An amendment he had backed to specify that the motion should not be used to discipline Jewish members attending synagogues that consider themselves Zionist was voted down by members.

Before the vote, he had also said he wanted to see the reference to a single Palestinian state changed, arguing: “I don’t believe we as a Green Party of England and Wales, or even the British government, should be deciding what the future settlement looks like.”

The Green Party has an internal democracy model, under which official party policy is decided by members. However, these positions are not necessarily included in the party’s general election manifestos.