Peter O’Toole might have put the fear into him but Owain Yeoman was never going to give up the day job. Donal O’Donoghue meets the Welsh star of hit US show, The Mentalist.
"There’s so much bulls**t written about me", says Owain Yeoman, the 33-year-old Welsh star of The Mentalist. "Number one is that I did an accountancy degree in Harvard. The truth is I didn’t. Also I can speak a little bit of French but I’m no Bradley Cooper (Yeoman’s co-star in TV comedy Kitchen Confidential), who is amazing."
This much we do know about Yeoman: He once played boggle with Brad Pitt on the set of Troy (he lost); He had hoped to do a PhD thesis in English literature at Harvard (subject: the link between suicide and creativity); and he is very, very tall: six foot four inches tall or "about nine foot in acting terms."
Fortunately, when we meet Yeoman is sitting down – he does stand up at one point to show just how tall he is – and toying with some French words. We are at the Monte Carlo TV Festival after all and the actor feels he should at least practice the local lingo even if ‘bonjour’, ‘merci’ and ‘La Rouge Jean’ (that’s Red John, the serial killer from The Mentalist) is as good as it gets.
Returns in The Mentalist
An affable chap, Yeoman was once married to Lucy Davis, who played the receptionist in The Office, but he now lives and works full-time in Los Angeles. "On set I’m the class clown but then my grandma used to always say, ‘you’ve got to laugh or else you’ll cry’", he says. "I think that when you’re in a show dealing with homicide and all these depressing themes it’s important to keep it light and bright."
The Mentalist manages to put a new spin on the hackneyed genre of crime procedural. Rather than relying on DNA or any of that forensic mumbo-jumbo, this is about a psychic who helps the California Bureau of Innvestigation (CBI) catch the bad guys. It’s sort of Murder She Wrote meets Supernatural, with smooth Aussie actor Simon Baker as the mentalist, Patrick Jane. But he’s just part of a tight-knit team of more traditional law officers, with Yeoman playing CBI Special Agent Wayne Rigsby.
When he was first cast in the role the lad from Chepstow suggested doing it with a Welsh accent. "I did make the joke in the beginning that it might be fun to play [Rigsby] with a Welsh accent", says Yeoman, whose accent is now more Valley than the Valleys. "Of course you could never make that work: Special Agent Wayne Rigsby from Cardiff. But we have an Australian playing the lead, we have a Korean [Tim Kang] and a Welsh person. The problem with justifying a foreigner in a show is that you have to have a whole backstory, so ultimately it’s about the best person for the role. I believe they got the best actor for the role of Rigsby, but that’s just me!"
Cocky you might think (except he was sporting a cheeky smile when he said that), but Yeoman was a budding thespian as far back as nursery school, when he’d regularly raid the dressing-up box. "I’d take all the costumes out and carry them with me to the top of the climbing frame", he once revealed. Even so he opted to study English literature at Oxford and subsequently submitted his PhD brief to Harvard but failed to get the funding. He then reconsidered his career and decided that if he was to be serious about acting he needed to change tack. He successfully applied to study drama at RADA and supported himself financially with a job in the bank. Then he got lucky.
"My first professional audition was for Troy", he says. "It was a big deal to go from doing school plays to the set of a $50 million movie with Brad Pitt and Peter O’Toole. O’Toole said to me: ‘I have been in the business for 50 years and I’ve never done a job this big so it’s downhill from here for you’. And I was like ‘that’s pretty intimidating’, but I was very singleminded about the fact that I wanted to stay in LA. My training was in theatre but I’ve realised more and more that in showbusiness, the business element is film and TV and Los Angeles is the Mecca for that."
After the epic Troy, it was back to earth for Midsomer Murders (his mother’s favourite show) before he relocated to LA and the audition trail. After Kitchen Confidential, he scored a fringe role on The Nine and played a cyborg in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. "It’s not often that you get the chance to get your head blown off and then put it on again", he says gleefully. "That was fun although I didn’t get the chance to say ‘I’ll be back’ which was a shame." But he did get to be part of a crack ensemble in the visceral HBO war drama, Generation Kill which was created by the team from The Wire.
However, The Mentalist was the turning point: a critical and popular hit over its three seasons with its fourth arriving on these shores on Wednesday. It kicks off with a bang. Or rather the aftermath of a bang: the shot that downed ‘Red John’, the killer who murdered Patrick Jane’s wife and daughter. The problem is that Jane has nailed the wrong man, having been set up by his quarry. No, he has to rely on his mental skills and trickery to avoid jail. "This is definitely not the last that we have seen of Red John", says Yeoman. "In season four we’ll realise that more and more Red John has a whole society of people working for him. He is a cult figure and for Patrick Jane he embodies evil. Like I said, he has not disappeared."
Yeoman’s parents, Hilary and Mike, watch The Mentalist at home in Chepstow. "Like any protective parents they were nervous of me going into a business with a 98% failure rate but I’ve noticed as I’ve got more and more work, they’re OK with saying: ‘My son, the actor’. Now they will ring me up and ask what’s happening on the show and I’ll tell them that I’m not allowed to tell them. But they love the show and I think that they are very proud of me. I am very grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to pursue a business like this."
Yeoman says that he loves the showbiz life, despite the media interest in his marriage break-up in January 2011. "I always say that as an actor you’re only as good as your audience and to have an audience is fabulous", he says. "In any case, we live in a culture where people generally don’t come up to you in the street and tell you that you’re rubbish. So when people approach me publicly I never think that a bad thing. But we also live in an age when people confuse actors with celebrities. People want to know who so-and-so is sleeping with and all those personal details. I’m concerned with being an actor, a good actor: I’m less concerned with the idea of being famous."
Who’s who in The Mentalist
Patrick Jane (Simon Baker)
Jane is the Mentalist, a brainiac who could probably predict the numbers for next week’s lottery, except money is not what makes him tick. Jane’s only goal in life is to get Red John, the serial kiler who murdered his wife and daughter. Their paths crossed in Jane’s pre-Mentalist life when he earned a buck as a fraudulent psychic. At the end of season three he bags the wrong man. And now he’s facing the jailhouse himself.
Senior Special Agent Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney)
The leader of the ‘Serious Crime Unit’, Lisbon has her hands full keeping loose cannon Jane on deck. But she does appreciate his unique skills and they make a rather dynamic duo: with a frisson of romance. Like Jane, she has a fractured past as her mother was killed in a drunk-driving accident and her father is an alcoholic. Her team is responsible for the Red John case.
Special Agent Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman)
Rigsby is the team’s arson specialist. He also lit a fire with colleague Grace Van Pelt and against regulations the two were seeing each other in secret. Eventually, Van Pelt pulled their plug on their relationship to protect Rigsby’s career prospects. They remain friends. Like others in the unit he has a colourful lineage: his father was a career criminal and member of a notorious biker gang and Rigsby has saved his father’s bacon from the clink on a few occasions.
Special Agent Kimball Cho (Tim Kang)
Although secretly known as ‘Ernie to Rigsby’s ‘Bert’, Cho is no muppet. He frequently calls Jane’s bluff, seeing through his parlour games and sleight of hand. A good friend of Rigsby (hence the nickname), he used to be in a street gang and served in the US Special Forces. His time as a juvenile delinquent means he empathises with young tearaways.
Special Agent Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti)
Van Pelt has strong religious beliefs and unlike Jane believes in the unknown and the power of psychics. Inevitably, they get to butt heads on such matters. Her taste in men is somewhat suspect as she was engaged to FBI Agent Craig O'Laughlin, whom she killed after he revealed himself as one of Red John's accomplices.
Red John
Jane’s nemesis is so elusive that we don’t even have an actor listed as playing him. His kill list is reputedly over 28 – including Jane’s spouse and daughter – and he spends most of his time taunting or baiting the Mentalist. He did save Jane’s life from a copy-cat killer but at the end of season three his plan to have his adversary jailed for murder backfired.
Donal O'Donoghue
