INTERVIEW WITH PAUL RHYS WHO PLAYS MELBA

Who is Melba in Tip Toe?

At first, I felt like somebody who is like Melba should be playing this role. That should be a Manchester fixture. People say what is Melba? I go to say a Manchester drag queen. And that’s wrong. He is Leo’s great friend, propping up the end of the bar at Spit and Polish. He was an enormous challenge because he’s really nothing like me at all. He’s a genius! I was determined that this was a person, should the circumstances of his life been different, who would be running half the world. I think Melba is just a genius. I was so happy to do him and let him go. His drag is a statement of rebellion as much as anything else. 

He’s a defiant person…

Pure defiance. I remember the 90s well, and there was prejudice on every single side. Peter Hoar, the beautiful director, said to me, you do know, Paul, that you’ll be able to open Melba’s on Canal St and that’ll be that. Not a bad idea actually!

How much do you know of the evolution of Canal St?

Not much at all. I’ve been up there a bit in the past. I was more on the outskirts of Punk, I loved music and came up to Manchester for The Smiths, The Hacienda. So part of Melba is, I suppose quite me. I love a bit of intelligent provocation. There isn’t nearly enough of it. 

How excited were you to work with Russell?

Terribly. And I must say, I think this is his masterpiece of all masterpieces. Not only the timing of it. Not only is it a considerable work of art, an important piece of writing, the like of which is rare. It’s also within Russell’s own canon, his legacy piece. It’s the truest thing that he’s ever written, in my opinion and I can’t think of it being equalled by anyone else, really. 

Although it has the look and feel of a Russell T Davies show, it also feels quite atypical of his work as the moral faultlines just keep dancing about so rapidly underfoot?

All the time. That’s what is so brilliant about it. And funnily enough, Melba seems to remain as this constant, this conscience throughout the whole thing. Says it like it is, and is right and accurate most of the time. He’s a Cassandra, a modern prophet in a way. I think Russell speaks truthfully through Melba about what he really feels. I just think he’s done the most astonishing job with Tip Toe. It was the best time, the shoot, the crew up in Manchester, everyone was so committed to it. It’s a great bit of writing. Russell said how well I’d done with it and I told him, you could train a dog to do it, the writing is so perfect. It’s easy to act when it’s great writing. 

Can you talk me through the scene that’s being used as the first trailer, when Leo and Melba are on Canal St talking about the state of the queer world?

It’s Melba’s birthday. He sits at the end of the bar, as he always does every afternoon and every evening. Leo forgets it’s his birthday, then remembers, they go on a bar crawl and eventually end up sitting, exhausted on the street. Melba talks about the present condition of life for LGBTQ+ people. More than that, for anybody of any sensibility, of any refinement. It’s a brutal time in many ways. So he hits on all sorts of injustice. 

He brings in the economic injustice of our times, which feels like a crucial axis to add to a drama like this. 

Absolutely. Melba lives on nothing but love to get by. He’s got it with Leo. They love one another. He adores Leo and Leo adores him, in all sorts of ways. Melba’s depth and analytical punch is revealed in this world, the state of gay life, the safety of gay life. He says he used to walk into any room and go ‘Ta-da!’ and now he just walks in on tip toes. That’s all new, because Melba is fearless. He would take Clive on and take him out. I want Melba on my side. 

It’s one of Russell’s great writing strengths, to never present gay people as victims?

They are never victims, no. The victimhood is easy to get because there is so much oppression, intolerance, cruelty and Melba is a survivor of that and would give it back. That scene was so beautiful to shoot. Terrifying of course, too. At the read-through Russell said you could hear a pin drop and I told him, that’s because it is the truth of where we are. I always have a problem with the pendulum metaphor, of attitudes coming backwards and forwards. No. They always move forwards, it’s part of nature. Weeds will make their way through Oxford Street if you let them. Nature will always move forward. Where it will go next is the debate, but it’s never backwards. It might be much better. But it’s not going back. 

What do you think Tip Toe tells us about modern masculinity?

A lot! Through several generations. You get down to a 16 year old kid, watching how he’s shaped by his relationship with his father and his mother, and then not really, too. There’s a gang of boys, who knows what they’re being fed? The two brothers are so interesting. Completely different and yet from the same family. There is a crisis in masculinity. It’s a catastrophe the way some of it is going. But I think in the script there is hope. It’s brutal. I’ve never seen anything like some of the later scenes. It was hard to read, let alone to watch. But I don’t believe it’s utterly grim. Things move on. We’re not necessarily going back to something grim. We’re in the middle of something incredibly difficult but out of that could come something absolutely magical. It is possible.

Who would you most like to see Tip Toe?

Russell’s writing, and particularly in this case, is human. It’s about what he knows. But filtered through something much more universal. So I can’t think of anyone that shouldn’t watch this show, for numerous reasons. It’s an almost completely democratic drama.