We chatted to Michael about the play, how he balances everything and more importantly how does he manage to switch off.
Over the years he’s wowed us both on-screen and on-stage and now he is gearing up for one of the biggest roles of his career. (Image: Welsh National Theatre)
Over the years he’s wowed us both on-screen and on-stage and now Michael Sheen is gearing up for one of the biggest roles of his career. The 57-year-old will be leading the Welsh National Theatre and Wales Millennium Centre co-production of Owain & Henry this November.
Playing Owain Glyndŵr while co-directing the new play, written by acclaimed Welsh playwright Gary Owen, the co-production runs at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff from November 5 to 28, 2026.
We chatted to Michael about the play, how he balances everything and more importantly how does he manage to switch off. From superstar gigs to cosy pubs, find out What’s On in Wales by signing up to our newsletter here
Just months away from the launch of Owain & Henry Michael says it is absolutely “terrifying as well as exciting” that their second Welsh National Theatre production is so close. Although, it was never meant to be their second, and instead it was part of the reason the actor chose to launch the theatre company.
He said: “Our Town was never meant to be the opening production of Welsh National Theatre—this was. The vision for the company sort of grew up around this play. When I was here at the Millennium Centre doing Nye—the Tim Price play for the National Theatre—I was given a copy of this play at the point that it was at then.
“I’d heard that Gary had been working on a play about Owain Glyndŵr, but it was the first time I got to read it. Graham here at the Millennium Centre had a copy of it as well, and he said, ‘Look, we’re looking at maybe doing something with this, what do you think?’ It was around the time where I was starting to take seriously the idea of creating a new Welsh National Theatre.
“I read the play, and it just made me so excited, just as a piece of theatre, just right on the page. The fact that it was about this story that’s never really been told before—certainly not like this, on this scale. Because of what I’d been thinking about with the launch of the company, but also the experience of doing Nye here; having done this new Welsh play about a kind of famous figure within our culture, and an important figure in our culture, on that stage and seeing the reaction from the audience, the response, you know, sold out, people really responding to it.
“It made me really excited about the idea of doing something else along those lines. Another play, a new play about a character that means so much to us as a culture and speaks to us in so many different ways, and is bold and exciting and theatrical and all those things, with a good part for me as well!
“So it became sort of central really to the launch of the company, the foundation of the company. I was only, because I then started working with Francesca Goodridge on doing something together, and out of that came Our Town, and eventually I thought, ‘Well, this is too good to not be part of the Welsh National Theatre,’ so it ended up being our first production. But Owain and Henry has always been really central to the development of the company, not only this production.”
Over the years, Michael has played iconic characters and now joining the list will be Owain Glyndwr, the last native born Prince of Wales. The actor explained that when picking and auditioning for roles, they have to matter to him and he’s got to feel passionate about the character.
He said: “Well, it’s got to matter. If it matters to me and it moves me, then hopefully there’s a chance that it’ll, you know, be similar for an audience. I think that’s really important. Also, even more so when it’s obviously about us, about our history, about our identity as a nation, because we don’t often get the chance to tell stories at that kind of scale.
On whether he could relate to the character of Owain, Michael said: “He was a lot older than people thought! I mean, that was good for me, because I’m not a young man anymore.
“He’s such a very unlikely rebel really. His life was one of great privilege really… certainly for Welsh nobility at the time. He had quite a life of comfort and ease for a long time. So he was a man who was relatively wealthy, he had a secure family life, and then he has this argument with a neighbour, essentially, and that develops into a sense of great injustice. So he’s a sort of reluctant rebel, really. I can relate to that in some ways.
“I didn’t start my life off trying thinking that I was going to become a sort of, as people call, ‘activist’, but I’ve sort of fallen into it in some ways. So I can relate to that, and I can see that —certainly in our version of the story—he feels the weight of how his actions are going to impact his people, the people of Wales, and taking that responsibility really seriously, and being full of doubt, and very aware of what people project onto him, and what other people want him to be, and whether he feels he’s up to that. So I can relate to a lot of this sort of stuff.”
In recent years, we have seen Michael make a slight move away from screen acting as he has taken on a various other projects, including BBC’s most recent documentary Buried, where he investigated a decades-long toxic waste scandal. He will also soon be fronting the popular puzzle show House of Games and will be competing in this year’s Celebrity Traitors which is due to air in the autumn.
Speaking of what he enjoys doing the most, Michael said: “Part of what I’ve tried to do over the last sort of 20 years maybe now, is to bring a lot of the different strands in my life together. So, as an actor, looking for good parts to play and being involved in good projects, alongside that, I was also becoming more and more involved in community projects. Trying to shine a light on things that other people are doing, particularly around Wales, and becoming therefore drawn into more and more talking about what has happened in the past, and how that affects where we’re at today.
“When I did The Passion, for instance, in Port Talbot, I got to know a bit more about what was going on in the community and the challenges people were facing, and I would sort of ask questions, basic questions, like, ‘Well, why haven’t you got any funding? Why is there no funding for this when there’s funding for whatever going on?’
“As you start to ask those questions, inevitably you start to have to put it into the framework, the context, of what’s happened in the past. So my understanding of history and how it affects the present, and the challenges that are going on at sort of grassroots level in communities, all of that over the last sort of 10-20 years I’ve tried to bring together.
“So the projects I do now as an actor, or as a director, or as a producer, whether it’s documentaries or dramas, or community work/activism, all that—I now see it as all part of one thing, so I don’t have a favourite.
“The point really was to try and find a way to do it all as one kind of thing, so it’s not all separate and fractured. I feel like I’ve sort of got to that point now. I feel like it’s all a piece now, which is what I was hoping to be able to get to ultimately. So that’s really sort of important to me.”
Whilst juggling so many different roles, we asked Michael how he tends to switch off at the end of the day. Although, with two young children it doesn’t sound he has much time to relax.
He said: “I wouldn’t say it’s switching off, but it’s very easy to put everything else aside when you’ve got a four-year-old and a six-year-old who just are on from the minute you’re there at home.
“So, even though it’s sort of exhausting, as an older father now, it is exhausting having young children, but it really helps to completely switch off from other things and focus on them. Because that’s what they need, that’s what they want, and it’s what I want to give them. So that makes it a lot easier in that sense. It doesn’t make me any less tired, though!”
Owain & Henry runs at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff from November 5 to 28, 2026. You can find more information and buy tickets here.
