Matthew Rhys is not a pessimist. No matter how many Americans might mistake Welsh humilty for a morose outlook, and however much he might start to believe it, the 51-year-old TV man of the moment just has his feet on the ground.
Nominated for two acting Emmys at the 2026 ceremony, he’s made history as the first – alongside Jason Batemen – actor to get a hat-trick of nods for roles in comedy, drama and limited series.
“Can that be my intro, please? ‘History-making Welsh star’”, joked the Cardiff-born star of Apple’s Widow’s Bay – a hit with critics and viewers alike whose socks were knocked off by the 10-part blend of weird, spooky, scary scenes mixed with dry wit, slapstick and really funny moments. His tongue-in-cheek demeanour is him all over and I don’t have to bring him down to earth with a bang.
His reaction to his double nomination this year – Emmys’ first in three decades – is genuine. “It was very surreal, very surreal,” he said. “It’s still making me go, ‘Oh, bloody hell, that’s weird.’ And I still can’t quite believe it myself. And then obviously the Welsh pessimist in me goes, ‘Well, this is it, this is the height of it all, it’s downhill from now on. It’ll never be better than this.’”
“Nothing brings you down-to-earth like a Welsh sister”
His Welsh upbringing certainly plays a part. Matthew grew up in Whitchurch, went to Ysgol Gyfun Glantaf and has an older sister, Rachel. “Nothing can pull you down faster than a Welsh older sister, and will let you know exactly where your station is and where you should be,” he says.
“I just think it’s intrinsic in us, and I’m sure you can trace it back to moments in history when [as a nation] we’ve been downtrodden. But there’s this sense that the second you believe your own hype or think you’re chocolate [a favourite saying of his dad, Glyn] it’ll be the moment your entire social circle turns on you and lets you know that you’re not.”
But for a moment there’s a glimpse of the root of this modesty, with Matthew explaining the long periods out of work earlier in his career keep him grounded. “I’ve had enough years – bad years out of work, that’s what keeps you humble.
“Even when I thought I was doing well and became successful, I still found myself out of work for long periods of time. There’s no rhyme or reason to this business, and it’ll pull the rug from under you in a heartbeat, just to let you know that it can. I think that keeps you very grounded as well. You just know it’s very cyclical.”
“It makes me wince”
His cycle is in top gear right now. The 2026 Emmy nominations follow his 2018 gong for The Americans, he has a second series of Widow’s Bay to film in 2027, he’s back to the UK soon for the BBC drama Dragon Slayers as the former Sunday Times editor Harry Evans whose paper broke some of the biggest stories of the 1970s, and he’s about to take Mark Jenkins’ one-man play Playing Burton off-Broadway. That’s not to mention he’s the Welsh language voice of Han Solo in Star Wars: A New Hope due to air on S4C this Christmas.
The pre-Emmy buzz too means he’s everywhere. If you enjoy TV and celebrity social media there’s no doubt your algorithm has fed you a podcast here and cover-shoot there of the Welsh star.
A tongue-in-cheek reaction of “I’m bored of myself!” belies somewhat of a more sensible, refreshing answer about overexposure. “I grew up loving old movie stars where you knew really very little about them and if you did it would be because of an interview they did with Parkinson or something like that. In this day and age people are taking pictures of their lunch and I’m like: ‘Oh my God, why? We need to scale it back.’
“I’m aware slightly of the overexposure of it at the moment, it makes me wince a little bit. I think publicists think if you’re not always in the news, or if you’re not present, then you’re dead, and I disagree. I think you have to go away for a while so that people can accept you in a different project.
“Actors are overexposed now and people know too much about them and what they do. Ultimately you’re always asking an audience to suspend belief about you, to be able to say, ‘Right, now believe I’m a media mogul mass murderer,’ or ‘Now believe I’m the mayor of a New England town.’
“So if someone has just been looking at you eating your lunch or whatever on their phone, the leap is now bigger. Where I think the less they know about you, the easier the transition is to kind of go, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll believe he is this person,’ as opposed to going, ‘Oh, I know everything about this person, he’s nothing like this.’”
“You can’t say that!”
Even his acting heroes are at odds, like his current pre-Emmy social media presence versus his under-the-radar, off-screen life with fellow actor – and Emmy nominee – Keri Russell, and knack of being able to inhabit his roles fully.
As Beast in Me’s Nile Jarvis, Matthew disappears and a chilling on-screen figure takes his place. Widow’s Bay’s Tom Loftis is the polar opposite, a little wimpy but ultimately someone who, reticently, does the right thing.
For the 51-year old his acting idols are “neck and neck” – Richard Burton and Sir Anthony Hopkins. “They hold different things [for me],” he said. “Burton was the one I fully feel was the first pioneer, the real big one, to go, ‘Right, well, I’m going to conquer America,’ who had that kind of very un-Welsh hubris and confidence to say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got the talent and I’m going to do it, watch this, everyone.’
“Which to me was kind of amazing, I’d think, ‘Oh my God, you can’t say that!’ He [Burton] lived his life as large and as luxurious as he wanted on his terms, which again, to me, was very un-Welsh. And then Hopkins, just the performances that man has turned out are just unbelievable, still staggeringly good.”
I suggest his current run of roles and accolades and CV stretching back to the mid-90s sees him as the greatest living Welsh actor of the moment, maybe even pipping Anthony Hopkins. “You can’t say that,” he gasps. “Anthony Hopkins isn’t dead and he’s got two Oscars and two Emmys!”
Matthew’s inspirations aren’t all brooding, Shakespeare-reciting Welshmen. His self-actualised branding as a “child of the [Monty] Python era” soaked up the Welshness of it all via Terry Jones. And that daft influence on him is no more evident than when he launches into an imagined two-handed conversation between him and friend Michael Sheen bickering about playing Owain Glyndwr.
The 51-year-old joked that he’d spoken to Sheen to ask to play Glyndwr in the Gary-Owen-penned Welsh National Theatre play Owain and Henry at the Wales Millennium Centre this November.
Rhys says: “I said, ‘I’m not—I’m not doing it unless I play Owain Glyndŵr.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m playing Owain Glyndŵr!’
“I said, ‘Well, I want to play Owain Glyndŵr!’ ‘Well, you can’t play Owain—and me!’
“Well, I want to play Owain Glyndŵr!’ “We can’t alternate evenings, but we can play Owain Glyndŵr, can’t we?’
“But,” he quips, “I’ve grown the beard now.”
But there’s no real rivalry, he says, despite “constant humiliation” from Sheen. “I always know whatever it is I think I’m doing well at, Sheen’s always like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve just taken over the Welsh National Theatre.’ So, you always know it’s like whatever you’re doing, times it by 10, and that’s what Sheen’s probably doing.”
The Welsh tendency for humility creeps back in slightly. He finds awards shows stressful and when he won back in 2018 he forgot to thank his parents as the giant cinema-screen timer opposite the stage counted down his speech. Celebration was a warm beer and a plane back to work the next day.
This year he says he’s going to get “leathered”, hopefully after making any speeches. With awards season, parties, events, red carpets, and projects in the diary for the foreseeable, what on earth could Matthew make room for in his professional life?
“We are small but mighty”
With awards season, parties, events, red carpets, projects in the diary for the foreseeable, what on earth could Matthew Rhys make room for in his professional life.
Well it circles back round to Wales of course. “The big historical drama, the Owain Glyndŵr story, that’s still the one I’m working on. It’s almost impossible to make because everyone I bring it to goes, ‘Oh my God, this is expensive! This is a load of white men shouting at each other! Angry white men shouting.’”
Jokes aside, it shows someone with a deep passion for his home country and its rich history and how we see ourselves, the Welsh, in the modern world. “It [Owain Glyndwr story] is a defining moment in our identity,” Matthew says.
“You know, if you go back far enough – 300 odd years before Owain, Llywelyn had come to a bad end, so there was this resurgence. When there’s some kind of resurgence [of Welsh achievement], be it ‘the Welsh are coming to Hollywood’ or ‘the Welsh are doing great at sport’, or the Olympics or Commonwealth Games, it redefines us.
“It unites us and redefines our identity. And that’s what he [Owain] did for this brief moment, what he did give at that time, he gave the hardest thing, he gave hope. That we can overcome huge odds, which is what I think we always do as a small nation.
“You think about our rugby, and I’m sorry to go into cliché, but statistically, we should never beat England, it doesn’t make sense, and yet we do, there are times we do, and you have this moment of a hope where you kind of go: ‘We are small but mighty.’”
- Matthew Rhys is nominated at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards for lead actor in a comedy (Widow’s Bay) and lead actor in a limited or anthology series (Beast in Me). He’s already won lead actor in a drama for The Americans in 2018. The awards take place on Monday, September 14.
