FAULT Feature: comedian and ITV’s ‘Plebs’ star Tom Rosenthal

Tom Rosenthal stars in upcoming ITV2 comedy ‘Plebs’, the story of three young men who move to the big city – Ancient Rome. Don’t expect a history lesson but if you like your comedy fast and loose, look no further. On that note, FAULT caught up with Tom, whose off-the-hip humour had us laughing all the way to the forum – mainly to buy him a new toga. Confused? Scared? That’s understandable. Read on for a rare treat – an unguarded, thoroughly enjoyable interview:

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Photo by Louis Sheridan

FAULT: Hey Tom, how are you? What have you been doing today?

Tom: I’m good man, mainly just talking to people about Plebs and doing some Voiceovers. Oh god I’m doing it for Fairy, I’ve done it seven times so far I think I’m going to have to do it again as well, It’s just like a 20 second advert of a woman putting washing in a dishwasher and I’m just like, “Fairy! Try new tablets from Fairy”.

You sound like a natural!

If you want to talk about Fairy, I’ll fucking nail it mate. I’m the Fairy Pro now. I know everything there is to know about Fairy.

Right, enough washing up for now let’s talk ‘Plebs’. Tell me about the new show.

It’s a sitcom about 3 young guys who move to the city, but the city just happens to be Ancient Rome. It’s just like a normal story of young people moving to a big city trying to settle in but you know they’re all in Togas and obviously there’s Centurions around and people are getting beheaded and stuff.

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So we’re talking about Ancient Rome’s answer to ‘The Inbetweeners?

Yeah basically, maybe slightly older than the Inbetweeners kids, obviously they don’t have university but it’s that kind of student age and they’ve just moved to a big city thinking they’re the dogs bollocks but it’s pretty fucking scary and they don’t know what the hell they’re doing and yeah they get up to all sorts of shit. Because it’s in Rome they can obviously do stuff that you can’t really do now, like go to orgies and live gladiators and have sex with your cousin and all these terrible things.

Do any of the characters take part in these… events?

Yeah there are all sorts of taboo things that were fine in Ancient Rome that we get up to, pretty much everything.

Moving from the last question carefully… can you draw any similarities between yourself and your on screen character?

I think the rest of the cast would say I was most like my character but I guess I did come to London University and I suppose it is a bit dirty. You know me, it’s always an orgy, an orgy a week for me. Sunday is an orgy day. My character Marcus is much more reluctant to get involved in stuff than my mate Stylax who’s played by Joel Fry. He’s always like “yeah let’s go and do this”, this awful thing. Or “let’s go and have sex with these girls” and I’m always a bit like “ahhh… no… I don’t really wanna do that” So I’m a bit like that in real life I suppose, I mean I go out sure, but I’m not banging babes left right and centre because I’m scared that they might hate me you know?

You’re ruining the ruthless rebel image…

I mean I will be, after this interview comes out I’ll bang anyone!

Any particularly hilarious moments whilst filming?

There are a lot of animals involved in Plebs and it’s always funny when a man’s chasing a cat trying to make it stay in the same place. Oh and I did a naked scene with Danny Dyer, which is obviously quite funny.

 

Danny Dyer is quite a character, what was it like hanging around with him?

Yeah it was amazing! Exactly what you’d expect, if not better. He’s genuinely just Danny Dyer, he’s just complete pure testosterone. Danny Dyer’s deadliest men, I was in… no, Danny Dyer’s Football Factory, that’s what it was. He’s just “Awright Tom awrrr” all the time. That’s how he punctuates his sentences, just with “awrrr”, “know what I mean arhhh” It was great, yeah: brilliant.

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Any particularly embarrassing moments whilst filming?

Oh loads of embarrassing moments for me, there was one episode where I was wearing like a skin tight toga it’s like the new fashion, I get this yellow toga and you can just see everything, so I was just basically walking around with my little willy out essentially. It was a visible lump. The extras were openly mocking my ladylike frame and I just had to take it. It’s the price that I paid. There’s a lot of nakedness and a lot of embarrassment.

Judging by Twitter and the parody accounts, you’ve built up quite a following from ‘Friday Night Dinner’, do you think they’ll be even more adoring of you after seeing your “Ladylike frame?”

My little yellow lump? Yeah big time! Especially after saying “I’ll bang anyone”. The thing is, ‘Friday Night Dinner’ it appeals to more sort of families than it does to our age group, so I don’t really have girls of my age coming up to me going “Oh yeah you’re Johnny Goodman!” I get sort of fourteen year olds going “oh my god!” and that’s not right, that’s not legal you’d get in trouble.

Yeah we’re not in Ancient Rome now… moving on from there, what’s next? Can you see yourself doing more sitcoms? You’re doing quite a bit of stand-up, where’s that going?

Yeah I’ve got a new Edinburgh Show in the making, I’m writing quite a lot about filming Plebs, the whole experience out there. That’s in August so just doing live gigs working towards that. A fair bit of work that goes into an Edinburgh Show really, so I’m just doing the normal Comedian thing, Trying to write a few T.V shows, playing Playstation, just living life and having Pret A Mangers… enjoying being alive really.

Tom Rosenthal for FAULT Magazine
Photo by Louis Sheridan

Keeping it real?

Keeping it damn real, trying to find a girlfriend!

 

No doubt you’ll find one after this interview!

Yeah anyone, everyone, send me your picture I’ll do a Jason Manford on you!
That’s probably the best place to end it really….

 

‘Plebs’ starts in the UK this Monday on ITV2 at 10pm. For more information and to watch the trailer, click here

Interview by Louis Sheridan