When Gwilym Lee signed on to take over from Joseph Fiennes, playing England’s transformative football manager Gareth Southgate in James Graham’s remounted and rewritten play Dear England at the National this year, his dad came up with a joke. “He said you’ve got to de-Fiennes the role, or re-de-Fiennes it,” smiles Lee, 41, his chiseled jaw now adorned with a Southgate-esque beard.
He has also been fitted for the manager’s famous waistcoat and has a “small [dental] bridge” to replicate his horsey teeth. “In a moment of high stakes in rehearsals it pinged out of my mouth the other day, but I managed to catch it and pop it back in,” Lee adds. Good save, I say. “I’ve got denture glue now,” he frowns, “which is a little glimpse into the future.”
