With the return of SAS Rogue Heroes for a second season, cast member Jack Barton talks about portraying a real-life SAS hero and his fascination with complex characters
The second series of SAS Rogue Heroes – the beloved BBC drama that charts the origins of the renowned special forces unit – sees Jack Barton step into the boots of British SAS officer John Tonkin: valiant, strong, cool-headed.
But when filming started, Barton felt anything but. “Honestly, I was bricking it,” he says. “The first week I think I called my mum more than she’s ever gotten calls in her life.” On set in Croatia, reading lines penned by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight (“he gives such energy and such vibrancy to the whole script”) and acting opposite the likes of powerhouse performers Connor Swindells, Jack O’Connell and Dominic West, Barton was – understandably – a bundle of nerves.
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Adding to that was the pressure of playing a real-life SAS hero. “I was a bit scared to be honest, because of the scale of [Tonkin’s] contributions to the war effort – that made it a bit daunting,” says Barton. To get into character, he studied up. “I did a lot of research into him. He was the most incredible guy [with an] amazing story and seemingly endlessly humble about it all, but survived so much throughout the war. I loved digging into his life.”
But it wasn’t until speaking with Tonkin’s daughter that Barton understood the real weight of his undertaking. “I was lucky enough to have a chat with Jane Storey, his daughter, just as we were starting with filming, and then I suddenly had this huge sense of – this is someone that means, and meant, a huge deal to someone who is alive and I want to get this right.”
"I still feel very lucky and nothing is for certain"
From his breakout role as David Nelson in the highly acclaimed coming-of-age romance series Heartstopper to a part in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things and now his turn in SAS Rogue Heroes, 29-year-old Barton has come a long way from his humble start on stage. “I remember doing a play when I was 13 – we did the Dracula Spectacular show, and I just loved it. I was Dracula, and it was so much fun,” says Barton. Acting was “something I had that was just part of me… It always just fulfilled me. I had a lot of energy, creatively, growing up. So it was my outlet.”
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Barton says he’s drawn to complicated characters with interesting backstories. “I'm quite interested in characters who have some level of torment or some conflict within them,” he says. His dream role? “I mean I’d love to play Macbeth. That’s a sort of wanky answer, but I would. I’ve always wanted to play Macbeth. Again, going to this place of conflicted, slightly tortured characters who are a bit dark.”
Despite his growing success as an actor and the promising direction his career is heading in, Barton isn’t taking anything for granted. “I don’t know if I’m at that place [of calling himself a ‘real’ actor] at all,” he says. I still think to myself if I get a job like SAS or anything, I still feel very lucky and nothing is for certain – so I don’t know if I’ve had that moment yet, I hope it comes soon.”
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