Donal O’Donoghue catches up with the A-lister in Monte Carlo to talk about his new UK series, Wild Bill, and a career less ordinary
The career of Lowe has many shades, from Brat Pack pin-up and an award-winning turn on The West Wing to playing a police officer in the UK Midlands. Donal O’Donoghue meets him
“Iget to say mother***ker on this show,” says Rob Lowe, a grin crinkling his cherubic features. “It’s the rst time I’ve ever cursed on screen in more than 30 years.” In the rollercoaster career of Rob Lowe, swearing on screen is probably one of the less dramatic chapters. Over four decades, he has been pinned up as a Brat Packer, partied through drink and drugs (he’s now sober for almost 30 years) and was the star of an infamous sex tape. On screen, he has also punched out some unusual roles in unexpected places, from sleazy
producer in Wayne’s World to press o cer Sam Seaborn in e West Wing and the startling Dr Startz in the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra. But top of the ‘what-the-hell’ heap has to be Wild Bill, ITV’s sh-out-of-water yarn in which he stars as a tough-talking US police chief relocated to the sleepy hamlet of Boston in Lincolnshire. “Yeah, there was no acting required,” quips Lowe. “I just showed up, this American out of water not understanding anything.”
We meet in a neighbourhood more suited to a Hollywood icon. “Woke up this morning, looked out the window and found myself in Monaco, one of the most beautiful places on the planet,” says Lowe, who was attending this year’s Monte Carlo TV Festival. Still devilishly handsome, the 55-year-old oozes charm and privilege with a permanent tan and muscles straining at a tight polo shirt. Before the press conference for Wild Bill, he watches himself intently on screen, his wife Sheryl seated among the journalists. If the subsequent Q&A feels like a performance, maybe it is. A few years back, Lowe adapted his best-selling memoirs, Stories I Tell My Friends (2011) and Love Life (2014) into a one-man stage show and now he’s reeling in his audience, joking about his rubbish Paul McCartney accent, conceding that he loves the limelight and that all actors have to be narcissists to survive.
e part of ‘Wild’ Bill Hixon was written especially for Lowe. “ at is always gratifying,” he says, “but then there is that moment when you read it. Now you’re thinking ‘What does this say about me because he is kind of an asshole?’ No, just kidding ( he laughs). I think what people mean when they say that about actors is that they are writing something that plays to that actor’s strengths. Wild Bill is very articulate and loves to hear the sound of his own voice and I think that’s what they meant and they did a great job. But the thing that really drew me to Wild Bill was that the tone is so unique. It’s a drama but not a traditional drama. It is funny but not a traditional comedy. It’s really dark but it’s not too dark. And it’s very sweet without being saccharine. But that’s what life is like.”
Lowe caused a bit of a ap when he chided Prince William for losing his hair and not doing anything to delay this loss. “I attribute that to the great phrase that we are two countries divided by a common language,” he explains. “ at was more of an indictment of my own vanity and narcissism. I’m a big William fan but I’m so insecure that if I see someone else losing their hair I just get jealous.”
Lowe has been married to Sheryl Berko for nearly 28 years and they have two sons, Matthew (26) and John (24). “ ey roast me all the time,” he says of his sons. “Our kids are put on this earth to give us perspective and it doesn’t matter who you are. I remember having lunch with Paul McCartney once and the song Obla-di Obla-da came on and Paul started singing it. en he looked at me and said ( Lowe
Our kids are put on this earth to give us perspective
affects an atrocious Liverpool accent) ‘I didn’t even know what it meant’ and his daughter says to him ‘Dad, you’re an idiot! You know it meant take drugs!’ And at that moment I knew that even if you’re Paul McCartney your kids are going to give you sh*t. By the way, my Paul McCartney makes him sound like he’s from Bombay so I apologise. ( Then he affects an atrocious sing-song Indian affect). Or maybe he is from India!”
Rob Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, son of a lawyer and a high-school teacher, who divorced when he was young. “I always knew that I wanted to be an actor,” he says. “I wanted to do it from the time I was eight years old. My earliest memories are of playing Batman, wearing the mask and acting opposite my brother who played Robin. I remember watching The Partridge Family and thinking I want to be David Cassidy. So I got the hair cut. Then I made backyard movies with an 8mm camera. I just always wanted to do some version of this. And I have been a comedy nerd from the very beginning. When I was a little kid I used to watch the original Saturday Night Live, I was obsessed with it. So I kind of saw myself as that from day one.”
In 1982, he was cast in The Outsiders, Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of the SE Hinton novel, a break-out role for Lowe and his costars, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise. “The Outsiders was the first movie with that great group of guys,” he says of the ensemble. “I was the same age I would have been had I been going off to college for the first time. So that’s my fraternity, The Greasers are my fraternity brothers. So if you’re in a fraternity you know what that is like. When you run into those people you know them in a way that very few other people do. So it’s like seeing my brothers again whenever I see the gang. Unfortunately, I don’t see so many of them these days. We have all gone our separate ways, but whenever we do, it’s cool.” Following The Outsiders came his Brat Pack films, with St Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night. He was partying hard, booze and drugs, and the release of a sex tape in 1989 very nearly flat-lined his career. But Lowe kept working. Bad Influence (1990) featured one of his best ever performances until The West Wing put him back in sitting-rooms everywhere. There were also parts that passed him by. “I remember watching Nip/Tuck and there is Dr Christian Troy (self-obsessed cosmetic surgeon) and I’m going ‘Wait a minute, how come I’m not . . . now that’s what I should be doing!’ So I called my agents, said I want to meet this Ryan Murphy person and they set up a meeting. I told Ryan about how much I loved Christian Troy. As I’m talking he’s getting paler and paler. And he says, ‘Rob, I wrote that for you!’ So my agents never sent me the pilot of Nip/Tuck which was written for me.”
Lowe says that roles closest to himself are Sam Seaborn and Chris Traeger ( Parks and Recreation). “I think I became more like Sam the more I played him and I think Aaron (Sorkin) wrote him more like me the more he saw me play him. And with Chris Traeger, I sometimes wondered how much of it was me and how much was Mike Schur [ Parks and Recreation writer]. When I wrapped the show Mike gave me a framed copy of the notes he took in our first meeting. In those notes he wrote ‘(Rob Lowe) says ‘literally’ all the time.’ I think one of the things that I bring to stuff is that I can find the funny in it. I remember auditioning for The West Wing. Everyone wanted to play Sam Seaborn. I came in and auditioned. Everyone laughed when I did it. And when it was done and on the networks it was like, I told you this scene was funny.” More recently, there was The Grinder, the Fox comedy drama in which Lowe played a self-obsessed Hollywood actor. “It took a lot of work,” says Lowe with that toothy grin.
So are all actors narcissistic? “You’d better be narcissistic,” he says. “The amount of rejection that actors get, no matter how good they are, is incredible. Being judged is an intrinsic part of the deal so what I think is that people develop a healthy narcissism over the years, which is the armour. But underneath that armour is the wild insecurity. I just think that is a natural part of the personalities who are suited to this job for the long haul. Competitiveness and narcissism are very close so you’d better have both because it is a brutal business.”
Next up for Lowe (a second season of Wild Bill has yet to be green-lit) is the spin-off of 911, the Ryan Murphy first responders’ procedural drama. “Ryan and I have been trying to do something together for almost 15 years,” he says. “So when they came to me with this new idea I was like ‘Oh yeah I’m in!’ It’s a kid’s dream, running through fire. Come on!” He also says he’d jump at playing Sam Seaborn again. “The West Wing and Parks and Recreation are the two shows that everybody talks about rebooting.” For now there is no sign of either show being resurrected but as the career of Rowe Lowe proves, in Hollywood you never know what might happen next. And there are always the re-runs. “I cannot tell you how good it makes me feel to walk into a room where my boys are watching TV and Parks and Recreation is on,” he says. “It’s the only time in my career that that has ever happened.”
Underneath that armour is the wild insecurity