Some people (yours truly included) are lucky enough to be able to do what they love as a job. Presumably, Matthew Rhys also adores acting, which he’s spun into a series of successful roles, not only including The Americans and Perry Mason (which was recently renewed for a second HBO season) but also less acting and more hosting on The Wine Show for Sundance Now. For three tipsy seasons thus far, Rhys has globe-trotted to different wine-tasting venues alongside Matthew Goode, James Purefoy, and Dominic West. Is it a good time? Sure. But there’s a lot of dubious endurance involved.
Rhys appears in W Magazine‘s second annual TV portfolio issue in a Hemingway-inspired photo, and he talks about his love of all things Ernest, including boats and booze. Speaking of the latter once more, Rhys says that it’s rather difficult to keep his feet underneath him during those long days of shooting because this is how it feels to shoot The Wine Show on location:
“Absolutely wasted. Wasted! That first season, it was such a shock, especially Italy. When they do wine tasting, Italians firmly believe that… You do not spit the wine… So, if you imagine we start at 8:30 in the morning, we would stop at like 6:30 in the afternoon — by midday, we were on our knees!”
That sounds slightly miserable, actually. I’d be asleep by 11:00 am for the day, most likely, unless it’s permissible to screw up one’s palate with coffee pairing, and even that might not help much with the consciousness factor. And Rhys admits that it was harder to keep it together by around 2:00 pm because producers began saying, “You’ve got to stop slurring, you’ve got to say something more than, ‘Oh, this is nice!'”
It’s a tough gig, but as they say, someone’s gotta do it. The Wine Show is available to stream on Acorn TV, AMC+, and Sundance Now, and you can read the rest of the W Magazine TV portfolio here.
(Via W Magazine)
