Exclusive Interview: Oliver Dench Talks Hotel Portofino, the Art of Collaboration, the Show’s Timely Subject Matter, and More

British actor Oliver Dench has quickly emerged as one of the industry’s most sought-after leading men. He’s best known for the dynamic characters that he’s brought to life in projects including Ride, The Athena, and Pandora.

Currently, he stars as Lucian Ainsworth in Hotel Portofino. Set in the breathtakingly beautiful resort town of Portofino, this must-see drama is one of personal awakening in the aftermath of World War I and of the liberating influence of Italy’s enchanting culture, climate, and cuisine on elite British travelers. Hotel Portofino tells the story of the Ainsworth family that has relocated from Britain to open an upscale hotel on the Italian coastline.

As elite guests like the imperious Lady Latchmere check into the hotel, matriarch Bella Ainsworth tries to keep up with their constant demands. Mingling commences among guests in an exhilarating cocktail of drama, glamour, and mystery at Hotel Portofino.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Oliver about his thriving career, Hotel Portofino, the art of collaboration, the timely subject matter, and more.

PC: How did you discover your passion for acting?
Oliver: When I was really young, I wanted to be a chef or marine biologist. I didn’t know what that was, but I wanted to work with animals. I wanted to swim. I would hate that now because I’m not a massive fan of cold water.

In my early twenties, I started hanging out with my grandfather who was an actor. He was a Shakespearean actor and would talk a lot about Shakespeare, and he explained it to me. That was really what got me into writing more than acting, but I found the introduction to Shakespeare’s writing really exciting. My grandfather would talk more and more about Shakespeare and how he interpreted it and how he approached the text. Through the conversations I had with him, I got more into the lessons that I had on Shakespeare in school and more into drama.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Oliver: My granddad has been a big influence. I also have a wonderful, wonderful agent who is very good and very supportive. He’s had a big impact on my career, not just because he’s a part of it but also because of his advice. He’s been a bit of a rock. He’s wonderful. Whenever I’m feeling really stressed or frightened by something, he’s very good at explaining to me the literal aspects of the situation. He’s good at encouraging me outside of my career about the kind of person that I am or the things that I want to do. He’s had a big impact. If I didn’t have him, this all would’ve been way too anxiety-inducing. I should probably tell him that.

PC: You’re one of the stars of Hotel Portofino. Tell us about the series, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Oliver: The series is set in the 1920s. It’s about an English family who after the war moves to Portofino, as you would expect, to set up a hotel. It’s about the troubles that each member of the family gets into and how difficult it is to run a hotel and what they’re dealing with in the ’20s. Then we see the rise of fascism in Italy.

My character is Lucian. He’s the oldest son of the family. He was a soldier in World War I. He got very badly injured and saved by a friend of his and since the war has been in a place of depression, dealing with how his injury affects him.

That’s the stuff that attracted me to this project. In the ’20s, the perception of PTSD, anxiety, sexuality, and all these other things could drastically affect a person’s life. It was interesting to explore how these things were perceived in the 1920s versus how they’re perceived now in the 2020s.

Obviously, there’s a long way to go, but we’re a lot better at understanding these things now in the 2020s. It was exciting trying to portray those things within a character who’s receiving all of this advice from his family and friends but more along the lines of having a stiff upper lip rather than being serious about it.

PC: On the surface, your character presents himself as a carefree young man, but underneath, he’s coming to terms with his PTSD. How did you create the space for yourself to dive into that arc?
Oliver: It’s a collaborative effort to create that space. It’s about the other actors and the director. The other actors on Hotel Portofino are wonderful. The director is a lovely, lovely guy.

It’s conversational. It’s something that happens right at the beginning. We speak with each other. We’re like, “This scene is definitely one about how you and I are communicating, but also what I’m dealing with here is trauma from the war and this is what I think about it.” Then the other actors and whoever it might be will say, “I get that. I get that because what I’m focusing on from my point of view is the pressures I have from my mother or class warfare or all these intangible things that might seem unrelated at first, but you hope that they come through.” You hope that the work that you do in those conversations and your preparation ends up telling a more nuanced story. You hope that’s what happens. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re less successful. But it’s a process.

PC: As you’ve headed into the second season, how has your character evolved? How has that collaboration with the other cast and crew evolved?
Oliver: The second season is really interesting. My character’s journey in Season 1 is about Lucian’s journey from rejecting the world and responsibilities to having to take more of a middle path and accept some responsibility and do some things that his family expects of him. It’s about growing up in a time when he doesn’t want to be the person that he’s expected to become. That’s a very vague description of his first-season arc.

The second season is almost the reverse. It’s almost like we join Lucian when he has become the man he doesn’t want to be. The second season for him is more about rediscovering the beauty in life and making life worth living.

The first season for me is about PTSD and anxiety. The second season is about depression. It’s a very, very deep depression. It’s hard. I won’t give too many spoilers, but it’s an awful thing to struggle with depression. I think playing a character who was in the process of rediscovering these things is quite enriching. It’s quite a beautiful thing to do. It’s quite a fun thing to do.

That’s where that collaboration came from. That was me talking to the others who I worked closely with in Season 2 and saying, “Wow, this is a scene that’s important for me because this is quite new for Lucian. It’s important to him.” Then we work out how to balance the scene together because of that. There’s a lot of technique that comes into that. Like I was saying before, it’s not like we speak in a room together—or it could be—but I don’t think that’s necessarily a way that I’ve found helps tell the best story. It’s best to plan these kinds of things and understand what beats matter for which character. That’s how that collaboration has grown in the second season.

PC: This is set in the 1920s, but it deals with a lot of timely themes that are relevant today. Was there one that hit home for you?
Oliver: For me, it was sexuality. I thought that was the most pressing thing for my character. There are two things that are pressing for my character. There’s sexuality and how views on sexuality were in the 1920s and how pigeonholed a lot of people were in terms of sexuality, and also the innate pressure to not have a divergent sexuality and all of that. Everyone has been forced into heteronormative relationships.

It’s a subtle thing for my character. It features more heavily with other people’s characters, but it’s something that I thought was quite pressing because I do believe in the spectrum of sexuality. That was a really pressing thing for me that I thought was pertinent to today’s world because the conversation is obviously more present and as it should be.

In the ’20s in Italy, Mussolini was gaining more and more traction. We’ve got a slow decline into the political situation that was created in the second World War. My character is actively ignoring that. He says a lot of things that lots of people say nowadays as the political situation changes, things like, “It won’t make a difference” and “You can’t believe that sort of stuff is going to happen,” and then people are made fun of for being more invested.

I found that quite sad and interesting to play because I see it all the time. It really does feel like the attitudes haven’t changed so much with the political situation that the world’s in now with a growing rightwing and things like Brexit that I was living through when I was voting. Regardless of how a person stands on any issue, it seems good to take them seriously, be involved, and make active and informed choices.

That’s something that my character wasn’t doing and something that a lot of my friends didn’t do through the Brexit referendum or the elections they have had. That’s quite close to me in terms of issues that are relevant today.

PC: Throughout your career, you’ve picked projects that have an impact on audiences. What is your vetting process like?
Oliver: Something that’s always been consistent is I’ve always hoped to have fun on a project. I feel like that might seem a really odd thing to do when we’ve been talking about the themes that we’ve been discussing. It’s heavy, but I do want to enjoy my character. Most of the time, my thinking is, “That sounds fun. I’ll go and do that.” Sometimes that fun can come from where we’re shooting, or sometimes the fun can come from the character or the subject matter. I want it to be enriching for my life, and I want it to be a story that I’d have fun telling.

PC: You’re also a writer. Have you found that your experiences behind the camera and writing have impacted how you approach your role on screen and vice versa?
Oliver: Massively. I write with a friend of mine, Manuel Pacific, who is a wonderful, wonderful writer and actor. There are a lot of times when we’re writing when it’s easiest to understand the theme from a character’s perspective because we want to achieve something with that particular scene. We want to make a point or say something simply to get it out there.

I think coming from the acting point of view, it’s very easy for us to communicate with each other and say, “Well, this would never work. The characters would never say that,” so it’s going to be more complicated than we wanted it to be because we need to make that work. That’s useful for us. It helps our scripts be more natural if we want them to be natural. Then if we don’t want them to be natural, we know we’re making a decision to move away from the character at that point.

It’s been a really useful thing to communicate to the actors who do end up saying those lines because it’s good to know as an actor what the writer is going for.

Then as an actor, it’s useful to ask for that when you go into a scene—to ask the director or writer (if they’re on set), “What are we really going for in this scene? What’s the point?” Because for me, I’m really focusing on this little kernel of a character. Most scenes have beats that are important. Most scenes have a piece of information that is exchanged. Normally, it’s the character who doesn’t know something or wants to learn something. Most scenes have a similar format. It’s good to go in as an actor having some awareness of that.

Maybe it’s not good for some people. I know some people would be like, “No, no. You must only think about what your character would know.” I get that’s a way of doing it, and more power and respect to them, but for me, in terms of storytelling, I would like to know what we are going for, and that was useful to think about while writing and now as an actor.

To keep up with Oliver, follow him on Instagram.

Photo Credit: David Reiss // Grooming: Charlotte Yeomans // Styling: Bertie Taylor-Smith