Paul Hilton: The Sanctity of Theatre

Ahead of his return to the Donmar Warehouse for the first time since 2010’s Polar Bears, multi-award-winning actor Paul Hilton sits down to discuss his role as Richard in the world premiere of Fran Kranz’s Mass. Paul delves into the psychological weight of portraying a father navigating the devastating aftermath of a school shooting under the visceral direction of Carrie Cracknell. We hear him reflect on the unique technical demands of the Donmar’s intimate space, inviting the audience in to join a high stakes meeting in a church basement. Our conversation explored his process of physical discovery in the rehearsal room and the challenge of finding "play" and lightness within such profound human tragedy.

In this new interview, Paul Hilton offers a rare, introspective look at a career that has led younger peers to describe him as one of the greatest actors of our generation. We revisit his transformative time sharing the role of Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie with our former guest Tom Glynn-Carney and his recent, acclaimed transition between Ibsen’s moral pillars, Father Manders and Peter Stockmann. With his own son Kasper Hilton-Hille now following in his theatrical footsteps, Paul shares his reflections on mentorship, the evolving nature of the industry, and why the theatre continues to act as a sacred space for him and his family. We are treated to a warm and deeply personal exploration of a master craftsman as he continues to challenge the boundaries of contemporary theatre.

Mass runs at Donmar Warehouse from 18 April - 6 June 2026.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to Up Class with Palmas. Celebrating art, entertainment, and the human spirits. Paul Hilton, um, thank you so much for um sitting down with us. Um, this is your first time back at the Donmar warehouse since 2010's polar bears. Um, why did Mass feel like the right show to bring you back to the Donmar?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Well, um the combination of you know, an A-list team of players, playmates, an extraordinarily brilliant, bright-minded, forensic director, and a play which just kind of tore me apart when I read it, that combination. And coupled, of course, with the intimacy of this venue, I think that's going to be an extraordinary mix. Yeah, I got I'm so excited to share this piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, I mean, the play deals with you know the aftermath of a school shooting. Um, and in 2026, when we are still seeing these cycles of violence, um, do you see the play as being a form of protest or a form of prayer, perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

That's a very good question. I would say both of those things. Um, there's definitely an element of protest. And by virtue of the fact that these victims, if you like, or for parents who are recovering and reeling in the aftermath of this, that they are in a way trying to look beyond themselves and their own humanity to for answers and for the tools that they need to keep moving forward with life. So, yeah, it's but it's both of those things. There is definitely an element of prayer, it's very potent. Prayer in the wider sense, not in the religious sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, I was wondering, you know, just in a play that you know deals with such profound human uh experience, um, how do you find the play in the rehearsal room? Um, is there still much room for likeness when the subject matter is so heavy?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

It's fascinating rehearsing this piece because essentially the action takes place in a very um hot, crucible, not much in terms of uh physical movement around the space. So it's very contained and very held and very um emotional, powerful stuff that we're discussing. So, of course, uh the residual of that is it isn't easy to shake it off. So, we've actually discovered today that you know, even just stepping away from and out of the space between rehearsing helps to just release the pressure of the subject matter, if you like, because it's haunting, it's the kind of material that you wake up thinking about first thing in the morning, which for me is a measure of a great play. I'm I'm having dreams about this play, so I know that it's working on me at a very deep level. So, yeah, it's the the work of looking out for each other and holding each other in a safe space and trying to tell stories that reach into real, you know, dark corners of psychology and uh our imaginations. Uh, yeah, we we really need to kind of um have these periods of respite and laughter and dance. We put a lot of slide and family stone and Otis Reading and dance around a bit and get back into our bodies and just try and shake off that horrific world that the play exists in.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Absolutely. I mean, the play itself is sort of um at its core, you know, it's four people meeting in a church basement. Um, with the Donmar's proximity, do you imagine the audience will be like a fifth member of that meeting too?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Absolutely, yes. And um, I think the way that the play unfurls is I I don't want to give away any spoilers, but it will happen to them in the way that it happens to the actors. It happens in real time, the whole event is in real time, and the audience is once you're in your end, and I do imagine there will be people who will find it uh very difficult to listen to a lot of this stuff, and they may not even want to be in the space at certain points and may have to absent themselves. But I think we have to have the courage to look at these the darkest things in order to understand them and to work through them and find ways of building bridges across seemingly impossible divides. And the audience will be complicit in that because they can choose to either reject what is offered by leaving, walking out, and turning away, or they can go on the journey with us. And I hope they come with us because I do feel that they will they will leave that space with a with a lot of questions and a lot of um a lot a lot to think about and how to possibly apply those things to their own lives and their own may help them to look at the world slightly differently. And that's what theatre does, it gives it gives a lens into a world into worlds and lives that are so far removed often from our own experience. Um and in doing so, you know, allow allows us into those those worlds and experiences, teach us that it's a great parable of of forgiveness.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Absolutely. Um, I mean, I guess with a character like Richard as well, you know, have you been finding him, you know, through the words on the page, or has it been more of a physical discovery in the rehearsal room?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

It's both Carlos, actually, because at this stage we're still the the words are still finding themselves in our memories and our bodies, and we're discovering how the words work on our bodies as we bring it to life, and the character who is a kind of uh summation of the words is revealing itself to me uh as we work through the play, and um, it's unusual in that way, this particular process. I've never experienced anything quite like it, really, because uh obviously the the actors in question are all extremely skilled and are doing their homework, but uh the growth curve is uh steep and powerful and and often quite overwhelming. The interior experience of wearing the skin of the character to this point is a very um it's a very emotional experience being a parent myself to have to look at these very difficult experiences in the world today. It's quite distressing, it can be quite distressing. So, yeah, you have to have mechanisms to be able to switch that off. We're finding those together, yeah. We're finding them together, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, I was curious about how it's been working with Carrie Cracknell. Um, Arcadia which just finished its run feels like such a different piece. Um, what have the conversations been like, you know, on establishing that energy between Richard and the other characters and on bringing this character to the stage?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Well we've all shared the conversation, so we're all in each other's hearts and minds, and we're working very forensically through the text and the timelines of the characters and back history and improvisation to really kind of flesh out the characters. You know, we we have a mission statement on the wall as we come in that we've compiled together, and you know, we are categorically not these people, you know. We are using our own life experience to render these people accurately, but they are not us at the end of the day. We can leave them in the room and and and walk away from it. It would be impossible to do this work, you know, eight shows a week of something of this nature if you were inhabiting the role. So, yeah, we're Carrie's got very clever and methods to switch between the head and the heart in the rehearsal, and she brings her own world into the into the room, and as we all do, that that's a great benchmark, I think, for a healthy room is is uh an openness and a willingness to catch each other and you know what what everybody's moods are that particular day. It's it's a very holistic room. It feels like uh we know each other very well by this point. We're only week three, we're only on week three of rehearsal, so that that bodes very well. And it would have to be that way for this material. It's so coruscating and eviscerating, and you would you have to have trust in the people that you're playing with to do this kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Definitely. Um, I I spoke with um Tom Glencane not too long ago, and we talked about your time um sharing the role of Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Um, how challenging was it, you know, keeping a consistent character between the two of you?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

It was fantastic working with Tom. It it was a conceit in that particular version of the play to have two versions of Tom, the young and the old, which I think you know, the you just divided audiences. A lot of people didn't like that, and a lot of people did, but to play it's it's actually very moving to look to look back at a representation of yourself as a younger person. So any emotional response that I had to the material was entirely based on what Tom brought to the stage, which was a hell of a lot. He's a brilliant young actor.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, he really is. I mean, there were moments where you, as older Tom, when you were watching your younger self make those mistakes that you already knew the ending to. Um, did that feel surreal to you at all presenting the play in this way?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yes, yes. And there was there were moments which were choreographed mirror moments almost where we would you know duplicate each other's movements in real time. And I think for an audience, that's that helps them to align the two of us into one into one person. But yeah, they're tricks, really, aren't they? They're they're theatrical conceits, but they're they actually they manifest before your eyes. And in the space of the the imaginarium, that is the theater, they work. An audience will go with that. Two versions of one person. I mean, you can you can't make that happen in you know in real life, so it's a real imaginative stretch to do that, but it you can do it in theatre, and that's why theatre is the perfect place to be doing a a piece like this, which is really looking at the things that are hard, that are taboo, that are difficult to talk about, that are painful to talk about. It allows us to share those things together and to cry about them together and to comfort each other. I felt that very much so with the inheritance, which was hold a holding place for a lot of grief from the people who had lost family and friends to the AIDS crisis. And theatre can offer that, it can offer a community, a communion, if you like. And it isn't it isn't incidental that this piece is set in a Episcopalian church. Uh, there is an element of the sacred, the spiritual in the space with us. And uh, yeah, for me, who would describe myself as probably agnostic, a theatre is as sacred a space as a church in my imagination, in my heart?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah, I think I would very much agree with that, and I suppose um there was also something very spiritual about the glass menagerie as well. Um, I was curious. Um a few years ago, uh Caspar Hilton Hilly also played the role of Tom Wingfield, and he's now playing Makushio, a role that you have also played yourself in the past. Um, I was curious, did you pass on any advice about playing these characters that you're so familiar with?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I would have bored him senseless with advice and tips and and thoughts, and but and I offered them to my son, but he wants to carve his own path, which of course he does, and I respect that and admire it. And I haven't actually seen his Micushio yet, but I hear by all accounts it's a wonderful rendering, and of course it is. He's a brilliant young man with um tremendous, you know, theatrical nouse. He's grown up around theater since day one, so he's invested in a way that I can only dream of. You know, I didn't get into theater until I was 14. But he's been around theater since day one, so it comes, I think, easier to him possibly than it did to me in the early stages of my career. He's certainly on a very uh fast track to great roles, and that's entirely based on his skill and his um his ability as an artist. And he works hard, he works very hard. We all do. I think that's a and uh my partner's also an actress, and we we work very hard. It's all or nothing in this business for us, you know. When you're leaving your family behind to go and do day's work on a on a piece like this, you you have to bring yourself to the room, otherwise, what is the point? You know, you have to bring all of you, and Casper does that.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, I remember seeing him in um Dealer's Choice, and I was like wondering, you know, is he more Paul Hilton or more Anastasia Hilly? And I think yeah, he's very much his own actor, I didn't think we make those comparisons.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Cheers, yeah. But there are the I you know, I get that weird. I I see flashes of Anastasia in him and flashes of myself in him, but then also this other extraordinary young individual. It's it's an absolute thrill to see him work.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah, I was wondering as well, you know, with how much the industry has changed over the years. Um, is there anything from when you were first starting out as an actor that you wish Casper could experience as well, now that he's starting as himself?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

That's a very good question. I miss uh in the in my early early stages of my career, I did I did uh a couple of regional tours and I did uh uh you know there used to be the the big world tours that the companies would do that, you know. Uh my partner got to see most of the the world through going on tour with the RSC or cheek by jowl, and these things don't seem to quite be um uh happening so much as they used to do. The the landscape is changing so fast, particularly in this industry. He's got to be flexible and fluid. So that would be my advice is to kind of be prepared for anything in this game and to conduct yourself with grace and kindness because it's a long lot, you know. If you are in it for life, it's a long arc, and you will always meet people along the journey that you you know you worked with 20 years ago. What this happens in this business a lot, so you have to keep a clean slate and you have to show up and really do your work. So as long as I think as long as he sticks with that and feel the fear and do it anyway, I would always say that to him. That's where growth lies.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, when I speak to a young actor today, whether it be Tom Greencarney or Stuart Thompson, Jack Bardo, um, they all refer to Paul Hilton as being the greatest actor of our generation.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Oh Carlos, oh my god, that I'm gonna cry. Yeah, um I mean when you are we're so insulars.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, I mean when you are working with um No, no, it's it's um it's honestly what I keep on hearing uh whenever your name pops up. But yeah, I was like wondering, you know, when you are working with younger actors, um, do you feel a responsibility to be a mentor to the next generation?

SPEAKER_00 16:35

I do, I very much absolutely do. I've recently just completed a film with Anthony Hopkins, and I used to write to Anthony Hopkins when I was at drama school for advice on the the off chance that he might reply, and he did every time. He would always correspond with me, as did Mark Rylance, who I worked with last year. And for me, uh that connection with those people gave me a belief that those um I could do what they were doing. That uh, you know, this wasn't something that was beyond my can or beyond my reach. I I had every right to be doing what they were doing. Um, coming from a working class background, that wasn't drilled into us. So um I I do feel a responsibility to I do mentor a few students from Guildhall, and we have fairly regular contact, and I'm there for them. And I I really appreciate that connection with them because it keeps me young, it makes me feel uh like uh there's a validity to what I'm bringing to the room. You know, I'm not some old fossil. I I have two young children, I feel like I'm pretty plugged into where young people are at the moment. So, yes, it's I totally embrace the whole the whole thing. Mentors are essential in this business, I think. Yeah, not just for the practical development or you know, moving through from job to job or choices or auditions or how to do simply for you know to to have the broader conversations about what do actors do when they're not working, how do you keep your toolbox sharp? How do you keep your mind stimulated? Um, all of these things are really you know conversations that I've had with young actors who are you know beginning to feel the responsibility of what it is to be an actor in in the 21st century, which is different than what it was in the 20th century.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, I mean, um coming on to Ghosts, and I was with Hubert Thompson very recently, and he's another superb actor, and I thought you complimented each other so well in Ghosts. Um, when you were watching him unravel as Oswald, um, did you naturally lean into Manders or were you sort of resisting trying to play a more paternal role to him as well?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

I think I was I I was playing very much the authority figure, the the hypocrisy of uh religious authority. So yeah, I I wasn't leaning towards empathy, but as soon as the curtain came down, I would have a good dance with Stuart, or um, you know, we'd I'd come back into his world because that's where that's the world that I'm in. But yeah, it's it's good to keep these things. If you're playing characters who are longer heads with each other, the harder you play that, the more juice there is in the drama. But equally, like you say, um there is empathy too, and people are are not fixed, people are flexible, people can change. The work that I tend to do in theater doesn't tend to be pinned down. So there is a there are new choices to be made every performance. How you play an intention, you know. It might you might always be playing the same intention, but there are a million ways to play it, and uh and I like to keep a sense of you know life in the room. Uh it keeps me alive, it makes me feel alive.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Certainly. Um, I hadn't realized that you yourself had also played Oswald, you know, in Gregory H Harrow's production of the World Exchange in the past, too. And what is the experience like in the coming back to the same play but as different characters?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

It's wonderful. And uh I remember when I played Oswald at the Royal Exchange, uh David Horovich was playing Pastamanders, and he said to me once, I think, that you would make a good pastamanders when you're older. I think he actually said that to me once, and uh, I must at some level have held on to that idea because it was a part that I did look at several times before it came up again at the San Wanamaker with Joe, and the version that we did there was very different, and also it was a candlelit San Wanamaker production, it would never be the same as it was in the Royal Exchange. But yes, I I I did bring a knowledge to that production that I would say it was unconscious. Um, I wasn't deliberately drawing on that previous version, but I know there were aspects of that production that shot through my mind. So, yeah, that you're always referencing back. I know that I will feel that way when I see Caspar D'AMACUSHIO, I will be remembering the old version that I did and not comparing because comparison is the death of joy, but I will be um referen you know, uh alighting the two and seeing what I learned from that. Yeah, I don't tire of seeing productions multiple times. I'm looking forward to seeing I saw the first preview of Evening All Afternoon at the Dogmar, and I'm looking forward to seeing the last performance and seeing you know the the journey of that production and where it where it lands.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah I mean. It's a very special play as well, like um the two-hander and like how they um form a relationship over the course of the play. Yeah, it's it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

It's gorgeous and unexpected. Uh that I I was very moved by it because of the themes in the play and how they resound in my own life, and uh I really wasn't expecting that. So, you know, there is also always that element of surprise with theatre, especially with this play, Mass. You you what you just don't know what's around the corner, but you have to be ready and prepared to take whatever it is, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Definitely. I I read that Ibsen wrote Enemy of the People immediately after ghosts. So I was wondering, was it a conscious choice to go straight from Manders to Peter Stockman as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

It wasn't, but I will I also heard that fact too, and was stunned by that. And I think you know, often in life, I'm finding it quite a lot at the moment. You know, we find these um resonances or synchronicity that's things that are happening in the world that seem to echo the life of the play in a way. So I did think that there was something kind of strange and mysterious about that, that that had happened for me in that way, that I'd gone from ghosts to Stockman, from Manders to Stockman. And um, you know, I I was very grateful to take that.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Um, yeah, I guess I mean you've had the most extraordinary career playing the most uh incredible parts. Um when all is when all is said and done, um, what do you most want to be remembered for?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

That's uh gosh. I I've always wanted the respect of my peers, the people that I play with. And given what you said earlier about those young people, Tom, Stuart, Jack, the things that they say about me. It seems that I'm doing the right thing. So I'll just keep ploughing this pharaoh and be very grateful for every opportunity that I get to to deliver a role and bring my all to it. And yeah, hopefully the respect of my peers. That's all I want.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Paul Hilton, thank you so much for talking to us today.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Thank you, Carlos. It's lovely to see you.