Luke Evans said filming his ITV party drama The Party 25 minutes from his childhood home in Aberbargoed was joyous. The five-part series has no broadcast date yet, but the location puts the adaptation unusually close to the Rhymney Valley family house he grew up in.
Evans, 47, plays journalist Martin Gilmour and also serves as an executive producer on the series. He said the production was shot in Cardiff and Bridgend, and that he came up with the idea to adapt Elizabeth Day's novel for the screen.
Aberbargoed and the final episode
The proximity was personal as well as practical. Evans said his parents, Yvonne and David Evans, still live in the same narrow terrace house in Aberbargoed, and he added that he had not filmed that close to home before.
Some of his relatives also ended up in the final episode. Evans said his cousin, his cousin's wife and their children all have short cameos after asking whether they could be in the show.
Luke Evans on
Evans brought the detail into sharp focus on 's The One Show, where he said, "We were having dinners on the weekend, walking the dog, enjoyed a rainy three, four months in Wales over the winter period." He also said, "They were only 25 minutes from me up the road [this time]."
That closeness cuts against the distance he described from earlier work. Evans said he had shot in Wales before for The Pembrokeshire Murders, but never that close to his family home, and after filming wrapped he returned to New York.
Martin Gilmour in The Party
Tom Cullen plays Ben Fitzmaurice in The Party, with Ben Fitzmaurice described as a wealthy and charismatic politician. Evans's own role as Martin Gilmour keeps the adaptation tied to Day's novel, but the family cameos give the series a more local stamp than most screen versions can manage.
The unanswered piece is straightforward: how much of Elizabeth Day's novel has been changed in the ITV adaptation. Until that lands, the strongest read is that Evans has made the series feel rooted in the place that shaped him, not just in the story he adapted.
