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Damn, I’m parched. I know you are too. That’s why, in ELLE.com’s Thirst Trap series, we quench our thirst with the thirsted-after. What’s it’s like to be an oasis in the desert of life? Is it uncomfortable to be so famous and good-looking? Is that a LaCroix? We ask the hard questions. Drink up! You’re welcome.
The first thing you need to know about Tom Hopper is that he stands at six foot five inches, an objectively extraordinary height for a human man. It’s no surprise that Netflix’s outlandish new comic book adaptation The Umbrella Academy—based on the graphic novel series by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and illustrator Gabriel Ba—casts Hopper as a gentle giant. One of seven superpowered siblings who are forced to reunite after the mysterious death of their adoptive father, Hopper’s Luther Hargreaves is the eldest and de facto leader of the group, whose sheer size and apparent strength belie his deeply wounded soul. Are you having feelings yet?
Having already played major roles in Starz pirate drama Black Sails and some show named Game of Thrones, Hopper is no stranger to fandom, and no stranger to the specific kind of attention that his physique inspires. I sat down with Hopper for a drink (me: an Old Fashioned, him: black coffee) to talk about the loneliness of Luther, getting ripped with Outlander’s Sam Heughan, and how it feels when your body parts have their own Instagram presence.
Okay, so you don’t drink alcohol, you don’t eat refined sugar, but you do drink coffee. Would you consider that your one vice?
I probably am a little bit addicted to coffee, but only good coffee. It’s my thing, I can’t have bad coffee. I’ve started a tradition with myself that every single place I travel to in the world, I try and find the best coffee I can while I’m there and bring it home.
How did you give up drinking?
It was kind of a gradual thing. I’d had a period where I was partying a lot and having a lot of fun, my wife and I were having some good times. When we had our son, I started to do it less, and I started to notice I actually enjoyed my nights out more when I didn’t drink, and I could carry on going for longer. And it used to take me like a week to get back into training properly [after drinking], it would really knock me sideways.
The clean living seems to be paying off. Are you aware that your arms have their own Instagram account?
I’ve been told!
I assume it’s not an official account…
I don’t think it’s got the tick.
So it’s fair to say that your fanbase is fairly thirsty. How do you deal with that kind of attention?
It’s a funny one. It’s something I don’t really take notice of until people do things like that. It’s happened kind of gradually, as opposed to overnight, and I try not to take too much notice of those sorts of things—things that glorify you in a kind of way that isn’t really real. But I love that people are paying attention to it, and actually that account is very funny. As far as I’m concerned, fans are the reason you become successful, and ultimately put food on mine and my kids’ plates, so I appreciate that sort of stuff without letting it go to my head.
Speaking of food, what kind of training did you have to do to get your insane physique in The Umbrella Academy?
I’m actually wearing a muscle suit to make me look bigger, because Luther is not in all ways human, shall we say, in terms of the size of his body. It’s an inhuman body. Initially the conversation was for me to get as big as I could get, so I went through the process of trying to get huge, and then they decided at the last minute it was gonna be too complicated to get it to look right, so they did the muscle suit. I was like, “Ugh, I’ve been eating fifteen meals a day for this!”
It was funny—I was told for a long time not to get too big, because you start to fall out of casting brackets, but I literally couldn’t get big enough for this role. We did a lot of martial arts training: Steve Blackman, the showrunner, was quite specific about the kind of style that each of the siblings would have, and for Luther it was real rigorous martial arts training, which I loved.
Kathryn Wirsing
Luther in the books is described as a space gorilla, with a human head. That’s not exactly what you’re playing in the show…
No, the series has lots of nods to the graphic novel, but it’s an expanded world and our take on this character is definitely different. They’ve made the characters fuller and deeper, and it’s ultimately about these seven siblings and their relationships and how they’re dealing with their family’s past. The family is the meat and potatoes, and the superhero stuff is really the seasoning on top.
The character poster for Luther calls him “super strong” and “super lonely.” He’s kind of a tragic figure.
As the show picks up, he’s been up on the moon for the last four years on his own, and that’s what I loved about him. The character breakdown was like: Luther, a giant, loneliest man on the planet. I loved that idea of someone being so huge in stature and looking so strong, but inside he’s so small and timid and sensitive and thoughtful and lonely. For me, it’s so much more interesting playing a character like that as a big guy, than playing just a big man, trying to be the tough guy—it’s so much more interesting to play the opposite.
I saw on the Insta-grapevine that you’re workout buddies with Sam Heughan.
Yeah, Sam’s my boy! Me and him had crossed paths many times without ever actually meeting in person—we had the same trainer in Cape Town, because he was on Outlander over there and I was on Black Sails. Now we’re doing a movie together [SAS: Red Notice], which is a military drama we shot out in Budapest. We knew we were both well into training, and we love to push each other, so we were just doing these incredible workouts together. We’re at a similar level, physically, so it works really well.
Kathryn Wirsing
Do you ever feel like your physique limits you as an actor?
It definitely comes into play a lot. I’ve gotten roles because of it, and I’ve lost roles because of it. My height is always gonna be a thing, and some agents when I met them said, “This could go against you,” but fortunately it’s worked for me in a lot of ways. I’m trying to make sure that I’m not just seen as “a big guy,” and that I’m castable in roles that aren’t just the muscle. I really loved that about Umbrella Academy, because Luther’s so much more than that.
The Umbrella Academy is streaming on Netflix now.
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