Robert Wagner, Eighties heart-throb in Hart To Hart and best known to younger audiences as “Number Two” in the Austin Powers movies, stars in the first of a new series of BBC One’s con-man drama, Hustle.
For the first time the series goes Stateside, filming in both Los Angeles and the con man’s ultimate paradise, Las Vegas.
Having roped in movie memorabilia collector Anthony Westley, played by Robert, the team sets about convincing him that they can sell him the ultimate collectable – the famous Hollywood Sign.
Here, Robert talks to the BBC about hustling, Hollywood legends and being seduced by Jaime Murray…
What can you tell us about your character, Anthony?
He is a very self-centred man who got a lot of quick money in his life and he’s not a very forthright, honest character. He’s got a lot of greed in him – he is definitely someone who should be hustled!
He doesn’t care about anyone just so long as he gets what he wants. I think that was pretty well defined by Tony Jordan when he wrote the character.
Did you enjoy playing such a nasty piece of work?
I did, very much – I love these kind of shows and I liked the character very much; I thought he was a real kind of character, very legitimate, and he gets twisted around by the gang and his brain gets twisted around by Jaime [Murray]!
He deserves to get had – I’d like to come back and do an episode where Anthony comes back to find them and get his money back! We could do a sequel or spin-off!
What was your favourite moment from filming Hustle?
I liked the sequence I did with Jaime in the motel room – she had to try and seduce me and that was kinda good!
Were you a fan of the show before you were in it?
I had seen several episodes of the show and I really liked it – I like that kind of show. It’s a very clever triangle scenario – picking someone out and setting them up. I’ve done quite a lot of that kind of show and this had a great twist in the end. I liked being the Hustlee!
We all get conned a little bit in life, don’t we? We all get set up once in a while and sometimes you realise it and sometimes you don’t. The thing is to keep your humour up about it because everybody is hustling somebody.
Did you know Robert Vaughn before?
Robert and I have known each other over the years; we knew the same people and have been around the same period of time, as we both started in the industry at about the same time. He’s a very bright and charming man and I’ve always liked him very much.
We were in The Towering Inferno together but we never had any scenes together – why I don’t know, sometimes that just happens.
What has been your favourite role?
Jonathan Hart was a good character. When you play a character like Jonathan Hart and you play it for that many years, you have to try to bring some new things to it and I enjoyed that very much.
I also liked the character of Alexander Mundy – he was written for me. That was a series I did called It Takes A Thief and I liked that character a lot.
I had the opportunity to play Brick in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof with Laurence Olivier and my late wife, Natalie Wood, and we did that in England. That was a big number for me and I got a lot of wonderful response for that. It was a fantastic cast – it was a wonderful time.
Anthony is a movie memorabilia fanatic – do you have any keepsakes from your films?
Fred Astaire played my father in It Takes A Thief and I had been friends with Fred Astaire for a long time before that. He gave me a poster of himself and his sister, Adele, in Lady Be Good in Leicester Square, London, and I have that in my office – he signed it to me.
What have you been doing since Hustle?
I went and did the Dennis the Menace movie, A Denis The Menace Christmas, in which I play Mr Wilson, and I am producing a couple of movies which I’m in the process of finding finance for and that takes up quite a lot of my time!
Hustle Will Air On BBC One Later in April
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