The Umbrella Academy’s Robert Sheehan is going from anti-hero to anti-villain in new Netflix sci-fi series, The Last Bus.
Playing Dalton Monkhouse, an eccentric billionaire who seemingly wipes out the world’s population with Genie Orb robots, Robert channels his inner Elon Musk-turned-Wizard of Oz in the fantasy show, where a team of kids are the last chance to save humanity.
The series is a bit of a full-circle moment for the 34-year-old, who started his career at the age of 13 in Irish fantasy series Foreign Exchange – the same age as the kids who are now planning to take him down in The Last Bus, created by Paul Neafcy.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Robert tells us all about the influences behind the character, what it was like suddenly playing the dad figure on set, and what potentially lies in store for season two.
How did you become involved in The Last Bus?
[I read] the first and the 10th episodes, the kind of Dalton central episodes – basically just the ones that Dalton is in, and he read really, really strongly. He was a character who you could have loads and loads of fun with and play around with a lot, and he had this very, very interesting speech upfront.
It was shooting in Bristol, and we could fit it in quite comfortably. So all the stars kind of aligned to do it.
Dalton has quite an understandable method to his madness – this ultimate purpose of saving the planet, though zapping everyone away is going a bit too far.
It doesn't seem so crazy when we have individuals on this planet who are trying to start their own planet. That's a reality, that's a fact. He's full of schemes, isn't he? That [Elon] Musk! Full of schemes, full of mischief!
Well, if you have an endless amount of money, we guess, why not?
I guess, why not? I hope he gets his happiness from mounting all of these enormous mammoth projects. It would give me a lot of misery, that. Being that busy.
I suppose there have been industrialist types in recent history, like Musk, who have come along and over-stretched themselves to the point of, what seems to most of us, like insanity. Where he's inventing rockets to get us to the moon.
He's inventing a new type of car, personal transport, inventing a way to pay securely online for things. He's inventing a cure for paraplegia, a house or a small business being completely off the energy grid. He's inventing a way to fix LA traffic.
I suppose the guy thinks he could probably benefit from 10 lifetimes. Maybe that's what Mars is about. Maybe he thinks that his life would be prolonged if he gets off the planet or something. Or that Mars could be like 'Elon Musk World' where he could redesign the process of the government and just do things his way.
I get the sense that he feels he's being held back by many members of the human race, and many ways in which he has to adhere to the law. He's one of these kind of benevolent dictators.
Dalton is quite similar, but I don't know about Elon Musk's kind of spiritual situation. Dalton is somebody who is incredibly narcissistic and who thinks that nobody else can possibly kind of step up to the plate and save the world.
Time has gone by for everybody else and it's up to him. It's typical sort of narcissistic tendency.
And then he’s bested by a 12-year-old! Your career in the past has definitely been more along the lines of anti-heroes, but here he seems more anti-villain.
He's the sort of Wizard of Oz character, isn't he? He provides a sort of a target for them to aim at. But then ultimately, he's not the bad guy. I mean, he's done something pretty insane, but he hasn't done what they thought he's been doing, which is trying to kill the whole human race.
Haven't you noticed there's a lot of culture, be it through films or television or whatever, talking about the idea of mass genocide? Like The Last Bus deals with it, you know, lightfully, cheerfully and humorously, but even that Avengers movie, Endgame.
The Umbrella Academy, too…
Yeah! I suppose, I mean, population control. There's this strange sense of global anxiety, I think in people that art is picking up on and storifying in different ways – which is how can we sustain this? There's so many of us! But The Last Bus is incredibly optimistic, isn't it? It's incredibly hopeful for the future.
You started your career when you were the kids’ age, and now you're the father figure now. Was it weird to see that progression?
I suppose, having never had a fictional child to having a fictional child who's about 16-17 years old [was strange]. I showed it to my girlfriend, and I said, 'Do you think it's strange that I have this child who's this age? and she said, 'No. It kind of works, to be honest!' But I suppose it's inevitable.
If you reach a certain marker of human existence and you're an actor… It was a little strange, but ultimately, you have to take these things in your stride, don't you?
What was it like doing a kids show? Normally you do a lot more grittier content.
Yeah. It was interesting because there's a tone. I was coming in separate to the central group of youngsters, who were so familiar and natural with each other. So there's always a risk of coming in with the wrong pitch. But I don't think that happened, I felt like we're all in the same universe. Which is sort of slightly surreal, but very human.
I liked as well the fact that Dalton gets to be upset with the kids and not angry with the kids, do you know?
He's not an angry creature, and then later on as he starts to get really scared about Lucy, his daughter, who's come in and she's going to really muck things up. Those scenes were intense when we shot them out of the day.
So there was a lot of wiggle room, in terms of how well-developed it is, because it's kind of simultaneously fully and warm, and dark, and silly. It's easier to come in and to find your place in that, because really, you're just acting on instinct.
I think we knew that the comedy would come from the kids being the ones who are laying down the law and Dalton being the kid. As soon as he wakes up, he's no longer that hot-shot billionaire. He's more of an immature twat. We thought that's the best chance for hilarity, so that kind of guided the tone of Dalton as well.
You kind of touched on it earlier when we were talking about Elon Musk, but Dalton seems very isolated and almost lonely because he's literally just by himself in a pod.
Well so's Elon Musk. Anybody with that amount of money to some degree or another, has built themselves a gilded prison. I suppose with that amount of material wealth comes all sorts of responsibilities, security responsibilities, you know, an enormous amount of stuff on your shoulders, you know?
God, it's for some people, it wouldn't be for me. Being the sort of self-assigned saviour of the planet. I suppose there are other Elon Musks out there.
The Last Bus throws us some serious twists in the final episode, starting with the discovery of Dalton’s daughter, Lucy. Would you come back for season 2?
Yeah! I'd like to come back to do more. It was a good craic down in Bristol. It'd be nice to spend more time in Bristol when it's not completely locked down. When I went and shot with them, it was 100% lockdown mode. But I liked Bristol a lot even in lockdown mode.
So it'd be nice to go back and spend time there and have more play with the youngsters. We did loads of improv and it was a really happy family. So you know, the longer in the tooth you get, the more and more important that becomes. You really just want to work with a happy company.
The Last Bus is available now on Netflix.
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Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
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