Jamie Bamber on the New British Invasion: ‘American TV Has Been Transformed’
April 23rd, 2011Jamie Bamber is one of the pioneers of the recent British Invasion of American TV. In 2004, the handsome, London-born actor began a five-year run on the acclaimed reboot of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, skillfully assuming an American accent as the morally upright Apollo.
But here’s a less well-known fact: he’s actually American.
“I ought to say that as a lifelong U.S. citizen my position is different from most Brits coming here,” he said, on-set shooting a pilot in Vancouver. While Bamber spent his formative years in the UK, his U.S. citizenship is owed to his American father. He now lives in L.A. with his wife and three children.
“I came because I was able to work here and because I felt a need to be here,” he adds. “I wanted to acknowledge my U.S. heritage and to belong to it more closely. Having said that I am certainly British by formation and education and readily think of London as home. I had never lived in the U.S. till 2007.”
After a stint in Britain as DS Matt Devlin on Law & Order: UK and, recently, Mitchell on the sci-fi drama Outcasts, Bamber may return to American TV this fall. He has re-teamed with Battlestar exec producer Ron Moore for the NBC pilot 17th Precinct, an innovative cop drama with supernatural elements. Bamber plays a Yankee police officer on the series, trading in Apollo’s patrician tones for a working-class Irish accent. “My preparation was pretty minimal,” he says, “although I did re-watch The Fighter and The Town to absorb a hint of Bostonian Irish.”
Bamber joins the likes of Minnie Driver, Ioan Gruffudd, Jason Isaacs, and Toby Stephens in the cadre of UK-based actors booking U.S. pilots this season. We had the chance to ask the 38-year-old star why so many British thespians make the westward pilgrimage each year. And he gives an illuminating look at the ins and outs of the TV business on both sides of the pond.
Law & Order UK
