What job helped Jon Richardson get over his divorce from Lucy Beaumont?
Jon Richardson admits his role as media studies teacher Darius Donovan in Waterloo Road helped him get over his divorce from wife Lucy Beaumont.
Jon Richardson's role in Waterloo Road helped him get over his divorce from from his wife Lucy Beaumont.
Jon and fellow comedian Lucy got married in April 2015 and starred together in their own sitcom Meet The Richardsons but announced their divorce in April 2024.
Jon - who shares eight-year-old daughter Elsie with Lucy - was struggling to know what to do next with the end of his relationship and series, and his role as media studies teacher Darius Donovan in the BBC series came at just the right time.
Appearing on the Scarred For Life podcast, Jon said: “Waterloo Road is a pivot. I hope it's not me pivoting towards a fire door!
“We did five series of sitcom called Meet The Richardsons, which is sort of acting of us all, but it's me playing me doing things I've done. So I came out of that still not knowing if I could act or not.
“Then I had quite a spicy 2024, where I had to make some changes in my life. I didn't feel particularly funny at the start of 2024, to be honest, and I didn't want to tour because I thought, well, anything I say is going to get taken out of context. I didn't want to be away a lot.
“So I said to my agent, ‘Can I go on Spotlight and just see if anything turns up?’ Thinking it might be a cameo in a sitcom episode or something like that.
“Within a few weeks Waterloo Road came in and said, ‘They’re looking for a guy about your age from about where you are.’
“So it was just a self-tape. At that point, I thought, ‘Well, I've got nothing to lose by doing a self-tape.’ Having said that, it took me two weeks to send it in because every time I did it, I thought it was terrible. So I do one and then retake it … I just couldn’t bear to watch myself troll through these lines.
“Eventually I sent it in and then off the back of that was asked to do a live read with the production team and another cast member reading the lines. And then I got it.
“It came in so quick, before I knew it, I was off on set. We started filming just a few weeks after that.”
Jon, 43, is relishing playing Darius because he is like a “film villain” and so different from what he is like in real life.
He said: “Darius, the character I play, part of the reason I took it is he's so unlike anyone I've ever been compared to. I mean, he's an absolute rotter. So if I went back to my school days, it was only to say, ‘Well, what teacher would I have least wanted to be around?
“I think if there was a teacher even remotely like Darius in schools, they would have got their comeuppance long before I got to know them. I mean, he's an absolute rotter. He's more like a film villain or something.
“He’s such a joy to play.”
