‘Grantchester’ Star Al Weaver Reflects on Leonard’s Crisis & Men Sharing Feelings

[Warning: The below contains spoilers for Grantchester Season 10 Episode 5.]

Leonard Finch, the lovable former curate brilliantly inhabited by Al Weaver, has been through the wringer over Grantchester’s 10 seasons. He was rejected by his father for being gay, dismissed from his position in the Anglican Church, imprisoned for “gross indecency” and even temporarily lost his partner to a cult. As if that weren’t enough, at the beginning of this 1962-set season, he learned that his father had passed away — after the funeral had taken place, because Russell Finch didn’t want his son to attend.

To soothe the pain of parental rejection, Leonard, who on a good day seems to be carrying the weight of the world, began drinking to excess. This soul-wrenching storyline has been heaven sent for Weaver, whose performance has showcased this usually mild-mannered character as both a fun-loving drunk and a heartbroken man spinning dangerously out of control, especially with his partner, Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale), now cult-free, away visiting his own parents.

“I think if anyone faced that rejection of the father, it would ask big questions: What is my worth? Am I lovable?” Weaver tells TV Insider. “A lot of it was the carryover from Daniel joining the cult — that trust that was broken. It fuels that self-hatred and lack of self-worth.”

And it led to an arrest in the July 13 episode of the Masterpiece drama, as well as a cracking locked-room mystery. “I’m full of umbrage; I’m umbrageous,” an inebriated Leonard shouted before tossing a drink at police officer Larry (Bradley Hall). When he awoke in his cell with a dead policeman nearby, Leonard needed help not only to prove his innocence but also to deal with his personal grief, and vicar Alphy Kottaram (Rishi Nair) and police detective Geordie Keating (Robson Green) had his back for both.

Tessa Peake-Jones and Al Weaver (Kudos/ITV/MASTERPIECE)

In a nearly five-minute scene, the three had a heart-to-heart, and there was plenty of emotional pain to go around. “Geordie’s dealing with his son wearing a dress,” Weaver relates. “I’m dealing with, ‘My dad didn’t love me and I don’t know if Daniel loves me.’ And Alphy’s dealing with, ‘I’m adopted and now I need to find my mum.’ It’s a gorgeous scene of men talking about their troubles in a time when men were very stoic and wouldn’t talk about feelings. It’s quite nice that we put those in.”

And that may be one key to the show’s popularity, especially among female viewers: Grantchester has all the nostalgia of the era and features men who can be persuaded to show their sensitive sides. “There’s one for everyone,” Weaver says with a laugh about the show’s male ensemble, starting with Leonard. “You could have a nerdy type, or a hunky vicar type, or an older, suave Geordie, or even an older, suave Jack [Nick Brimble], a debonair Daniel, a weird Larry.”

But the episode ends with a tender scene between Leonard and vicarage housekeeper Mrs. Chapman (Tessa Peake-Jones), who stayed at the police station through the night, until Leonard was released. In her, he finds the parental affection he didn’t get from his father when he breaks down and admits he needs help.

“They’re surrogate mother and son, so they’re a complete family,” notes Weaver, who relishes his scenes with Peake-Jones, both of whom have been with the show since Season 1. “It’s always lovely to do stuff with Tessa ’cause she’s such a giving actress and person. That’s one thing I always ask [the writers] for: ‘Please, please, I need to have things with Tessa.’ You need to have Chapman and Finch.”

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Weaver has been working behind the camera as well. While tackling Leonard’s personal struggles, he also directed this season’s remaining three episodes, which were shot together over six weeks and involve the murder of a rock musician, a fashion show for Cathy (Kacey Ainsworth) and Mrs. Chapman’s new business, and a bomb that explodes in Cambridge ahead of a far-right speaker’s lecture at the university.

“It was a really big challenge, and I probably didn’t think it through!” he says of his workload. “The first two weeks of filming was all my stuff — all the emotional stuff. A couple of days were really tough mentally and physically because you’re doing both. Usually we finish filming in November, but I didn’t finish editing till middle of March.”

Weaver has come a long way from his first day on the set, when he recalls being “starstruck” to be working with Green. Even his mother wanted to know what the veteran actor was like. The men were in a car, on their way back from work, when she called to ask how his day went. “And she said, ‘How’s Robson?’ I was like, ‘He can hear us!’”

As shooting begins on Season 11, which will be Grantchester’s last, Weaver won’t be behind the camera, but he’ll get to explore another side of Leonard — a paternal one — when he helps care for the son of Daniel’s neighbor. Weaver remains surprised and delighted to have had the chance to play Leonard for so long. “It’s a great group of people,” he praises, “and we’ve kind of all grown up together, into our 40s, 50s and 60s. Everyone’s lovely, and we have a real giggle.”

Grantchester, Sundays, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)