As gentle BBC Two comedy Rev returns for a third series, co-creator and leading man Tom Hollander, who was brought up in Oxford, tells of unexpected requests for blessings, writing his first episode and piling on the pounds to play poet Dylan Thomas. Jaine Blackman reports

Six weeks before Tom Hollander filmed the third series of Rev, he looked like an altogether different man.

Uncomfortably tubby and with his shirt buttons threatening to burst open at any given moment, Hollander had piled on the pounds to play the late Swansea-born poet Dylan Thomas for a one-off BBC Two film A Poet In New York, which details Thomas’s last few months.

Perched on a pew in the pretty St. Leonard’s Church in East London where Rev is filmed, Hollander is looking healthier, but today, his weight gain is still fresh in mind.

“I thought, ‘I mustn’t get diabetes’, because I’ve got to put [the weight] on quickly and then take it off again very quickly, because we were about to do the third series of Rev,” explains the 46-year-old, who’s also known for his role in the big screen political satire In The Loop as blundering Secretary Of State For International Development, Simon Foster.

“I had to stuff my face for six weeks, which isn’t as fun as it sounds. If anyone fantasises about being able to eat whatever you want without impunity, you can’t.

“After about 48 hours of it, you’re full, you feel sick, you have night sweats and you go to the loo at all sorts of odd times of the day.

“Anyway, we suffer for our art in showbiz, as is well documented.”

With his buttoned up smart black blazer and V-neck jumper, Hollander, who was born in Bristol but brought up by his teacher parents in Oxford, is not looking dissimilar to his Rev character Adam Smallbone.

The show follows conflicted Reverend Adam, who has transferred from a rural parish to the inner-city church of St Saviour’s in East London, with his long-suffering solicitor wife Alex (Broadchurch’s Olivia Colman).

The third series follows them as new parents, adjusting to life with a baby daughter, which means their home is once again awash with parishioners.

“Adam is, I think, an enthusiastic (if slightly hopeless) parent,” says Hollander, who attended the Dragon School and then Abingdon School where he was chief chorister.

“He loves their daughter but she makes their lives more complicated, for obvious reasons, as it does for everyone when they have a child.

“We discovered that vicars’ babies sort of become parish babies. Everyone feels the baby is theirs so there are even more people coming round to the vicarage, attempting to babysit or feed the baby, and annoying Alex.”

Hollander, who’s appeared in the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and the big screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley, has noticed people have stopped mistaking him for an actual man of the cloth, as they did when the show first aired.

“If I’m wearing the dog collar, people don’t think I’m a real vicar, they go, ‘There’s Rev',” says the diminutive actor (he’s 5ft 5in) who regularly meets up with five or six vicars who advise on the show.

“When we did the first series, if I was in costume on the street, people would assume I was a vicar, naturally enough.”

This meant that “once or twice, outside pubs, very drunk people” asked for the actor to bless them.

The holy requests might have stopped, but the continued popularity of the show means actors are queuing up to take part. This series will feature guest appearances from Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Kayvan Novak, as well as the return of Adam’s nemesis, Roland Wise, played by Hugh Bonneville.

Hollander co-created the series with writer friend James Wood, but this time, he’s taken on the challenge of writing his first solo episode. “It was thrilling,” explains the actor, who wrote episode three alone.

“But I found it embarrassing when we were shooting, because the lines that we had to say didn’t feel like lines at all.

“Normally, when you’re learning something, you're grappling with someone else’s brain, because they wrote them, whereas when it’s your own, it just feels like chat. It’s now put together and I’m really glad. It works well as an episode, so I feel proud.

“I’ve always storylined the episodes with James and written scenes along the way, but actually stepping up and sticking my head above the parapet and doing a whole one on my own was a wonderful thing.”

As far as the future’s concerned, he is happy to be cast in other people’s projects, rather than exclusively his own.

“It’s now probably possible [to have more of a creative role] but I also do just want to act,” says Hollander. “You know... traditional acting. Someone’s written a marvellous script and the director wants you to play the part and you do it.

“It’s quite a strain writing something and also acting in it. It’s much easier to just turn up, learn the lines and say them.”

Despite the additional pressure of writing, Hollander enjoys having such a big role in forming the series, which he describes as like “putting on an old cardigan”.

“The most fulfilling thing about doing Rev has been having a creative role in it,” he says gingerly. “That’s what drew me to the project and the fact that it’s been a success and something people seem to love has all been hugely fulfilling. I feel very fortunate and it’s something I couldn’t possibly have expected.”

Rev returns to BBC Two, Monday 10pm
A Poet In New York will air on BBC Cymru Wales in April and BBC Two in May