From Shadow and Bone and Westworld to The Punisher and The Chronicles of Narnia, along with a variety of independents and TV shows woven throughout, Ben Barnes is an actor whose characters are always layered on multiple levels and never fully just one thing. Now, as a singer/songwriter, he’s also carrying that same vibe over to his music, most specifically the collection of songs that make up the EP Songs for You.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, which you can both watch and read, Barnes talked about his more than 20-year journey to releasing such a personal collection of songs, the creative and artistic fulfillment he gets from music, his musical inspirations, how he knew when he had the right collection of songs put together, why he wanted to do music videos, and his hope of doing some live shows. He also talked about where things are at with Season 2 of Shadow and Bone and what he’s most excited about in that regard, as well as his experience doing an episode of Guillermo del Toro’s horror anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities.

Collider: How long had you been thinking about this music, these songs and this album, before finally deciding to actually take this journey and see it through?

BEN BARNES: I think the answer to that is somewhere between two years and 22 years. Twenty-two years ago, I had my first foray into music and music recording, and I signed to Simon Fuller, who was the managed who came up with Spice Girls. We were doing a jazz/big band project together, which never came to fruition, and I did a few pop band projects and did some recording with some other producers, but it just never really got any wind under its wings. I got quite quickly disillusioned with it. Meanwhile, the acting side of things was brewing and peaking my curiosity and I got excited about some of the storytelling.

Through the course of my career, you can see that I was navigating back, whenever I could, to projects that had something to do with music, but it was always impersonations of people. I was always doing impressions. Even at school, I would do these Sinatra tribute concerts and Stevie Wonder soul nights, and all of these things that weren’t really me, but just things that I loved. It just took this amount of time to find the confidence that my own songs can stand up in the canon of all music ever released and that I knew what I wanted it to sound like. Sometimes it takes some of us a bit longer than others to get to that place, especially when I’m so used to people seeing me in a certain light. Honestly, it just got to a point where I was talking to the 80-year-old version of myself thinking, “If I don’t do this now, I’ll forever regret not having done it.” That should far outweigh any other argument there is for not doing it.

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Marvel's The Punisher

It’s easy to find yourself put into a box in Hollywood. Especially when you’re good at a particular kind of character or people see you a particular way, they want to keep casting you as that because it’s reliably successful. It’s up to the actor or the filmmaker to get people to see them in some different way or convince them that they can do something they haven’t seen them do before. How do you deal with that, as an actor, and does feeling like people see you as an actor then get in your head when you’re trying to work on music?

BARNES: I think there’s probably always that slight initial judgment from people. They want to own that little piece of you and they see you in a certain way. They see you as a certain character that they love from a story, or whatever it might be. But for me, I love to try new things and try a different way. To be honest, it’s just a different way of storytelling. Having spent 20 years being edited and directed and written for, it became important for me to do something completely from me, completely raw and authentically me. I have no regrets about it because it’s actually made it easier. I feel like it’s helped people understand me more readily already. It’s definitely proven to myself what it is that I sound like and what it is that I have to say for myself.

What are the biggest differences for you with music, when it comes to creative and artistic fulfillment? Is it as simple as when you’re acting, you’re playing a character, and when you’re doing music, it’s coming from you personally, or is it not that clearly defined?

BARNES: I think I’m always trying to find ways to syringe in and find foundation in the characters that I play with pieces of myself. This is just a purer, more raw way of just expressing myself. Music is just so evocative. When you’re acting, you have the way you move your body, and your facility with your voice and how you make that sound, and your interpretation of the words. I don’t need to interpret these words because I wrote them and I know what they felt like. I know what it felt like to feel them and meet them, and then write them down, and then find music and chords that go along with it.

I’ve always found music that the quickest emotional access, in terms of storytelling. I know how other people’s music makes me feel, in an instant. I was just excited to share what that feels like for me and just so curious as to what people’s reactions would be like. I’m so curious what people’s favorite songs are, what they connect with, what it is in their own life, what line of what song makes them feel something about their own situation. When we talk about music, we talk about sharing it, and that’s what I wanted to do with it. I don’t want to just put it out into the world or force it down people’s throats or sell it. I wanna share it.

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I love music. Music has always been a part of my life. For me, I can judge my life before I heard Pearl Jam, and after I found their music. Was there a musician or a band or somebody who did that for you, who made you fall in love with music in a way that like just made you totally re-evaluate how you looked at and heard and thought of music?

BARNES: There’s a few, but one that’s jumping to mind now is the band Queen. My dad listened to a lot of the great rock bands when I was growing up. Music was always playing in the house. There was always something about the rawness of Freddie Mercury’s voice and the idiosyncrasy of the songs. It seemed impossible that the lyrics and the music ever existed one without the other. Maybe a lot of that is nostalgia for me and remembering how I felt when I heard that stuff for the first time. I know we all have bands like that. And then, I loved ‘70s and Motown and soul, and all that stuff. One of my music teachers introduced me to Donny Hathaway in my early teens, and his voice has always been one that was just able to cut right through to the heart, no matter what he’s singing about. That’s the purity and rawness I was talking about. I would love it to sound somewhere in between the two of them, but they were definitely huge influences. They were definitely musical awakenings, those two. By the way, there are hundreds of others, but those are the first two that jumped into my head.

I love songwriters who are also real storytellers that take you on a journey.

BARNES: I love that too, but I also have always been drawn to vocalists. Even when I was really young, it was Etta James, Whitney Houston, Michael McDonald, Freddie Mercury, Stevie Wonder, and those people who, as soon as you hear their voices, you know they’re so musical with extraordinary sounds that no one else was making, and you can immediately tell who they are. I don’t necessarily think I have any of that about me, but it is definitely what I respond to when I listen to music.

Songwriting always seems like a very elusive thing to me. It’s hard to explain how somebody comes up with those words and that music, and it just somehow works together. It feels like it would also be hard to describe how you put a collection of songs together. When you were putting this collection of songs together, how did you know that they felt right? How did you know when you were done and should walk away from it?

BARNES: It’s a good question. The first part of it was little phrases that chimed with me, that then became a bit of a loving crossword puzzle. I really enjoyed the process of having things fit and looking at the structure of how most songs are presented and seeing how closely I need to fit to that and does it convey the different perspectives of what I want to talk about. Finding music is much more painstaking for me because I just sit at the piano and move my fingers.

I don’t know anything about music, really, in terms of keys or chords or structures. I just plunk away until something sounds like the feeling that I had when I was writing the words, or the feeling that I then wrote the words about. It definitely ends up being quite organic and truthful, but is not necessarily quick. And then, just thematically, I’ve always loved albums, which feel like they go together, and this felt like a collection of songs that all were about hope and empathy and trying to see things from more than one side. They were all about living a little bit in the gray areas.

Some of the songs are positive and have a vibe to them, but then they have a melancholy undertone, and some of them are more soulful and sensitive. They have that feeling of pathos to them, but then there’s a hopeful undercurrent. It’s more than one thing at a time. I often say that about acting, with a line. If you’re asking someone a question in a scene, when you ask someone an important question in real life, you usually are hopeful for one answer rather than another, or are fearing a certain kind of answer, but there’s always more than one thing at a time that’s going on. It’s important to share with each other that things are not always black and white.

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Image via Netflix

Does making music videos feel like a marriage of the two sides of you, between the acting and the music? Does it feel like this intersection of where those two things meet?

BARNES: Yes, absolutely. That’s exactly why I wanted to do it and that’s exactly why I did more than one music video, even though it was more costly and I had to call more favors. I put so much more blood, sweat and tears into it to getting it done. I did want to involve people I’d worked with before. I wanted to give people an opportunity to pitch ideas. In the case of the 11:11 video, I just had a very specific story in my head that Lee Krieger, who was the director on the Shadow and Bone pilot, helped me make a reality. Instead of coming from left field and being like, “I’m an actor and I’m doing music too,” it was more like, “This is all storytelling, and this is a way to link the two together. It’s the tunnel between the two.” A lot of this is wanting to feel understood and wanting to feel connected to people who feel like they can see it too. Music is one thing, and then the visual is another. Some people are more visual than they are oral, and they can see at least one of the threads of storytelling that’s going through your head when you’re feeling this music. That’s interesting.

There are music videos that can definitely make an impression. I love the music video for “Losing My Religion” as much as I love the song.

BARNES: I definitely didn’t wanna just do something that was abstract. I didn’t wanna do something that was just a performance. I didn’t wanna do something that was inaccessible. I wanted to tell a story that, even if it’s not the story of the song, connected to the song. What I do is storytelling, and I wanted it to make it feel more accessible, not just to have something to look at while you’re listening to it. It was the specific kind of video that I’m interested in.

Fans of Shadow and Bone are highly anticipating and anxiously awaiting the second season of that show. Where are you at in the production of Season 2? Have you started filming any of it yet, or is that something happening imminently soon?

BARNES: We haven’t started and I don’t know exactly when we’re going to. I’m hopeful it will be soon because I’m waiting with as much anticipation as those fans who you were talking about because I’m one of them. I’m excited to see what they do with it, and I’m excited to see when we can get going.

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Image via YouTube

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Shawn Levy has said that all of the scripts have been written. Have you read them all? Do you want to read them all? Do you not like to get that far ahead of yourself?

BARNES: I would very happily gobble them up today, if they arrived on my doorstep, but nothing has been shared with me yet. The spies at Netflix are keeping them safe. I’m excited. I wish I had secrets to spill . . . But I always find that it appeals to me to be able to look at the arc of the season, and to be able to balance things and judge things, and know how much to fall back and how much to give. I prefer it that way. There’s also something exciting about working on something like Westworld, for example, where you had no clue where it was going, so you just had to go balls to the wall and just don’t leave anything in the tank because you don’t know what it is next week. You might be shot.

When you’re telling a story in such a expansive world as Shadow and Bone, there’s a lot of story to tell and a lot of characters to explore. Have you had any conversations about how many seasons the show could go? Do you have any idea what they’re thinking about that?

BARNES: I don’t know. I know that Eric [Heisserer], our showrunner, is very keen to get to the Six of Crows stories. I know he loves a heist and he loves those characters, and he read that first. I know that much. So, he’s keen to get on with that. I’m excited to see how they could sew it all up. I’m not envious of that task. I think they did an amazing job in the first season, of having a prequel for Six of Crows interlink with the Shadow and Bone stories. I’m beyond curious to see how they do it going forward. So long as I get to say the juiciest lines that I’ve written on my list, I’ll be happy.

It’s such a fun show. The first season was great, but I love where all of the characters were left because it just feels like there’s so much to dig into.

BARNES: Yeah, almost every character has had the rug pulled out from underneath them, but is facing forward, knowing what they want to do now. I think that’s an interesting moment to leave things at.

When a project comes your way and you know that it’s a horror anthology series (Cabinet of Curiosities) from Guillermo del Toro, do you even need to know any more before saying yes, or was that enough?

BARNES: No, you don’t need to know anything. I just said yes, which I never, ever do. And also, I always said to my team – my manager and everything that I’ve had for 20 years – that I would never do a horror because I don’t watch them and I don’t like feeling creeped out. I love psychological thrillers and being scared, but I don’t like feeling creeped out. It’s not something that I actively seek out, but if it’s Guillermo del Toro, you know he’s gonna do something else with it as well. You know there’s gonna be a humanity to it. You know there’s gonna be something to it, which has something else to say for itself. He’s been very hands-on with the creative process and choosing all of the stories and choosing the cast and designing some of the features of it. So, I just said yes, and it turned out to be a really interesting character and they were very collaborative. There were certain themes that I wanted to pull out of this particular story that I was doing, which I can’t say what it is yet. I think it’s something that I’ll be really proud of.

We do know that it is based on a short story by HP Lovecraft. How does that influence the tone and vibe?

BARNES: That was the thing that I didn’t think I could say, but you do know that. I will say that what we made is very different from the short story. It’s much more expanded than this particular short story is. This short story is about one tiny element of what we’ve made, so it’s kind of an original, fresh-feeling thing. The main thread of the story is taken from the short story, and the two main characters, but it felt like we were making something new and fresh, even though it was set over different time periods. I’m excited about it. I’m just hesitant because I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not.

How was the experience of working with someone like Crispin Glover, who’s an actor that is unpredictable?

BARNES: Yeah, totally unpredictable. That’s one of the great things about working with him. He likes to do takes in different ways and scenes in different ways, and he loves doing it. He’s excited about the character he’s crafting and it’s so fun to watch him do that. He likes to talk about it and download what we’re trying to do with any particular scene, and make each scene the most full version of itself. He’s a good collaborator, in that way. I think it’s important, in a genre like that, to have people who are gonna be a bit unpredictable, but still have a verve for making it exciting, and he has all those things.

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Image via Netflix

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I love the work that Guillermo del Toro does. He feels like a big kid, in the sense of his imagination and all of the creatures and characters that he comes up with, and yet he can still be very terrifying, at the same time. I love that combination.

BARNES: Yeah, and this story definitely has all of those things. It feels very period Guillermo del Toro.

Since it took 20 years or more to get to this point with your music, are you thinking about working on new music anytime soon? Is it something you always do? Are you always playing around with that kind of thing?

BARNES: I’m always sitting at the piano and playing songs that I love, or trying to, at least, and just enjoying doing it. And I’m always writing down lyrics and phrases and little things, often for people’s birthdays. If they’re feeling a bit down, I’ll write them a short little poem of some kind, just because I like thoughtfulness and I like that kind of communication, which is a bit more thoughtful. I’m always doing stuff with words. The actual sitting down to finish the songs is something I need a bit more space for. That tends not to happen, if I’m working on a show or a film. I’ve caught the bug. I definitely wanna do more. Whether that involves doing some more covers or some different genres, or whatever, then that’d be great. I’d love to perform the songs, at some point, for people. I’d love to do some shows. I don’t know how or when or what, but it’s nice to be able to write a list of ambitions.

Is it hard to even think about doing live performances, between your acting projects and just in general with COVID? How could you even work something like that out?

BARNES: I need more support in my life, I’m realizing, if I want to do more than one thing. But maybe I’ll get that and maybe we can find a way.

When you are figuring out the process of writing a song and working on getting your thoughts out that way, has it ever made you think about writing a script? Does one even translate to the other?

BARNES: I have written a couple of scripts in my life, particularly with people. I’ve not felt confident enough with any of them. The effort to get something from a script onto the screen is inordinate, and the same with a song, to get it from something I can play [on the piano] just for my own ears to something that is available on a vinyl or a CD and a full thing with a video [is a whole other thing]. It took the last year and a half, completely, to do that because you want it to be what you set out for it to be, and I definitely do the same with a film or a show. So, I continue to dabble with writing scenes and scripts, but there are moments where it’s felt more important than something that I wanted to do. Maybe I want to direct. And then, you’re like, “But actually, if I have time that’s outside of acting, I wanna be doing music with it.” You’ve only got limited hours in the day. But at some point, I would like to have tried everything. I would like to make a film, at some point, that was out of my head, or myself with a writing partner. I love that process. I have so much experience with breaking down other people’s scripts that it’s stood me in very good stead. We’ll have to see if it’s ever something that comes to fruition.

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Image via Ben Barnes/YouTube

Is there an artist whose music that you listen to, but you would never want to touch covering any of their songs because you’d be afraid that it just wouldn’t work with how you sound?

BARNES: I would have a go of it. I know there are artists that perform in genres that I don’t. I’m not afraid of it. You can’t sing a Stevie Wonder song and sound like Stevie Wonder, but I’ve heard some great covers of that stuff. Life is too short to be envious of those kinds of people and their voices and their soul and their phrasing, or whatever it might be. But I do sometimes listen to artists that just cut right through to the soul, or the joy of something, or the pain or something, and I get stuck in time, in a moment, and that’s something sacred. I listen to an Irish artist, called Foy Vance, a lot at the moment, who I think is magical in that way. But yeah, that happens to me, all the time, listening to music.

Now that this album is done, how do you feel most creatively fulfilled by this experience? After 20 years of thinking about it, does it live up to what you hoped?

BARNES: It doesn’t sound like I thought it was going to sound. I thought it would sound more like the people I love it. I thought it would sound more Ray Charles. But of course, I’m not Ray Charles. It sounds more me. It’s just that you doesn’t necessarily know what that is. Dropping those expectations of wanting it to sound like anything else was a big part of this for me. People close to me saying the music sounds like I am, as a person, was a big part of it. Seeing people’s smiling faces, dancing to something you made, is an incredible, bountiful experience. Just being able to go onto Spotify or Apple music and click on a song that’s mine and it plays is magical to me. And it will never be deleted. It’s there now. No matter how old and doddery I get, you can still press play on it. There are very few things in life that are that tangible.

Songs For You is out now on all digital outlets via Label Logic, as distributed by Ingrooves.