‘People are hurting’, says Michael Sheen in documentary where he writes off debt

Welsh actor Michael Sheen became emotional as he said the people in his local community were “hurting” in a new documentary where he writes off £1 million of consumer debt with his own money.

The Good Omens actor, 56, uses £100,000 to buy approximately 900 personal debts – amounting to £1 million – for people living in South Wales, in the Channel 4 programme.

In one scene, Sheen sits in a cafe in Port Talbot, where he was raised, and tells viewers the women who work there said people had been “crying at these tables” amid the closure of its last blast furnace, which had led to steelworkers losing their jobs.

His mission

He also reflected on his mission to buy debt from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – which took nearly two years – after working with Roland Roberts, a former director of a debt collection company, to set up a debt-buying business of his own.

“We’ve been doing this for quite a long time and things have changed in the sort of landscape of debt and things have shifted”, Sheen says in the documentary.

“But things have sort of changed for me a lot in the time that we’ve been doing it.

“I’ve lost family members during this time. I wasn’t sure that we would ever get to this point.

“It didn’t look like it was going to happen for a long time and financially, things have changed.

“Ironically, I genuinely am not sure if I can afford to do this.

“But I’m still going to do it, because I’ve made a commitment.”

He continues: “We’re sitting in a cafe at the moment, with steelworks right behind us, and the ladies who work here, before we started filming, told me that tomorrow is the last ship, the last boat coming into the dock here to deliver stuff to the steelworks.

“And they’ve described people sitting in here just crying at these tables.

“So it couldn’t be more real, how much people are hurting. It’s made me realise that this is … you’ve got to give it a chance, you’ve got to give it a go, and maybe this programme will make a tiny difference, or maybe it won’t, but I can’t walk away from it now.”

Banks declined

Also in the documentary, Sheen meets Labour MP Lloyd Hatton to learn more about the proposed Fair Banking Act as well as former prime minister Gordon Brown, who says he will help him have “the kind of meetings that are necessary” to make change.

Sheen tells him he approached several major banks to discuss this, all of whom declined.

The actor, who played Aro in the Twilight film series, announced he was a “not-for-profit actor” in 2021.

In January, he launched a theatre company called Welsh National Theatre, which he said would bring “a new dawn” in the country.

Sheen has played interviewer Sir David Frost in Frost/Nixon, the Duke of York in Prime Video show A Very Royal Scandal, and US researcher William Masters in Showtime series Masters Of Sex.

Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway is available to watch and stream on Channel 4 on Monday at 9pm.