A decade may have passed between albums, but Iwan Rheon never truly left the creative orbit. Best known to global audiences as an Olivier-winning stage actor and as the unforgettable antagonist Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones, Rheon’s musical return isn’t marked by fanfare—but by something far more interesting.
Now, his long-awaited second full-length album, I Just Wish I’d Never Gone To Space (out now via AWAL Recordings), lands with a dry, darkly witty wink. It’s not a comeback—it’s a continuation, filtered through time, experience, and a sharp, satirical gaze on ego, isolation, and the quiet mess of being human.
The Billionaire in Orbit
The lead single, “Hashtag,” launches the album with satirical bite—sharp, punchy, and eerily on-point in today’s world. Set against a muscular pop-rock backdrop, it imagines a tech billionaire drifting endlessly through space, his fortune meaningless in the void.
“I was watching some tech billionaire’s phallic rocket taking off,” Rheon says dryly. “And I remembered vaguely, something about Newton’s laws of motion—how, in a vacuum, the velocity of an object will always stay the same. So if anything goes wrong out there, they’ll be just floating away forever.”
The image amused him: someone with unimaginable wealth, suddenly so powerless. “I could just imagine this billionaire floating around, all his wealth on Earth pointless, and he’s wishing he’d never gone to space.” The absurdity struck a nerve. That vision stuck, evolved into a metaphor, and eventually crystallized into the song that gave the album its name.
Writing From the Margins
Although I Just Wish I’d Never Gone To Space comes nearly a decade after Dinard, Iwan Rheon never truly stopped writing. “I never really planned to have this huge hiatus,” he reflects. “It’s just sort of the way things happened. Acting roles came along.” But even as scripts took precedence, music never disappeared—it simply moved to the margins. Over the past five years, songwriting became a quiet, steady rhythm in the background, until the creative buildup could no longer be ignored.
“It gets to a point where you just need to get the music out, otherwise it just lives in your head. And that’s not necessarily healthy,” he says. Eventually, returning to the studio felt inevitable—and welcome. “It was lovely to get back in the studio and record some new tunes.”
Songs That Stayed, Songs That Didn’t
Still, not everything written during that period found a place on the final tracklist. A few songs, shaped during a breakup that coincided with the pandemic, were consciously set aside. “There were a few songs that I didn’t feel I wanted on this album because I guess a lot changed since then, and I wanted to do something a bit more forward-thinking and relevant to now,” Rheon explains.
Some remnants of that era linger—“Fever” and “Party” in particular carry echoes of that earlier chapter, though even those span different timelines. “The latter is a really old song, but it felt relevant,” he adds. The result is an album shaped by reflection —one that nods to the past without being defined by it. No, this isn’t a breakup album; it’s something more subtle. It charts a quiet transformation, a shift toward the present.
Crafting Space: Sound & Collaboration
Produced in collaboration with Chris Hyson and featuring Welsh twin musicians Lloyd and Alex Haines, I Just Wish I’d Never Gone To Space is a sonically diverse yet emotionally cohesive body of work. From the biting satire of “Hashtag” to the swelling optimism of “Forward Motion,” the album toggles between irony and intimacy, without ever straying from its emotional core. “The sound came together in the room,” Rheon recalls. Nearly every track—“all except for ‘Agor’”—was already written before he entered the studio.
The rest unfolded organically, through instinct and shared musical language. “Chris and I discussed a lot of references, bands and artists we liked,” he explains. “He really gets it, and I really enjoyed creating the sound with him.” Much like the themes, the emotional contrasts weren’t premeditated either. “I don’t think you really know what you’re gonna start writing about until you start,” he reflects. “The songs and themes just sort of happen.”
In Welsh, Inward
Two tracks—“Agor” and “Y Gwenyn”—bookend the album in Welsh, anchoring the project in Rheon’s heritage and offering a quieter, more introspective kind of emotional release. “Welsh definitely gives me a different freedom with writing,” he shares.
“It’s like accessing a different part of me.” Though he didn’t plan for “Agor” to be bilingual—or to open the record—once it was finished, it simply felt right. “It felt like the perfect opening,” he adds. “Y Gwenyn,” on the other hand, was always destined to bring the album gently to a close.
Character vs. Self
Though much of the album feels intimately autobiographical, Rheon carves out a surprising detour with “Hashtag”—a biting, satirical track voiced through the persona of an absurd tech billionaire. It’s a rare moment of character-driven storytelling for him, and one that offered unexpected creative distance. “It’s something I don’t really do that often, writing from the perspective of a different character,” he admits.
“So it is kind of freeing in a way—looking at the situation from the outside. But I think it actually helps with the absurdity of it, writing in the first person.” Still, no character is ever completely separate. “It would be impossible to say there aren’t elements of my personal experiences within this one.”
The Vulnerability of Creative Control
What makes I Just Wish I’d Never Gone To Space land with such clarity is how unmistakably handcrafted it feels. Iwan Rheon wasn’t just the voice or face of the album—he was in the thick of every decision, from songwriting and arranging to production itself. “There’s nowhere to hide,” he says, acknowledging the vulnerability of such deep involvement. “But I guess that is empowering.”
For Rheon, music is as much about the process as the product—a rare space where he isn’t just interpreting someone else’s vision, as he often does on screen, but steering the entire creative ship. “Having that creative control is really important to me,” he says. “I really enjoy every part of creating an album.” It helps, too, when collaboration clicks—especially with producer Chris Hyson, whose partnership brought instinctive synergy to the record’s sound.
From Ramsay to ‘Men Up’: Navigating Roles
On screen, Iwan Rheon continues to move fluidly between contrasting worlds. From the raw tenderness of BBC’s “Men Up” to the blood-and-sand chaos of “Those About to Die”, he gravitates toward roles that spark something visceral.
What guides his choices? A quiet, internal click.
“You read a script with an interesting character,” he explains, “and then instinctively start thinking about how you play the role—and that’s always a good sign.” It’s less a formula than a gut-level recognition, one that has long shaped his varied and unpredictable screen trajectory.
Ramsay Bolton: Ghosts of Westeros
Of course, for many, Iwan Rheon will always be remembered as Ramsay Bolton—the cruel, calculating and sadistic villain of “Game of Thrones”, who became one of television’s most terrifying figures. It’s a legacy he carries without letting it weigh him down. “I try not to take the characters home. I think it’s really important to leave them in the room,” he says. “I’ve always been quite good at doing that. It’s just playing.”
When asked whether Ramsay was misunderstood, he doesn’t sugarcoat it: “Not sure if there’s much to be misunderstood about him. He was a very bad boy.” Spoken like someone who’s long since made peace with the ghosts of Westeros.
The Stillness Between Projects
Still, there’s often a strange weight that follows once a project ends, not quite the character, but something harder to define. “The general is a sort of shadow of the character that could linger,” Rheon admits, “but I think it’s often just the intensity of the work—the commitment, concentration and energy that goes into creating something.”
When that abruptly vanishes, it leaves a peculiar void. “It’s always a bit strange when you’re no longer doing it,” he adds, matter-of-factly. That’s where music comes in—not as escape, but as tether. “It’s a wonderful way to remain creative when I’m not on set.”
Solitude, Stillness, and Song
Unlike acting, which he describes as “a small part of something much bigger… a cog in a huge machine,” music offers Rheon something more personal and sustained. “You come in in the middle, when so much work has already gone into getting to that stage. Then when I finish my bit, there’s a whole load of work left to complete the project.”
In contrast, songwriting is a full-circle process—start to finish, soul to surface. “It’s about a single creative idea that I’m a part of from beginning to end,” he says. “I enjoy having the complete creative control.”
In the quiet stretch between scripts and sessions, Rheon gravitates toward simplicity. No spotlight, no pressure, just the world as it is. “I like walking around in woods or a cliff side or whatever,” he shares, almost offhandedly. “Making music is actually one of the things that I love doing as well. Even just sitting on my own in a room playing the guitar.” There’s peace in that solitude. In the soft ritual of being alone with sound. Or, sometimes, not being alone at all. “Hanging out with friends, family,” he adds. That, too, is enough.
The Album Belongs to the Listeners Now
Now that “I Just Wish I’d Never Gone To Space” is finally out in the world—streaming, spinning, echoing across headphones—Iwan Rheon is keeping it grounded. “I’m just really pleased to have made it,” he says. “And I hope that people can sit back and enjoy it and get something out of it, whatever that may be.”
He hints at live performances ahead. “Some shows would be great. We did a few tunes on a live session a few months back so they’ll be released—and let’s see about everything else.” For now, the album belongs to the listeners.
And maybe, somewhere, even a lonely billionaire is listening from orbit. Stream now!
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