The 28-year-old takes centre stage tonight in the classic Evelyn Waugh comedy as Paul Pennyweather, an inoffensive divinity student at Oxford University in the 1920s, who is wrongly dismissed for indecent exposure having been made the victim of a prank by The Bollinger Club.
That prank being that Pennyweather is stripped of all his clothing and left in the school yard clutching his manhood in nothing but his birthday suit.
Of course, Whitehall’s no stranger to getting naked on the small screen, though he admits he was looking forward to starring in a high-brow series where he could keep his clothes on.
“There’s rarely something I do when I keep my clothes on,” he joked to press including Express.co.uk. “My heart sank when I saw that. I thought, ‘A comedy-drama, finally this might be the one where I keep my clothes on.’ And then the first scene they’re down.
“One day I’ll do something where I’m dressed thought the whole thing – unlikely though.”
As a result of the practical joke, Pennyfeather soon finds himself teaching in a crumbling Welsh all boys school where he becomes caught up in the affections of one of the child’s mothers, played by Eva Longoria, 42.
Naturally, Whitehall was more than a little excited to be playing the love interest of one of the most sought-after women on the planet.
“I’m a huge fan of Desperate Housewives,” he enthused. “I had to check myself a lot from telling her how much I enjoyed her as Gabrielle Solis.
“Also her husband [Jose Antonio Baston] was on set and he is literally the coolest, loveliest and sexiest man. I spent a lot of time while I was wooing her looking at him and feeling totally emasculated.”
Decline and Fall begins tonight at 9pm on BBC One.
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