Sheen’s killer new role

Michael Sheen played the complicated pioneer of human sexuality, Dr William Masters, in the TV series Masters of Sex.

But in his new TV drama, Prodigal Son, he plays another doctor – this time with a much darker focus as a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon.

In the series, Tom Payne – who plays Paul ‘‘Jesus’’ Rovia in The Walking Dead – is Malcolm Bright, a criminal profiler who knows how killers think because his father, Dr Martin Whitley, is The Surgeon.

Sheen embraced the chance to research the serial-killer world. ‘‘Over the last couple of years, there’s been an explosion of content around these sorts of issues so there was plenty to read or watch for research,’’ he says.

Part of Sheen’s research included watching a documentary about British doctor Harold Shipman who was suspected of killing more than 200 of his own patients between 1975 and 1988. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison in 2000 when he was found guilty of murdering 15 patients.

‘‘It was really useful, understanding the idea of how a doctor – someone trusted in the community, loved, respected and admired – could also be doing these terrible things,’’ he says.

Sheen had also written a script a few years earlier about serial killer Gary Leon Ridgway, who was convicted of murdering 49 victims in the 1980s and 90s and given the nickname of the Green River Killer after the Washington State location where his first five victims were discovered.

‘‘I’d spent a long time looking into the psychology of that serial killer and, even though it’s not the same as the character I play, it gave me a broad background and more specific details on those personality traits,’’ he says.

Sheen has appeared in numerous films, including The Queen (2006), Frost/Nixon (2008) and Midnight In Paris (2011) as well as the new TV series Good Omens, but he says this was one of the most fascinating roles he has played.

‘‘When I first talked about playing the character with this heart of darkness, the question was, ‘Is it a heart of darkness that can feel love or is it a heart of darkness that can’t?’ ’’ he muses. ‘‘On one hand, you think, ‘Can this man feel empathy or love or emotions we take for granted?’

‘‘We’ve all given these emotions names and put labels on them, but we don’t know what we’re really describing. So in playing the scenes and the dynamic between all the relationships, the question keeps coming up.

‘‘He was a loving father and husband so was he just conning his family for years – which he clearly did on one level – or was he just hiding a part of himself that was very fundamental to him and couldn’t be shown to the people who mattered most?’’

The actor, who is a loving father to his 20-year-old daughter Lily with former partner, actress Kate Beckinsale, is hoping these themes exploring the difference between love and the simulation of love, will hook audiences.

‘‘Given that my profession is about simulation, about pretending to be something, that’s not lost on me,’’ he says. ‘‘And yet, what we aspire towards as actors is not to just be pretending but for it to be real. There’s an Oscar Wilde phrase, ‘Give a man a mask and he’ll show you his true face,’ so I guess it’s all about fake it till you make it.’’

Prodigal Son also includes flashbacks between young Malcolm and his father years earlier. ‘‘We go back and forth between Martin before he was identified as The Surgeon and who he is now that he’s been in prison,’’ Sheen elaborates. ‘‘How much does he keep hidden? I’m looking forward to peeling back the layers.’’

– Jenny Cooney, TV Guide

Prodigal Son, TVNZ 1, Mondays, 8.30pm.