Julien Baptiste is no Marvel hero... he’s an Everyman

TCHEKY KARYO is addressing his heartthrob status – a tag the Turkey-born French actor has further acquired since his turn as The Missing’s Julien Baptiste.

“I didn’t expect that,” he begins with a smile. “It is flattering, makes you feel good,” says the star, 65, who received much praise for his performance as the dogged detective in the BBC1 thriller.

“But the character is not reducible to that. I am a father also, I have a six-year-old daughter and a two-year-old boy. And I’m glad because when I had those children I thought, ‘At my age, I will be the grandfather’.

“But no, I’m happy nature gave me good conditions, I’m happy to still enjoy life as much as I can, while trying to be wiser and trying to cultivate myself and be a good man.”

Tcheky is talking before his return to the role. Rather than a third season of The Missing, however, the veteran – who made the transition from 1980s French films to Hollywood blockbusters – will take centre stage in the spin-off series, Baptiste.

“Never quite retired detective and erstwhile beekeeper Julien Baptiste is a character very dear to our hearts so we always knew we weren’t quite ready to let him go if the right story presented itself,” says The Missing writers, Harry and Jack Williams, of their decision to pen an offshoot.

Fans of the brothers’ work could not be happier to see him back.

The new six-part drama will follow the insightful yet stubborn Julien, whose “retirement” is cut short when he becomes embroiled in a missing person case while on holiday in Amsterdam. Unable to refuse a plea for help from police commissioner Martha Horchner – who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend – he soon finds himself unravelling a complex web of deceit and lies.

With violence, sex and underground crime ticked, the fast-paced trailer has already drawn comparisons with its predecessor.

“The DNA of The Missing series one and two is still rooted in the story of Baptiste,” says Tcheky, whose film credits include American epic The Patriot and Garth Davis’s biblical Mary Magdalene.

“We are still very much in the same world as The Missing but (now) we see things through the eyes of Julien.”

He adds: “Julien is still stubborn but he has a lot of empathy for people and is still searching for the truth about human nature.

“He still has to deal with missing people, and with characters having to deal with difficult journeys, but it is different,” insists Tcheky, who will be joined by Tom Hollander, Barbara Sarafian and Jessica Raine in this run.

“I feel proud of it,” he adds of carrying his character through to a whole new arena. “The audience, the BBC and the writers, Harry and Jack Williams, didn’t want to say goodbye to Julien Baptiste.

“The brothers said that Julien still had a lot of skeletons in his closet and a lot of things left to be fixed.

“He’s not a Marvel superhero he is an Everyman, Julien Baptiste.”

It is the writing – the excitement – that keeps pulling Tcheky back to this complex character.