Dark secrets come to light in Netflix’s latest Harlan Coben thriller
Stars James Nesbitt, Cush Jumbo and Richard Armitage tell Georgia Humphreys why Stay Close is sure to have viewers gripped
Harlan Coben and Netflix have become a dynamic duo in the world of TV. The American writer, 59, and the streaming service have already made Safe and The Stranger in the last few years – and now comes Stay Close, based on his book of the same name.
The goosebump-inducing eight-part drama explores how the people close to us could be concealing dark secrets, and how our past can suddenly unravel around us.
The Good Wife star Cush Jumbo plays working motherof-three Megan, Strike Back’s Richard Armitage is photographer Ray, Cold Feet’s James Nesbitt plays detective Broome, while Merlin and Mistresses star Sarah Parish plays Lorraine, an old friend of Megan’s who turns up out of the blue.
Adding to the stellar cast is
Eddie Izzard as lawyer Harry and former Eastender Jo Joyner as Broome’s partner Detective Erin Cartwright, who also happens to be his ex-wife. Erin – now happily re-married with a child – and Broome investigate the disappearance of a young man – a case Broome is convinced is linked to a man who went missing 17 years earlier.
James, 56, who led the cast of crime drama Bloodlands earlier this year, notes “recently all I seem to do is play a policeman”.
But the Northern Irish actor liked that Broome was optimistic. “I thought, ‘There is someone who is one of the good guys, in a way, but yet with a complicated internal process going on in his life and in his mind’. I loved that.
“He is someone who wants to see the good in people, who believes very much in his job, who clearly has had failures, has flaws, has had sadness, heartbreak. But I also think he is someone who, when the sun rises, thinks he should probably get up as well.
“What’s great about the relationship with Erin, he really is a balance for her in many ways – and even better now, since they’re apart – although I think you can see, at times, wee bits of regret in both of them.”
Leicestershire-born Richard Armitage, who also starred in The Stranger, as family man Adam Price, was excited to work on another Harlan Coben story. “The prospect of coming back to work with these guys again got me through lockdown, because I thought, ‘There’s something on the horizon’, and I was able to study the book, and chat to them over that time and figure out what we wanted to do,” says the 50-year-old, who also starred in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film trilogy.
“One thing they were very nervous about was asking me to come back and play another character so close in their production, and just how do we make him very different to what we’d seen before. Obviously, it’s a different character, but he needed to look and feel different.”
Cush Jumbo explains how Stay Close explores what a person would do if someone from their past turned up, causing an “explosion” in their current life.
Her character Megan seems to have the perfect life when we meet her; a nice house in suburbia, three children and a wedding coming up.
But she worked as a dancer in a nightclub when she was younger and as the story switches between past and present, we discover she had to start living under a new identity.
“Everybody loves a flashback,” says Londoner Cush, 36. “In the book, you’re creating your own imagery of where they were and how that was; being able to build it for real is a lot of fun.”
Cush adds she enjoyed playing a woman who, from the outside, looked to have everything right, “and yet inside they’re slightly discontent because they’re never sure whether, in another universe, in another time, with another boyfriend, ‘Would life have been different? Did I miss out on anything?’
“But most people don’t have the opportunity to go back through a wormhole into that life, and Megan did, so I found that interesting and exciting.”
“A lot of Harlan’s books, they follow a formula...” she continues. “And yet he still tricks you every time because what he’s really good at is leading us down all of these different pathways.”