Thandie on her Line Of Duty role: “I’m very anxious – I just want to be good!”
Feeling old, forgetting lines and wearing pop socks – Thandie Newton’s new role isn’t her most glamorous...
She starred opposite Tom S Cruise in Mission: Impossible II, scooped a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for the 2004 film Crash, and most recently hit the headlines for getting naked playing a robot brothel madam in futuristic Sky drama Westworld.
But Thandie Newton faced her biggest challenge on BBC1’S Line Of Duty; namely learning 25-page-long scenes and having to wear “nasty” clothes.
AMAZING OPPORTUNITY
“I hadn’t actually seen Line Of Duty before,” admits Thandie, 44, who also starred in US series ER. “But I had a call from my agent, who said if I wanted to work on British TV, Line Of Duty would be the best thing I could ever do. I was intrigued. I sat down to watch series one and I just couldn’t stop. It was phenomenal – I just had to be part of it.”
Series four of Line Of Duty has moved from BBC2 to BBC1, and Thandie joins the cast as DCI Roz Huntley. She finds herself investigated by the AC-12 (anticorruption) officers (played by Vicky Mcclure, Martin Compston and Adrian Dunbar) after being accused of tampering with evidence when a man with learning difficulties is suspected of abducting women.
Roz is a mum-of-two while, in real life, Thandie – who grew up in London and Cambridge and has a social anthropology degree from Cambridge University – is mum to daughters Ripley, 16, and Nico, 12, plus son Booker, two.
And it was Thandie’s nanny who got roped in to help her learn her epic lines after work (co-star Vicky Mcclure has joked the series should be called “Lines Of Duty” because there are so many of them). Thandie adds: “I’d get home from work, my two-year-old would be asleep and I’d have to ask my nanny to test me on my lines. She dreaded it, so I’d ply her with expensive wine. I had a half-hour-long 14-page scene, and a 25-page scene. I’m a very anxious person and I just wanted to be as good as the other cast members. But there were times when I had memory failure and I felt old.
“I’d fluff it and f*** it up – but then I’d come back like a prize fighter and I felt like the dopest [coolest] actor in the world. It’s challenging, but rewarding...”
HORRIBLE OUTFIT
As Roz, Thandie also has to wear an outfit that she describes as “awful, butt-clenching nastiness.”
She adds: “I thought, ‘She’s a working mum so obviously she’s going to look like me.’ Jed [creator Jed Mercurio] was like: ‘Sorry, no, you’re going to wear suits and bad shoes.’ So I found the most horrible shoes I could find – and pop socks, which I insisted on pulling up so you could see them...”
In previous series, the key “antagonist” roles have been played by Lennie James, Keeley Hawes and Daniel Mays – but according to the Beeb, Roz Huntley will prove AC-12’S “most devious opponent yet.” We can’t wait!