5 MINUTES WITH...

Stars Tara Fitzgerald and Brendan Coyle (aka Bates from Downton Abbey) tell all about the Beeb’s spooky must-see six-part drama Requiem…

ell us about T this haunting psychological thriller, set 23 years after the disappearance of a toddler from a small Welsh town. TARA, 50: It’s set in the fictitious small Welsh village of Penllynith [Tara manages a faultless pronunciation here], which is a powerful place – but odd. I play Sylvia, a local antiques dealer. She’s an outsider, and she’s properly introduced in episode two. Much more will be revealed later, though... BRENDAN, 55: I play Stephen Kendrick, who was the Chief Investigating Officer on the case of the missing girl. He is haunted by the disappearance of this child. The community is scarred. So it’s a supernatural drama – do spooky things happen…? T: It’s scary, and what was weird was that there were a lot of incidents on set, involving birds. Dead birds seemed to be in people’s gardens more than normal, and there was a dead pigeon in my basement. Somebody else said a bird had flown in through their window. B: That was me! Two birds got into my flat in London – I was freaking out! T: And then a bird flew into someone else’s windscreen. It was uncommon… Any other memorable events during the filming? T: The funeral scene was filmed in Dolgellau, in Snowdonia, on the hottest day of the year. We shot that for about 11 hours, and it was hilarious how hot it was. It was the hottest day they’ve almost ever had in Dolgellau, I think, and we were all in this dark, heavy funeral attire.