THANDIE: MY LINES OF DUTY!
Star's horror at having to learn lengthy scripts
LINE Of Duty’s latest signing – Hollywood’s Thandie Newton – admits that she was not much cop when it came to learning her lines.
The star – who appeared in Mission: Impossible II and The Pursuit Of Happyness – has joined the hit police drama series which is known for its lengthy interview scenes.
She said: “I had one scene that was half an hour. I felt very old because my memory was failing.
“It’s so frustrating because you want to be so good. But then you fluff and it f***s it up.
“Then you come back in like a f***ing prize fighter. And then you get through it and you feel like the dopest actor.
“It’s the most challenging but the most rewarding. I did have to get my nanny to test me on my lines. She would dread it so I’d ply her with expensive wine.
“I should have paid her a bit more!”
Co-star Vicky McClure joked: “I call the show ‘Lines Of Duty’ because there are so many. We work weeks ahead to get it into our heads. It’s a brilliant feeling.”
In the new series, Thandie plays Roz Huntley who is being investigated by the force’s anticorruption unit.
She confessed: “I actually hadn’t seen any Line Of Duty before.
“I don’t watch television really, partly because there’s just so much reality TV, which makes me uneasy.
“But I got a call from my agent and she said: ‘If you ever want to work on British television this is the best thing you could ever do.’” ¬Ê Line Of Duty is back on Sunday, March 26, at 9pm on BBC One.
LINE Of Duty will air on BBC One for the first time. The drama has been on BBC Two for the past five years and scored ratings of five million so TV chiefs have decided to move it to its flagship channel as a result. EPISODE one kicks off with dramatic scenes as a woman is bundled into a car. Police are on the hunt for the kidnapper and Roz (Thandie Newton) heads up the case. A show source said: “This series is going to be full of shocks.” THE cast became a family while filming in Belfast for the third series in a row. Vicky McClure said: “Me, Martin Compston and Adrian Dunbar all stay in the same block of flats. We have a right laugh. We take it in turns to cook each night.” THANDIE Newton was forced to ditch her Hollywood glamour for the show by boss Jed Mercurio. She said: “I gave some ideas of how I wanted the costume to be… really cool in tracksuit bottoms and high tops. And Jed just said: ‘No, you’re going to wear suits and bad shoes all the time’.”