THE SISTER
The new thriller from Luther writer Neil Cross gives Russell Tovey his toughest role yet
WE’RE ON set of Neil Luther Cross’ new drama, holed up with Russell Tovey in the upstairs bedroom of a big, spooky house on the outskirts of London. While a rare sequence in which he doesn’t appear is being filmed close by, he’s whispering to Pilot TV about how intense this experience is turning out to be. Just as he’s trying to find the right words, a bonechillingly loud scream from the hallway punctures the atmosphere. “Catering disaster,” deadpans Tovey. He’s trying to keep it light, but this is the darkest role he’s ever taken on...
How would you describe the atmosphere of this show?
It’s incredibly intense. The story revolves around something that happened involving my character, Nathan, on New Year’s Eve ten years in the past. Something terrible. But you’re not quite sure what Nathan’s done, and what he’s capable of. It reminds me of that HBO series The Night Of, where Riz Ahmed’s character has possibly done something really bad, but you hope he hasn’t. When you see Nathan in the present day, he’s a decent, nice person and you fall in love with him, but has he done something fucking awful? What’s it like being at the centre of such a story? It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. I’m in most of the scenes, and it shifts between three time periods. It’s a genre piece and it’s quite noir-ish, so there’s lots of camera trickery to give it that horror-movie vibe. So sometimes I just have to focus while they’re setting up a complicated sequence with an elaborate crane shot, which can be frustrating. But it will look brilliant.
You say it’s a genre piece, and we’ve heard the scream — just how scary is this going to be?
I think it’s full-on. There’s this other element to the story where he’s in a relationship with a woman and they want to have a baby, but for some reason they’re having trouble with that, and there’s a paranoia that something is haunting them. It’s a bit of a ghost story, and the question of whether there is something supernatural going on is hovering over it. Stuff starts happening that is terrifying, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it.
Did it take you a while to get into the character, or did you know how you would play him from the start?
I did actually change my approach in the read
through. I tried one way of playing him, then I changed my mind and gave him a different energy. I wanted him to have a real stillness. It was quite hard to get a grasp on him because you don’t know where he’s from, and who he really is. Unlike most of the roles I’ve done, this character hasn’t got any swagger at all — he just wants to disappear.
Do you like to watch yourself back to see if you think it’s going OK?
I do like to have a look at the scenes, without listening to them — just to see myself because I notice when my face looks a certain way and I pull certain expressions, I know I’m not feeling it. Particularly in this, when I need to find the stillness. Like, I’ll watch it back and in the scene I’m meant to do nothing, but I end up looking like Jim Carrey in The Mask; like my head’s spinning around and my rubbery face is all over the place. I have to sort that out.
Has filming TV changed much since your younger days working on shows like Being Human?
A bit, yeah. I mean, I’ve got some night shoots on this which will be just like when I filmed Being Human — in the woods, naked running around till 4am. Except I’m not naked in this. One thing that has changed is the intimacy scenes. I’ve got an intimacy rehearsal coming up, which I’ve never done before. I had an intimacy chat with an advisor on Looking which went on for a whole afternoon, but this is the first time I’ve done an intimacy rehearsal — but it’s fair enough. I do so many sex scenes and I’d hate for anyone to feel uncomfortable with me. Whereas I don’t really give a fuck.