DUTY CALLS
Best known as DS Steve Arnott in Line Of Duty, Martin Compston is one of the most engaging actors on our TV screens. But life off-duty is a world away from fame, as Francesca Babb discovers
Red meets actor Martin Compston
The first thing I notice upon walking into an apartment at London’s brutalist Barbican Estate, where Martin Compston is having his photograph taken, is a half-drunk bottle of Irn-bru. It was, apparently, the chaser to a Greggs’ sausage roll. It’s a necessary start to the day for the Scot, following a night out with his best pals and Line Of Duty co-stars Vicky Mcclure and Adrian Dunbar. Compston arrived in London yesterday from Las Vegas, where he lives with his wife Tianna Flynn, their baby, and the dog. What started as a civilised night out at a Radio Times awards do, turned into a bit of a, well, late one. ‘When I’m in London, I get really excited,’ he laughs. ‘Maybe too excited. Vicky and Adrian are my best pals, genuinely my best friends. We just make each other laugh. Vicky is the mother hen, she’s the go-to person for everything. We have a stupid voice that we’ve been doing to each other since [Line Of Duty] series one, and it annoys everybody, but by the end they’re all doing it, too; this weird, Czech-russian camp accent.’ Compston, 35, has played DS Steve Arnott, lover of waistcoats, hater of ‘bent coppers’, and an integral part of Line Of Duty, the smash BBC police drama, for eight years, since its first season in 2012. ‘You’re never unaware how privileged you are to have that role,’ he says. ‘I don’t have many regrets, but I do have sleepless nights thinking, “What if I hadn’t taken it?”’ Filming for season six was due to start the day after we meet and he’s almost giddy with excitement about its return, however filming has since been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. ‘The scripts are back to what Line Of Duty was at the beginning,’ he says. ‘I feel bad band trying to sell their new album, but I genuinely feel like this is the best Jed [Mercurio; the series creator] has done. The tension’s all in the dialogue, the innuendos and the looks, and that’s when Jed is at his best.’
On-screen as Arnott, Compston is arrogant, prickly, buttoned-up and very, very English. In person, he’s the exact opposite. The thick Scottish accent is peppered with colloquialisms – some more sweary than others – and he is equal parts funny and emphatically earnest.
We’re also here to talk about The Nest, the new BBC One drama written by Nicole Taylor, creator of 2017’s brilliant Three Girls. It’s a thriller based around a happily married couple (Compston and Peaky Blinders’ Sophie Rundle) and their teenage surrogate, and is the sort of thing you will watch through your jumper sleeve as it pulls on every emotion. His role of Dan
– a millionaire property developer pushed to his limits – is the first part that he’s ever had specifically written for him, and he’s feeling the pressure.
‘Going into this, I really thought it could be something special,’ he says. ‘If [a script] is really good then you need a reason to go, “It wasn’t me that made a mess of this, it was a guy in my eyeline,” or, “We shot too long that day,” or “I had to do an accent.” But there was no excuse with this one: the script was great, the casting was great, and we had a really good director, and an incredible cameraman. Everything is geared toward it doing well and… I’m scared.’ He needn’t be. The Nest has all the makings of a classic BBC hit: moral conflicts, intense dialogue and brilliant casting (newcomer Mirren Mack, in particular, is outstanding).
The premise darkly explores the desperation and pain of trying for children.
‘I OFTEN THINK, “WHAT IF I HADN’T TAKEN LINE OF DUTY?”’
‘There’s a bit of me that thinks their intentions are quite noble,’ Compston says. ‘There’s nothing more noble than wanting to raise a child, but the way they’re going about it is horrible and despicable – a millionaire couple trying to buy a baby. On the surface they have everything, but the one thing that would be elemental, they can’t have, and it’s tearing them apart. Your sympathy shifts so much [throughout the series] with who you are rooting for.’
Compston became a father himself for the first time last year. ‘It obviously informed this job, it couldn’t not. My character is supposed to be exhausted and delirious, and I thought, “Well, I’ll be living that!” But there’s a difference between coming on set and going “I’m living this”, and coming on set and not being able to remember your lines because you’re so tired you can’t see straight. People are liars, because [having a baby] is the best thing that’s ever happened to you, but it’s also the hardest. You’ve never felt exhaustion like it where you could cry.’
As far as talking about his baby is concerned, Martin likes to keep the conversation minimal. It’s not that his becoming a father is a secret he’s harbouring, he just doesn’t feel like the intricacies are something he wants to share with the world. ‘When the last series of Line Of Duty came out, my publicist sent me [paparazzi] pictures,’ he explains. ‘Me walking the dog, going to the shops, me and my wife going to a doctor’s appointment – that changed everything. I have no desire to be walking down the street with my family being followed. So you batten down the hatches. We live in a weird world where if you don’t put something on Instagram, everybody thinks you’re keeping it a secret. Everybody who needs to know, knows. If I’m keeping it a secret, the 100 people who turned up at the christening were very lucky on the time and date. So it’s not something I’m hiding, [but] for any new parent, it’s a terrifying experience, and I just don’t want any added pressure.’
The anonymity is partly why he loves living in Las Vegas. It’s where his wife – actor and real estate agent, Flynn – is from, and where they settled so that she could be near her mother when he would have to head off filming for up to eight months of the year. ‘Greenock’s always going to be my home, and I’m always going to have a base there,’ he says. ‘But I was very aware of friends in London and LA starting families and really struggling without a support network. I saw friends be at their partner’s throats just because they’re exhausted and I understand why now: it’s tiring and you need that support. In Vegas, we live five minutes away from my mother-in-law, and so when I’m gone, she moves in with my wife. You need your mum around.’
Compston and Flynn married in 2016. (I’m sure this comment will make his eyes roll, but Compston lights up when talking about her.) ‘I was at happy hour with my pal [Scottish actor] Gianni Capaldi,’ he says of their first meeting. ‘She was the hostess. She had a Claddagh ring on – her dad’s Irish – so I sang her a few songs from the old country. I gave her my number because I didn’t want her to feel like I was pestering her, and she texted me within an hour. It’s that old cliché; I had been saying to Gianni that I’m focused on work, I don’t need distractions, then I came home that night and said, “I think I’ve met someone.” You just know.’
The couple’s life in Vegas is distinctly unshowbiz. ‘When I’m there, it’s just the family and the dog,’ he grins. ‘None of my neighbours know I’m an actor, or if they know, they don’t care. Me and the missus, we feel like we’ve lived. I’m ready to slow down. I just want to walk the dog and put something on the barbecue, and that’s all I want.’
It’s no huge surprise that the peace and quiet is such a welcome respite. Compston’s been acting pretty much solidly since his first role in Ken Loach’s 2002 drama Sweet Sixteen, in which he played the lead, having been cast in a very fortuitous open audition at his school. Then, there were two years in BBC One’s Monarch Of The Glen, parts in 2006’s A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints with Robert Downey Jr, Irvine Welsh’s Filth and 2018’s Mary Queen Of Scots, last year’s The Aftermath with Keira Knightley, and numerous roles in between.
But it was debut Sweet Sixteen that made acting a possibility for him at a time when he was certain he was going to be a footballer. ‘Acting was always something I was interested in,’ he says. ‘But where I’m from it’s not a serious career you consider, it’s a posh kid’s thing. It’s weird, I went to school with a lot better actors than me, a lot of people who were funnier than me, but put a camera on them and they freeze. Whereas whenever I see a camera, I can shut off. It’s just me and it. I can be whoever I want to be. I can be Indiana Jones, I can be a bank robber, I can be 10-foot tall; you can be whatever you want to be in that time. It’s amazing to lose yourself in a character. Line Of Duty is like cops and robbers and that’s very cool.’
So, what’s next? I ask him, as we start to wrap things up. ‘I feel like there’s a part out there that I was born to play and I haven’t played it yet,’ he says, with a grin. ‘I’m getting to a point in my career where it’s not a pipe dream any more. That’s really exciting.’
The Nest is available now on BBC iplayer
‘WHEN I’M IN LAS VEGAS, IT’S JUST THE FAMILY AND THE DOG. NONE OF MY NEIGHBOURS KNOW I’M AN ACTOR, OR IF THEY KNOW, THEY DON’T CARE’