Actor on his dream of getting back to Edinburgh
“I really wanted it to work but the scripts I was getting were so crap, I just thought I don’t want to be part of dumbing down an audience.
“The Tunnel works for me, just like The Wire worked for me.
“It was real ly interesting because you had a British and a French production company, you had actors speaking in English and French and switching between the two.
“We had an i nternational crew working together to tell t he s t or y, different directors, it was really exciting.”
An American who lives in London, he’s back in New York, the city of his birth, with The Royale.
It’s a play inspired by the real- l i fe experiences of Jack Johnson, the f irst AfricanAmerican heavyweight world champion but it’s really about being an outsider.
Clarke knows the feeling well, especially as he watches the rise of Donald Trump and his bid for the Republican US presidential nomination.
He said: “It’s upsetting. You come to the theatre and there are people of ever y pol it ical persuasion and unanimously people are saying, ‘ How did this happen?’”
The first series of The Tunnel, starring Stephen Dillane and Clemence Poesy, was the English language version of Scandi-drama The Bridge.
This second series is separate from the original.
Clarke plays Sonny Persaud, an academic who put his career before fatherhood – and it’s something he can relate to.
He said: “I have four kids. Two of the older ones have benefited from it and my younger ones have suffered because I have not been there as often.”
Cl a r k e h a t e s b ei n g pigeonholed and only chooses the roles he really likes.
He said: “I know nothing about boxing but here I am being this guy’s trainer and it’s really exciting to learn about the pugilistic history.
“Most actors have these varieties of experiences in their lives, it is just my whole thing has been in the public eye.”