Seeing what goes in these rooms was fascinating and absolutely terrifying
Taking a glimpse inside the workings of Government crisis action meetings was an eye-opener for the stars of Cobra.
The Crown’s Victoria Hamilton and Killing Eve’s David Haig star alongside Robert Carlyle as the Prime Minister’s chief adviser and Home Secretary, respectively.
The Sky One series tries to replicate exactly what would go on in a Cobra meeting, from the layout of the room – the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms – to the senior politicians likely to be involved in planning the response to domestic and international crises.
Victoria said: “Certainly, the crisis room we filmed in is pretty much what the crisis room would look like, in that it’s enormous and full of things showing you terrifying information from all over the country.
“As far as the people in it – the senior members of the cabinet and then the higher elements of the armed forces and the security services and all of that – it certainly felt as though, if this was going to happen, this is who would be in the room.
“One of the really interesting things about it is when you see that group of people together at the Cabinet, the hatred between people who are sitting in the same room, around the same table apparently representing the same government line, is astonishing.
“I think people will love learning about how these characters personally feel about each other. It’s a constant juggle of who is actually acting in the way they are acting for idealistic purpose.
“Can you see why this person went into government in the first place? Or is it literally just a lust for power, in the sense you’ve been born into privilege and you would do anything you have to do to retain your crown?
“It’s all quite frightening considering what’s happening at the moment.”
David, who plays the abrasive Archie Glover-morgan, agreed.
“You get a flavour of the sort of civil unrest and polarisation, which actually is very resonant with present British society and in the world,” he said.
“I was so surprised by the scale of the room, the number of people who would have been in the meeting like that.
“Obviously, only several characters spoke in each of these meetings, but it’s on a huge scale, and there are all those contemporaneous screens around the room, just monitoring activity all over the country.
“It’s that sharp end that you forget is happening politically when something like this happens.”