The ordinary teenager who becomes an international spy
New TV series Alex Rider is based on Anthony Horowitz’s best-selling books about a teenage spy. Georgia Humphreys chats to stars Vicky McClure and Otto Farrant.
VICKY MCCLURE admits that, when she got the call about new Amazon Prime series Alex Rider, she’d never heard of the eponymous character before.
Originally created by British novelist and former York University student Anthony Horowitz, Alex is an ordinary teenage boy who is unwittingly dragged into the dangerous and morally compromised world of international espionage.
Nottingham-born McClure, 37, decided to ask her 12-year-old nephew if he knew about it. “I basically got the response of, ‘Yeah, course I know Alex Rider!’” she recalls, chuckling.
“So, I felt very uncool. And then felt, ‘Well, how cool would it be if I was in it?’ He was a massive part of me taking the job on, because a lot of my work is quite adult-based drama, so people like my nephews can’t watch it.
“And then, when I read the script,
I just went, ‘Absolutely’. It was jampacked full of loads of different characters, action, genuine emotions and relationships.”
In the eight-part series, which has been adapted from the books by screenwriter Guy Burt, McClure – known for shows such as Line Of Duty and This Is England – plays Mrs Jones, the deputy head of MI6, who becomes Alex’s professional guardian.
Otto Farrant, 23, takes on the role of the protagonist who, after discovering his uncle and guardian, Ian, was an agent for the British Secret Service and died at the hands of an unknown assassin, realises that everything about his family and past is a lie.
Blackmailed into working for the Department, Alex is given a cover identity as the son of a billionaire and thrust into the terrifying world of Point Blanc Academy – a school for off-therails teenagers located in the remote French Alps.
“I read the books when I was a kid,” says Farrant, who has starred in BBC dramas Mrs Wilson and War And Peace.
“I loved Alex Rider because he’s such a relatable character in that he is just a normal kid who is thrown into this world of espionage and has to adapt super-quickly, and I really admired that and looked up to that. So, I guess that was appealing to me to want to play.”
He continues, enthusiastically:
“I was thrown into the same kind of situation; I’d never done anything nearly as big as this, or as intense. We were filming for six months, five days a week, sometimes six days a week, so long hours. I just had to rise to it and it was really exciting.”
Part of the appeal of the series for McClure was that Mrs Jones is such a strong female character. Indeed, Burt wanted the series to appeal more to young women; in a recent interview with RadioTimes.com he revealed that he only agreed to the project on the “condition” that another female character was added.
It’s empowering to see female characters who aren’t just on screen as love interests, and McClure affirms this is something she has noticed happening more. “It’s been nice not to continually play the love interest, or the sort of obvious roles,” she notes.
“I think, if you look at television now, the majority of some of our biggest shows we’ve had, they’ve had female leads and they’ve carried the show, and long may it continue.”
Clearly a topic she’s passionate about, she adds: “We’ve all read scripts before and thought, ‘Well, why can’t I play his role? Why can’t they just turn that character into a female and turn that character into a male? It would make no difference whatsoever’.
“And I guess people are just starting to change their mindset now and going, ‘Well, actually does it matter that that person’s female, male or indifferent?’ We don’t live in that world anymore – I don’t. And I don’t want to be involved in projects that feel like those sorts of things are a massive deal – it’s whoever is right for the job.”
■ Alex Rider launches on June 4.