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‘Prime Suspect’ reboot stars 26-year-old Brit Stefanie Martini
A new breed of TV detective arrived when Jane Tennison took charge at London’s fictional Southampton Row station in 1991. First of all, she was female, and her subordinates — all male — noisily resented taking orders. Tennison was middle-aged, with the bags under her eyes to prove it. She was flinty and enjoyed a roll in the hay and a stiff drink (or three) at the end of the workday.
Best of all, she was played by Helen Mirren, a then-45-year-old theater veteran. She won two Emmys for “Prime Suspect” — and Tennison became the standard against which future TV policewomen would be measured.
On Sunday, “Prime Suspect: Tennison” introduces us to the Jane of 1973, a pivotal year for British police. For the first time, female and male officers worked side by side. “Her male colleagues aren’t used to having women in their world,” says producer Robert Wulffe. “They, too, are on a learning curve.” Still, Jane, who is a probationary officer, not only sets out the tea and biscuits for the male officers but does the washing-up — and then dashes out to attend the autopsy of a teenager found strangled by her own bra. Stefanie Martini, 26, plays Jane and says she fell under Mirren’s spell while preparing for the role. “I got to Season 4 when I realized I was becoming obsessive about her performance,” Martini tells The Post. “I had to step back, because I’m not her. It’s quite sad, but I’m not her.” Indeed, Martini’s Tennison is naive — only 22 but with the same sharp instincts and lapses in judgment that drove the elder Jane to speed through professional traffic lights. When young Jane sees a woman get her purse stolen, she jumps off the bus and encourages her to report the crime. When her boss, Detective Inspector Bradfield (Sam Reid), makes a pass at her, she doesn’t discourage his drunken kiss. “Any kind of average boy her age is not her thing,” Martini says. “[Impulses] like that, you see them come out. She feels terrible about it [and thinks], ‘What have I done to my career?’ ”
Martini beat out loads of other actresses for the role, largely because she conveyed “some of the energy, strength and humor of [the older] Jane,” Wulffe says. “Stefanie has a stillness as an actor that you are happy to watch.”
Playing Tennison was daunting almost from the start.
“It was pretty horrible filming that autopsy,” Martini says. “We filmed in an actual morgue that was disused. I felt incredibly sorry for the actress lying on the table. She had to lie in the fridge [before that].”
Martini was born in Bristol, England, and educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. There she took proficiency exams in accents, including General American and Received Pronunciation (she calls it “Posh”).
That last one came in handy in her next project, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Crooked House.” “It’s set in the 1950s,” Martini says, “and I play the granddaughter in an aristocratic family that hates each other.”