Freeman shows he’s more than a nice guy
The Everyman Card has been nice to have in his back pocket; it afforded him entree to a solid career. But British actor Martin Freeman has others to play, as two very different TV projects show.
“I didn’t go to drama school just to be likable and funny,” he says over a Zoom chat from his London home. “I like having that facility; it’s very useful. But like most actors, I’m greedy. I want to do as much as I can do.”
Freeman, 48, made his name as the nice young man in the original British “The Office” and the accidental cosmic tourist in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Since then, his hits have included the trilogy of “The Hobbit,” and “Captain America: Civil War” and “Black Panther” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And this season, he’s got two TV shows available in America: The warts-andall parenting comedy, “Breeders,” which hit FX in March, and the truecrime miniseries, “A Confession,” available through BritBox. He’s not exactly sweet or heroic in either.
“There are lots of comedies about parenting and family, obviously,” he says of “Breeders,” which he co-created. “But there weren’t any that I had seen that showed what happens when you lose your temper with your kids, when you actually do that . ...
“I was interested in how far we could go down that line and for it to still be funny and for the characters to still be people you root for. They’re not abusive; they’re not horrible people. They love their kids and are ostensibly a pretty happy, functional family. But within that, we’re showing the underside . ... I haven’t seen this tone in this context on television before.”
In its bones, “Breeders” is a comedy, but there’s serious drama in its marrow as well. In the same vein, “A Confession” is not your father’s true-crime miniseries — especially if your father is American.
“That had occurred to me, the difference between the U.S. and the U.K. — it’s a very English telling of the story,” he says, smiling.
The series’ first act, if you will, is a nail-biting hunt after Freeman’s Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher learns of a young woman’s kidnapping. From there, it becomes an examination of the aftermath. The balance of the drama turns on a failure to observe the equivalent of a suspect’s Miranda rights, with severe consequences.
Freeman’s Fulcher is all business; he almost never loses his cool. The actor shows remarkable restraint, particularly when he must deliver terrible news to a family or when he gets devastating information from a suspect.
“The director and the writer both said, don’t do that version — slap him around, the actor gets to look good. It’s not true, not in this story, anyway. It’s more mundane than that. It’s the mundanity of it that’s more affecting.
“That said, there are some breakdowns — when I tell co-star Imelda Staunton her daughter’s died ... you didn’t have to do anything but just be there in that scene . ... You have to be a stone to not be affected. It makes your job easier. You have to do less.”