The Killing continues to intrigue viewers
Campbell says murderer will be unmasked
Billy Campbell apologized for being late. Filming on the second season of The Killing had backed up all week, until Friday spilled over into Saturday morning. Here he was, on a crisp, cold Sunday morning in Vancouver’s West End, preparing for his customary run around the Stanley Park seawall.
The cast of one of TV’S most contentious, divisive, talked-about thrillers has not exactly been sworn to a blood oath of secrecy, but it’s a question of common sense. Campbell is only too happy to talk at length about The Killing’s behindthe-scenes goings-on, except, of course, the Big Question: Who killed Rosie Larsen?
More to the point: Why is it taking so long for viewers to find out?
Campbell plays respected and well-liked Seattle city councillor and mayoral candidate, Darren Richmond, the prime suspect in the brutal killing of a teenage girl, Rosie Larsen, and the murder’s subsequent coverup. The Killing, as conceived by Veena Sud, is part whodunit and part character study of what happens to a family when a loved one is suddenly and brutally murdered.
Emmy-nominated Mireille Enos and Stockholm native Joel Kinnaman, play the investigating detectives, a pair of opposites compelled to work together in a case that starts to wear on them, emotionally and psychologically.
Michelle Forbes was nominated for a supporting-actress Emmy for playing the teenage victim’s heartbroken mother; Brent Sexton was lauded by critics for his performance as Larsen’s father.
The Killing was initially praised for its slow-burning mystery set against a backdrop of constant rain and drizzle. The first season’s 13 hour-long episodes took place over 13 consecutive days, with each episode representing a single day. In that time, the sun never shone once, in keeping with Seattle — and Vancouver’s — reputation for perpetual grey in mid-winter.
Richmond, whose wife died years earlier in a drowning accident, was revealed toward the season’s end to be leading a double life. In the pilot episode, Larsen’s body was found in the trunk of one of Richmond’s campaign’s cars. By the season’s end, he was revealed as the client of a high-end escort service, using the name “Orpheus,” and that he once proposed a morbid drowning scenario. Enos’s character was convinced of Richmond’s guilt after tracing e-mails to his personal computer. In the controversial season finale, Richmond was shot at while being arrested, and the season ended without any final clarification of his guilt. Or non-guilt.
Viewers were outraged, but Campbell insists their anger was misplaced. The Killing’s mystery will be resolved eventually, he said. And besides, The Killing was never intended to be a straightforward Agatha Christie-style potboiler, he said, but rather a psychological thriller in the vein of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson’s Scandinavian mysteries, Wallander and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where men in power abuse and ruin young women — sometimes very young women.
Campbell said that, as proud as he is of his own work in The Killing — “I had to do a really intense scene last week, that took some time to do,” he said — the real stars are Forbes and Sexton, as the girl’s parents, Kinnaman and, in particular, Enos, who, he said, brings “a natural, deep soul and resonance to every scene we’ve done together. Her Emmy nomination did not surprise me, frankly; I think it would have been a travesty if she’d been overlooked.”
The Killing’s subject matter is grim, but that doesn’t mean Campbell takes the job home with him.
“I don’t think you’d be much of an actor if you can’t separate the two,” he said.
“I do get tired — some of these scenes are really intense, and the days can be very long — but if you’re professional, you don’t let your weariness show. And only a fool would take that home. I’ve never been method, myself.”