The North Water
Season 1 M-Net Sat (*101) 22:30 Drama
Colin Farrell (Ray Velcoro in season 1 of drama anthology True Detective, 20152019) loves dramatic roles but he admits he wasn’t ready to play Henry Drax in brand-new miniseries The North Water. “I knew of the book by Ian Maguire (in 2016) and read it. I didn’t know if I had it in me to play someone like Drax,” says 44-year-old Colin. “He is a psychopath, a rapist and a murderer and a hitman. He is a beast of a character and it was intense getting into his head.”
In the four-episode series, Drax has a job as a harpooner and goes on a ship to the Arctic for work with disgraced ex-soldier Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell, James in youth drama Skins, 20072013) and they’re on the wrong foot immediately. “They get in each other’s faces pretty much every time they see one another,” says Colin, adding that they’re like two stags fighting over a doe deer. “There isn’t anything that sets them off, they just don’t like each other.” That’s going to make the long journey even longer, and it’s going to see the pair either kill each other or work as partners, because there is something neither knows about their “cruise”: the ship owner plans to wreck the boat and claim from insurance and he can’t have survivors.
To get into the mindset of his killer character, Colin read up on rapists and mentally unstable medical patients and had to go for therapy afterwards. “The things that these people do, it’s abuse of the lowest scum. It takes its toll, a role like this because you don’t understand the mental strain. I hope viewers will enjoy the show because we put a lot of work into it. But it’s tense!”