‘I was relieved people thought I was from Liverpool’

Martin Freeman takes us to the challenging world of first-response policing

Martin Freeman is almost unrecognisable in his new drama The Responder. The police series follows Chris Carson (Freeman), a morally compromised, unconventional urgent-response officer tackling night shifts in Liverpool. When he is forced to take on new rookie partner Rachel (Adelayo Adedayo), they soon discover that survival in this highpressure, relentless world will depend on them either helping or destroying each other. Although fiction, the series is drawn from the real-life experiences of writer and ex-police officer Tony Schumacher, and shows the emotional extremes of life on the front line of British policing – sometimes darkly funny, sometimes painfully tragic, always challenging. We caught up with Martin, 50, to find out more.

This seems a very different show for you…

I read a lot of scripts, and it was one of those that I responded to because it didn’t feel like it was written by a committee. It didn’t feel like it was written for anybody else apart from the person who had written it. And I like work that pleases itself.

We see so much raw emotion – how did you handle the crying scenes?

I either just go for it or I’ll just be less chatty for 20 minutes beforehand. I don’t particularly walk about [in] character ever, but I walked about for this in accent. For me, between pick-up in the morning and wrap, I’m staying in whichever accent.

Did you find the Liverpool accent difficult to capture?

I definitely had to work [at it]. I read this at the beginning of 2019, so with no particular start date in mind, I just walked around the house [speaking in a Liverpool accent] and watching Yellow Submarine. So, I would always have this background wallpaper with the voice where I was ticking it over, and then I had a couple of sessions [with a vocal coach] but it was already in pretty good shape because I don’t have a bad ear. But I was mindful of it because with the first Zoom read-through, it was me and a lot of Liverpudlian actors. It was the first time that I was doing it in front of people who weren’t my girlfriend or my kids. But it was delightful actually, because I heard a few people say after, “I didn’t know Martin was originally from Liverpool.” So, that was such a relief.

Did you try to keep things light between takes?

I think it’s natural that the darker the material, the lighter it has to be outside it because otherwise it’s just not fun. We could all die tomorrow. And that’s not the way I want to go out – the process should be enjoyable. I think you owe it to yourself.

Did you speak to Tony much about the reality of policing?

I spoke to Tony a lot. I asked him a lot about his own experience – knowing that he can’t speak for all of the police and he’s not literally Chris. But I’ve never been a copper, he has, and I know him quite well now, so he was always there on hand. Also, on set, we had police advisors who were really handy with just stuff like how do you put someone in cuffs because if you’ve never done it, it’s f**king hard! l

The Responder, Monday 24 January, BBC1