Award-winning actress Kate Winslet talks about learning the nuts and bolts of being a police investigator for her smash hit,
Martyn Compton is just one of our brave soldiers burned and left for dead in Afghanistan after the Taliban blew up his tank. Here, we ask you to read his story and help soldiers like him on the road to recovery…
Originally on Sky Atlantic, and now streaming on NOW, the first series proved such a hit that there are already ideas from the creator for a season two – so if you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth a watch. Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet), is a detective in a small Pennsylvania town, and the only detective investigating a brutal murder as she tries to keep her life from falling apart after her son’s suicide…
Hi Kate, how did you get involved in
I was sent the first and second episodes back in 2018… and something just gripped me right away. Mare is nothing like me, but I really got a sense of who she was and the world she came from. It’s a world entrenched in community and responsibility.
Would you make a good detective?
No, I’d be a lousy detective. I’d be very good at the coffees and the after beers for sure, but this character is a million miles from me in terms of the job she does. I could never do the job Mare does. I could never be a detective. I don’t have the mental stamina it requires. The one thing I felt I did have in common with her was a sense of family and how much it means to her to hold that together at all costs. And also to admit to herself from time to time she has failed, but that doesn’t change the fact her family is the one thing that bolts her and drives her on.
Did you binge-watch any crime dramas?
I actually deliberately didn’t. I worked with the real Easttown Police Department, as well as the Marple Township Police Department, and they were amazing. I worked with a great woman called Christine
Bleiler, a female sergeant. She was just incredible and she was on-set a lot. At one point, I got obsessed with putting handcuffs on correctly and wanted to reshoot, but she said, ‘Don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes one of them falls off and you are, like, “Sh*t, I have to do it again”.’ When I did watch anything on TV, it was real footage on YouTube.
Was the Delaware County accent much of a challenge?
It drove me crazy! And I mean it drove me crazy! ‘Delco’ is one of the hardest I’ve ever done, but I hate it when you can tell someone is using an accent. I wanted to sound as if I’d been born and raised there, so I worked with a voice coach because it adds to much to Mare’s character. And then finally, on the last day, I thought, ‘Oh, I think I’ve nailed it now!’
now
Ihad wanted to join the Army ever since I was a little boy. I didn’t mind school and got decent grades, but I much preferred being outdoors, running around, being active. I never sat still. It seemed like the perfect career for me.
As soon as I was 16, I signed up – and I loved it. The camaraderie, getting A-levels through basic training, learning to drive a tank…
My first tour was to Afghanistan, in May 2006, and although we had a year of training first, nothing could have prepared me for what was to come.
For starters, there was the heat. Most days, it was over 50 degrees outside – and we were inside a tank or erecting walls to surround Camp Bastion in the desert.
Often, we were sent out on three and four-day patrols to gather intelligence. Once, we drove straight into a minefield. Luckily, no one was hurt but it showed how little we knew the area. It was terrifying but you just couldn’t think about it too much.
Instead, I focused on the letters from my new girlfriend, Michelle, who I’d met just before I’d left for Afghanistan, and the care packages we’d receive. Even a Pot Noodle was seen as a treat.
And all the time, the locals were delighted to see us. It amazed me, to see the conditions they lived in and how little they lived on. We’d share our sweets from back home and buy watermelon from them. Then came the fateful day. On 1 August 2006, a roadside bomb blew our tank in two, killing my three crew members. Seeing I was still alive, the Taliban fired rocketpropelled grenades at me. One hit the engine, showering me in flaming debris, setting me alight. As I tried to get away from the tank, I was shot in the right leg twice. The pain was indescribable.
To be honest, I don’t really remember what happened next. I’ve been told that my colleague, Andrew Radford, spotted me and, thinking I was the enemy, raised his rifle to shoot. Thankfully, the split second before he pulled the trigger, he realised his mistake and pulled me to safety.
I’ll never be able to thank him enough for saving my life. I was transported back to the UK within 24 hours, where I spent nearly four months in a coma – with burns to 75 per cent of my body and no one knowing whether I would live or die.
Miraculously, I came round and, after the drugs wore off, although I knew I was badly injured and couldn’t walk, I felt just like myself, laughing and joking with Michelle and my dad.
Yet before I could leave hospital to start my rehab and numerous operations at Headley Court (a military rehabilitation complex), doctors asked me to look in the mirror. That was probably the hardest moment for me.
‘Leave me,’ I told Michelle bluntly, as I saw the damage
the fire had ravaged on my face. She just shook her head.
‘As long as you don’t change as a person, I’m staying,’ she insisted.
I don’t know how I’d have got through the following years without her. I’ve faced over 500 hours of surgery, I’ve had to learn how to walk again and needed intensive physiotherapy to help with all the scarring.
Finally, after four years,
I was spending more time at home than in hospital and by 2014, I was officially discharged from the Army.
Oddly, it was only then that everything I’d been through hit me hard. I suffered from PTSD and struggled to come to terms with what I’d lost. People are surprised when
I say it, but I still miss being part of the Army. I always knew there was a chance I could be injured – even worse – when I signed up, so I’ve never regretted it. In fact, now, I just feel lucky to be alive. So many of my comrades aren’t.
But fighting for Queen and country was all I’d ever wanted to do – and now I physically couldn’t. It was the first time I’d felt sorry for myself. I tried therapy, but it
‘I don’t know how I’d have got through it without Michelle’
didn’t work for me.
Michelle and I had married in 2008 and we went on to have two children, Archie, now 10, and Coral, nine. Becoming a dad massively helped – I had far less time on my hands, for a start.
But it was my discovery of racing – first go-kart, then motor – that really helped my mental health. It gave me a purpose, a sense of team spirit, an adrenaline rush… everything that I missed from the Army.
I was also put in touch with the charity Back On Track, who not only held go-karting events, but offered to carry out the lasering of my scars and other treatment I’d need for the rest of my life. As the NHS struggled to fit in all I needed, that relief was immense.
Now, I’m 37 and am setting up my own business with another veteran, Warren McKinlay, called Stand2 Motorsport. We just do it for ourselves at the moment, but we’re hoping to expand to include other servicemen and women, who might find racing as beneficial to their recovery as we did. We run on sponsorships and are always looking for new partners.
I was lucky enough to be a torch holder at the 2012 London Olympics and I went in to give a talk at Archie and Coral’s school about my time in Afghanistan. They’re both really proud of me.
It’s hard to watch the news about what is happening in Afghanistan now – we tried for so long to improve and defend lives out there. But I’m trying to focus on the fact that we did do that, for many years.
For the servicemen and women returning home, very few will be coming back without some kind of physical, mental or emotional injuries and I want to help them with that, however I can. Because I know, more than anyone, how important that support is.
To learn more about Back On Track or donate to the charity by helping to sponsor a solider on the road to recovery, log on to backontrack.london
Flamboyant, creative and outspoken as ever [this is the man that once called Meghan Markle’s style ‘dull’], Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, who lives in a 17th Century Cotswolds pile (of course he does), with his wife, Jackie, and has two daughters, Cecile, 26, and Hermione, 23, launched his career on ChangingRooms – the BBC home makeover show with questionable taste but high entertainment value, 17 years ago. Now the interiors guru, 56, is back with the all-new Channel 4 reboot, co-hosted by Anna
Richardson – and it’s as kitsch and crazy as ever. Here, Laurence talks about coming out of ‘retirement’, his love of four-legged friends and more…
Laurence, we’re really enjoying Changing Rooms! Are you feeling the love?
I’m feeling sore, stiff, and a bit rashy from the leather trousers! I feel as if I’ve returned from the dead. Those 17 years of being incarcerated in a far-off distant pyramid are over and I’m back in the land of the living, trailing burial wrappings and tomb dust as I go.
It took some persuading to get you back, didn’t it?
It did. There was a lot of ‘Honestly, it will be fine’ going on. We were also working through Covid and all sorts of complications – it was incredibly good fun. There’s something so addictive about that magic moment when you take the lid off the paint and in exactly 48 hours, the room is going to be totally changed – for better or worse. We’re a crazy, eclectic group of individuals and we need to express ourselves in our interiors.
What’s one of your favourite moments in the series?
In one shoot, the neighbours I was working with were convinced what I was doing wouldn’t be liked. That makes a great programme, with them going, ‘Mmm he’s not going to like it.’ I asked if they were alright with this, whether their friendship would survive (I don’t give a flying…!) and they went, ‘oh no, it doesn’t matter whether he likes it or not. This is an iconic moment – this is a room of national importance!