Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
From chauffeur to savıour
Allen Leech reveals how his harrowing new role as a hero policeman fighting human trafficking is a world away from the fun of the Downton film set
Al len Leech is buzzing with the joy of having just finished filming at one of Britain’s most famous stately homes, for the long-awaited return of one of the most-watched British dramas ever.
He’s been stepping back into the highly polished shoes of former chauffeur Tom Branson to shoot the Downton Abbey film, three years after the stories of the aristocratic Crawleys and their servants came to an end on television. ‘ We finished our scenes in Highclere Castle – used as the seat of the Crawley family and the real country home to the
Earl and Countess of Carnarvon – yesterday,’ says Allen.
‘There was a sense, when we first walked in wearing our period costumes, that we’d just come back after lunchtime – a sense we’d had a big snooze and woken up, saying, “Did we dream the last three years?” It was surreal but rather like a school reunion you actually want to go to.’
Allen has plenty of fond memories from his time on Downton, and a few he’d perhaps rather forget – such as the time when he and Rob JamesCollier (butler Thomas Barrow) stayed up until the early hours of the morning drinking cider. Allen was locked out of his hotel after forgetting to check in, so had to go back to the set to sleep in his trailer. The trailer happened to be in the grounds of Highclere so he had to shimmy over the enormous gates using his bag to protect him from the spikes.
It’s the sort of high jinks his character in his other new project, the BBC’s Doing Money, might frown upon. We’re here today to discuss this gritty drama, a jaw- dropping true story about slavery in modern Britain. Allen plays DI Dougie Grant, a real-life police officer who was instrumental in bringing justice to victims of human trafficking.
From the pen of The Girl and Vanity Fair writer Gwyneth Hughes, the 90-minute, one-off drama re-creates the harrowing story of Ana, a young Romanian woman kidnapped in broad daylight while on a London street.
Ana, played by Romanian actress Anca Dumitra, is trafficked to Ireland and used as a sex slave in a series of ‘pop-up’ brothels. ‘When I read the script it hit me that this was something I knew nothing about and yet it’s right on our doorsteps, in plain sight,’ says Allen. ‘Rather than it being just one woman’s story, this is happening all over the British Isles. Ana’s experience shines a light on the shocking truth of human trafficking and slavery in Britain.
‘DI Dougie Grant was one of the key officers at the centre of the investigation and it was a privilege to play him.’
Ana’s story plays out as a tense thriller which highlights the challenges of policing this form of modern slavery and exposes just how much money is made in this type of business.
‘From the research I did, the human trafficking gangs target girls in flatshares where they already have a member planted,’ says Allen. ‘They’ll break in and take a girl’s passport so that once she gets a new one issued, she’ll make sure she never leaves the house without it. Then they abduct her with it, and once they take that passport, she knows they have the power to stop her from moving anywhere. The power the gangs have over these girls is total. In Ana’s case, they know her address back home and tell her, “You can run but we’ll kill your mother.”
‘The mental torture as well as the physical torture those poor women go through really struck me. The hardest part was learning that Dougie was actually working on a case in Scotland where a girl had tried to pick away at the lock using just her fingernails, to the point where she had no fingernails left. The image that was in front of me – the actual police shot that was taken as evidence – was so harrowing.
‘When I became aware of this slavery, I was shocked, horrified and angry and I hope Doing Money gives people an awareness and enables them to think twice if they see something suspicious.’
The hard-hitting, modern story is obviously a marked change from the cosy drawing rooms of Downton, but then Allen, 37, has been doing his best to avoid being typecast. While still playing Branson on TV, he was cast as a WWII spy for 2014 film The Imitation Game, and he’s appearing in the recently released movie Bohemian Rhapsody, as Freddie Mercury’s manager Paul Prenter. Prenter was close to Mercury, wielding great power, but many felt he betrayed the singer by revealing to the press Freddie’s lifestyle and how his former lovers were dying of AIDS.
‘It was an incredible opportunity to play the real-life character of Dougie, and then play another real person with a chequered past in relation to Queen’s history,’ says Allen. ‘My dad was a huge Queen fan, so I grew up listening to them. But Prenter makes some very interesting choices, which are in the movie. He had quite a different morality to that of the impressive DI Dougie Grant.’ But now, for Allen, who announced his engagement to American actress Jessica Blair Herman earlier this year, it’s back to playing chauffeur-turnedmember-of-the-family Branson, as the cast of the Downton movie decamp to a new location in Yorkshire, the county where most of the action is set.
Nearly all the principal cast from the TV show are returning for the big-screen outing, including Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith, Joanne Froggatt as Anna Bates, Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Grantham, Elizabeth McGovern as the Countess and – to the delight of everyone – Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, even though she’d previously said a movie could be ‘squeezing it dry’. The script has been written by creator Julian Fellowes, and the film is due to be released in September next year. Naturally Allen, like the rest, was delighted when the Downton movie was confirmed. ‘But until I went to the readthrough I didn’t dare believe it was actually happening. We had that sense that something might scupper it, like Highclere could burn down. So there was real excitement when we actually got into costume.’
There are newcomers to the old troupe, such as Tuppence Middleton and Imelda Staunton, who in real life is married to Jim Carter, Downton’s butler Mr Carson. Have they fitted in to the well-established gang?
‘We’re all like old friends and have kept in touch, as we’d been doing it for six years as a TV show,’ says Allen, ‘but we always make sure that someone coming in is part of the family.’
‘It shines a light on the shocking truth of slavery in Britain’
Doing Money, Monday, 9pm, BBC2.