Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Playing messed-up Marcella poisons me
A new look, a new name – and a fresh challenge. As the disturbed detective returns for series three, Anna Friel tells why she’s more tortured than ever...
Marcella is back, but as you’ve never seen her before. Played by Anna Friel, troubled detective Marcella Backland returns with a new look and a new identity for series three of the dark crime drama this week, to go undercover in Northern Ireland and bring down a family who could teach the Shelbys in Peaky Blinders a thing or two when it comes to illegal money-making schemes and sheer ruthlessness.
The Maguires, ruled by coldhearted matriarch Katherine (Amanda Burton), order the assassination of a close associate with a single shot to the head when it’s discovered he’s been embezzling company money. Their stock-in-trade is extortion and intimidation, and they’re responsible for the ten trafficked workers found dead in a sealed lorry at Belfast docks.
Clinical efficiency, Maguirestyle, comes courtesy of Rory Maguire, the family’s brilliant lawyer whose fear of disease prompts him to wash his hands constantly and impose his own personal lockdown, rarely leaving the family mansion except in dire emergencies. ‘He’s obsessed by hand sanitiser and won’t let anyone near him,’ says Anna. ‘But the character was created by our series writer Hans Rosenfeldt two years ago, pre-pandemic; what did he know that we didn’t?’
To bring Rory and the rest of the Maguire clan to justice, Marcella must make them feel she’s one of their own – and she goes at it full tilt. ‘She enjoys the challenge, and the luxury lifestyle that comes with it,’ says Anna. ‘In fact, she’s arguably enjoying life with the Maguires – the cars, the clothes, the passionate encounters with gangster lover Finn Maguire – just a little bit too much.
‘That’s one of the themes of the series. Has she been seduced by the criminal high life? Has Marcella – or should I say Keira – crossed over to the other side and is she now on the wrong side of the law?’
Keira is Marcella’s alias, the identity she takes on in order to infiltrate the Maguires. As far as the family is concerned, she’s a former police officer drummed out of the force in Manchester after she was found to be corrupt who’s now back in her native Northern Ireland. ‘It’s a persona and a story she’s happy to take on – and not just for professional purposes,’ explains Anna. ‘She doesn’t want to be Marcella any more, that’s a past life containing terrible old memories.’
Those who watched the previous
two series of Marcella will be well aware of how awful those memories are. She was scarred both mentally and physically as she investigated crimes involving serial killers, paedophiles and witchcraft. Her husband Jason cheated on her then left her, and later gained custody of their children Edward and Emma when Marcella became aware that she was a danger to them because of her unpredictable periods of amnesia.
Tragically, under hypnosis, she also discovered that she was responsible for the accidental death of her baby daughter Juliet. Simply unable to cope with being Marcella any more, she was only prevented from committing suicide when colleague and friend DCI Rav Sangha talked her down from the roof of the police station as she gazed over the edge.
Given a second chance, she reached out for a new life and a new identity – and got lucky. The woman she’d swapped D NA cheek swabs with in series one died in a fire, just as Marcella disappeared off the radar and started to live rough. Badly burnt, the woman could only be identified by the DNA that was thought to be hers, which meant Marcella was declared legally dead and therefore free to reinvent herself as a different person. That’s when, at the end of the last series, Frank
Young (Hugo Speer) invited her to join his undercover police unit.
Fast forward to the present day and it’s Frank who waits nervously back at base while Marcella – now Keira and blonde rather than brunette – infiltrates the Maguire family at their sumptuous home outside Belfast. Her new alias may have allowed her to escape from her former life in London, but the mental scars remain red raw. ‘She’s haunted by what happened to Juliet and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,’ explains Anna.
The fact that the loss of a child forms part of the storyline is no coincidence. Anna told the scriptwriters about a similar experience in her own life, and the trauma she and others suffered as a result. She hopes that shining a light on the PTSD caused by the loss of a child may help others come to terms with their grief. ‘There was a family CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
tragedy involving somebody very, very close to me – the loss of a baby at full term,’ reveals Anna. ‘I don’t want to go into it too much but I saw it happen with my own eyes. It’s why it’s very important that I represent the PTSD endured by Marcella in as truthful and accurate a manner as I possibly can.’
Reliving a personal tragedy for the sake of a TV drama is brave indeed, and it’s one of the reasons filming this latest series of Marcella took a huge toll on Anna. She had her 15-year-old daughter Gracie, from her relationship with Harry Potter actor David Thewlis, for company while filming in Belfast but enjoyed limited downtime with her during a shoot that lasted for eight months and frequently involved 12-hour working days.
‘It was intense, not least because the character I play is so troubled,’ says Anna. ‘There was one day of filming when I got myself into such a state that I had to rush back to my trailer and throw up, my body was being so poisoned by the stress of what Marcella was going through. But I accept that. I give everything to the character, I become her, to some extent. I’m aware that Marcella has taken over my life whenever I play her.’
Former Brookside star Anna, 44, who’s single since breaking up with Regimental Corporal Major Mark Jaworski towards the end of last year, has spent the past five years inhabiting Marcella, and yet she almost turned the role down. ‘The truth is I didn’t think I could offer anything new or different to the world of TV detectives,’ she explains. ‘But the director said, “Let’s start and you’ll see how you can do it” and, gradually, I became more confident about making Marcella significantly different.
‘Key to the portrayal was emphasising her unpredictability, her fearlessness and the fact that she’s so lonely and doesn’t think she’s good at anything apart from her job. But it was a close call. I often convince myself I can’t do a job and I almost talked myself out of this one.’
Anna may not be finished with the role that she so very nearly said no to. Although Marcella was originally written as a three-series trilogy, the show’s Swedish co-creator Hans Rosenfeldt hints that there might be more.
‘This new series has a definite ending – audiences won’t be left guessing,’ he says. ‘But there’s an opening there for it to continue. So maybe we will see Marcella again...’