Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride..
Richard Armitage and Jing Lusi star in action thriller set on a plane
Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for more than your fair share of turbulence in the six-part airborne action thriller Red Eye.
Episode one sees Fool Me Once star Richard Armitage playing a guilty-looking Dr Matthew Nolan. After a dizzying car chase through the streets of Beijing in the opening scene, he appears to have left a Chinese woman for dead in the back of his car and fled back to London.
On arrival into Heathrow from Beijing – and with a stab wound to his stomach – he is quickly apprehended by border police and told he is being extradited back to China for manslaughter.
It’s the job of reluctant DC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, to see he’s returned safely to Beijing. But, as their flight takes off, that’s looking like an increasingly unlikely prospect.
“What’s interesting is that DC Li is his jailer but also she is his lifeline,” said Richard. “If he can convince her that what he’s telling her is true, then there is a way out. So he spends a lot of time trying to break down the walls, first of all professionally then personally, and we do get a little bit into ‘the culturally’, especially towards the end. They start to understand each other and they grow to like each other. They become allies.
“All the time, Nolan is still doubting who he really is. He doesn’t have a family. So I actually enjoyed the fact that maybe he’s not who he says he is.”
After a death on board, M15 boss Madeline Delaney, played by Lesley Sharp, gets involved.
Lesley says she loved taking on such a cool character. “In the field, as a younger agent, Madeline was probably a killer,” said Lesley. “She just very systematically goes through it all and sorts it out.
“And she would lay down her life and her career for citizens in the UK. So there’s a nobility in her and she’s fantastic. I love her!”
The airport scenes were filmed at London’s Stansted Airport, with real-life passengers coming and going. For Richard, it was reminiscent of filming a certain hit BBC drama. “It took me back to my days on Spooks because we used to do a lot of filming on long lenses in very public places and it’s both thrilling and terrifying at the same time because you don’t get many chances,” he said. “You get maybe two takes before people start to realise that you’re filming. “These days people
I enjoyed the fact that maybe he’s not who he says he is Richard
can get quite lairy and want to be in it and interrupt you so you have to rehearse, you have to know what you’re doing but without knowing.
“My heart was going through my chest. A lot of those reactions were real!”
The show also calls for Richard to be strip-searched, so he decided to fatten up for the role to look less like a TV hunk.
“I thought, ‘Oh no, not again,’” laughed Richard who went naked in the raunchy Netflix drama Obsession. “I started eating loads of pies because I wanted him to look like a doctor, not an actor.”
Jing made her name in the Hollywood mega-hit Crazy Rich Asians and is proud that UK productions are now casting Asian actors in leading roles.
She said: “I feel that this is the first show, in God knows how long, that has had an Asian British lead. So it was an absolute honour to see this happening in the UK.
“To see the story unfold through Hana – just seeing it through her eyes – I think that’s a huge shift in itself. It made me realise what I was capable of and also to realise a dream that I had, which was that Asians can be leads, that this can be a thing that’s just normalised in the future rather than always being relegated.”
The flight is the journey from hell for passengers and Richard can sympathise – though it wasn’t a prisoner who once ruined his trip, it was a pop star and a movie director.
He said: “I was on a flight to New Zealand going to The Hobbit premiere.
“Lady Gaga and Baz Luhrmann were in the same cabin as me, having a conversation over the chairs about how they should work together and we sat there the whole time going, ‘Just work together! Get a room!’”
Richard is a firm favourite with fans after starring alongside Michelle Keegan in Fool Me Once earlier this year and the pair are still in touch. He added: “Michelle’s been amazing. When I was in New York, I texted her this massive billboard picture advertising the show in Times Square. She was just like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it!’ She was really thrilled.”
seeing this through her eyes… that’s a huge shift Jing