the capture
Actor Holliday Grainger talks about the new conspriracy thriller in which you can’t believe your own eyes
“I watched some trailer-style footage of The Capture yesterday,” says holliday Grainger. “It looks like a show I’d want to watch.” she laughs down the phone line from Los angeles, where she claims to be “just hanging out and not doing much”. an unlikely story, given her ascent from roles in Casualty and Waterloo Road, to her ongoing role as Robin, sidekick to cormoran, tom Burke’s character in the Strike series adapted from JK Rowling’s novels. and now Grainger’s starring in ultra-timely new surveillance thriller The Capture as detective Inspector Rachel carey, who investigates when British soldier shaun emery (Fantastic Beasts’ callum turner) is accused of a crime on the basis of London cctv footage. But video evidence may no longer be as reliable as it once was…
How topical does The Capture feel to you? when I read the script around this time last year, it seemed quite hypothetical — almost in the vein of Black Mirror. But over the last year, the idea of manipulating news and video footage has become more relevant. I’m hoping The Capture is a few years before its time, but our director Ben chanan and I chatted with a former counter-terrorism guy. we were like, ‘Is this happening?’ and the way he was so vague about it made us think, ‘oh God, it is, isn’t it!’
Have any specific events added to that feeling in you?
Just little things, like when that journalist was questioning trump, and a press officer tried to get him to sit down. the footage was shown from two different cameras at the same event, which allowed people to spin it in two different ways — the journalist was either being aggressive towards a member of the staff, or he was just being persistent and doing his job. and that was without the footage even being manipulated.
Will The Capture keep us guessing about Shaun’s innocence? at the beginning, my character Rachel thinks
it’ll all be done and dusted within 24 hours, but the more she learns, the more complicated and muddy it gets. The audience goes with her on that journey, which keeps you guessing until the very end. Could The Capture be the next Bodyguard? It would be amazing if we get that kind of interest. There’s a definite hunger for edge-of-your-seat thrillers that force you to make your own mind up. My homework is actually to watch all of Bodyguard, because I only saw the first and last episodes! But I love crime drama and was obsessed with The Killing and The Bridge.
JK Rowling’s fourth Cormoran Strike book Lethal White was published in September, so when can we expect the TV adaptation?
I can probably tell you that we’ll be shooting that relatively soon. The fourth book is in the process of being written into the next series. I didn’t want to read it while I was doing The Capture, because I thought I might get confused about which case I was handling. In fact, as soon as I put the phone down I will finish the final chapter.