CABIN PRESSURE
ITV’S new thriller Red Eye sees high drama unravel on a tense long-haul flight. Its stars Richard Armitage, Jing Lusi and Lesley Sharp tell ABI JACKSON what we can expect
RED EYE
Sunday, ITV1, 9pm & ITVX
READY for a tense and twisty new thriller to sink your teeth into? ITV1’S Red Eye starts exactly as it means to go on – with high-octane, high-stakes drama that’ll leave you holding your breath to find out what happens next aboard a “red eye” flight from London to Beijing.
With a stellar cast including Richard Armitage, Lesley Sharp and Jing Lusi among others, and written by Peter A Dowling (known for police drama Black and Blue and Flightplan), the six-part series begins with British surgeon Dr Matthew Nolan (played by Richard, known for The Hobbit movies and TV series including Spooks, The Stranger and recent Netflix thriller Fool Me Once) being chased into a street in Beijing, escaping in his car and crashing shortly after.
Nolan had seemingly been in the country attending a medical conference with a group of colleagues. Landing back in London, he is swiftly stopped by airport police, interrogated, strip-searched – and then told he’s being extradited back to China to face murder charges, after a woman’s body was found in his car.
Nolan insists he has no idea what they’re talking about. But is he telling the truth?
“One of the things I loved when I read the first episode is that by default, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, we should be trusting him from the getgo,” says Leicestershire-born Richard, 52, on getting stuck into the role.
“The fact that he comes into the story with doubt in his own mind, because he doesn’t really remember what happened on that night so he can’t be 100% sure, he’s already in a state of flux within himself.
“Throughout the course of the story, we sort of ebb and flow between being absolutely convinced of his innocence, and really doubting who he is, and whether he’s a spy or some kind of mule.
“It was really interesting to play around with that, and at points, I didn’t really know whether he was telling the truth!”
Clues are quickly dropped that this is more than a “straightforward” murder story.
Madeline Delaney, director general of security services at MI5 (played by The Full Monty and Before We Die star Sharp), is pulled into the picture, with the Chinese government insisting on Nolan’s immediate return. And one of the doctor’s colleagues is bundled into the back of a van in the airport car park when he refuses to fly back to help with evidence.
Police officer Detective Constable Hana Li (played by British-chinese actor Jing, known for Crazy Rich Asians, Heart of Stone and Gangs of London) is tasked with accompanying Nolan on the red-eye flight back to Beijing.
And this is where the plot really starts to unfold, weaving in the backstories of Delaney, Li and Li’s sister Jess (a tenacious journalist played by Jemma Moore), who are each grappling with personal struggles as it becomes clear they’ve become involved in a terrifying conspiracy.
Jing, 38, who was born in Shanghai and moved to England with her family aged five, says the series marks a “turning point” for British-asian representation on the small screen.
“I feel this is the first show in god knows how long, that is a British show that has an Asian lead. I think the last one probably was (early 1980s series) The Chinese Detective, and that name probably wouldn’t hold up these days.
“So it was an absolute honour to see this happening in the UK, because this has happened obviously in the US with a lot of Asianled projects,” Jing added.
“And the significance for me is that, usually when you have a lot of diversity, you’re seeing the stories through the white perspective of the lead character, and the diverse minority characters are usually the ‘other’.
“To see the story unfold through Hana, finding out Nolan’s innocence or guilt, connecting with MI5 and her sister – you’re seeing it from her eyes, she’s not the ‘other’. I think that’s ground-breaking.”
If the airport chase scene in the first episode seems authentic, that’s because it is – it was filmed in Stansted Airport with real people in the background.
“It really 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. You get maybe two takes before people start to realise that you’re filming,” says Richard. “My heart was thumping through my chest.”
When his character – who gets chased by Det Con Li and armed officers after trying to make a run for it – is caught and cuffed in the departures lounge, many of the reactions from the public were “real”, he notes.
How did Jing find filming those scenes?
“I had a very different experience to Richard, because I had anxiety for him, but I also had anxiety for myself – because when another actor is doing so much of the work, and then you come in at the end and have to do this little moment, I’m like, what if I screw it up?! I’ll have to make him do that over and over again,” Jing explains.
“And also because of the nature of Stansted being a live, working airport, we’re in the departures lounge and most of those people are real passengers, we didn’t have an opportunity to rehearse... So it felt very real, the anxiety was real.”
Det Con Li is at the heart of the drama throughout. But there’s complexity in her story too, weaving in family dynamics, loss and trauma. Jing says she instantly fell in love with the character when reading the scripts.
“I thought she was amazing. As a character full-stop, and then it’s like – oh wow, she’s a woman, this is extraordinary. Then, oh my goodness - she’s an Asian woman, this is just unheard of,” she says.
Manchester-born Lesley, 64, loved playing MI5’S Delaney. “[She’s a] completely threedimensional character, and [the more we see] about her backstory, what she’s involved in and what she’s discovering and where that takes her, it’s really delicately seeded through every episode,” she explains.
“Madeline has been on leave because her husband has been in an accident, so she’d taken a leave of absence to take care of him. She’s sort of new back at work, and this is the thing that lands on her desk. So, she’s got quite a lot to deal with from the get-go.”
As for playing such a confident, in-control person, Lesley continues: “The thing about her is that in the field as a younger agent, she was probably a killer. She is prepared, prepared, prepared, prepared ...
“It means that when she turns up and there’s a situation like that, she just drops in there, she can do it. There’s no panic and there’s no kerfuffle. She just very systematically goes through it all and sorts it out.
“And in the end, she will lay down her life and her career for citizens in the UK, there’s a nobility in her. She’s fantastic.”
The thing about her is that in the field as a younger agent, she was probably a killer. She is prepared, prepared, prepared...
Lesley Sharp, pictured left, on her character Delaney*