Making bad...happy Valley star got his killer instinct from hit show
HAPPY Valley killer actor Amit Shah said watching Walter White from hit show Breaking Bad helped him get into the mindset of his twisted character.
Amit’s murdering pharmacist Faisal Bhatti has so far evaded the law, despite butchering abused mother Joanna Hepworth and hiding her body in a suitcase.
Speaking after last week’s episode, which saw Faisal bump cars with Joanna’s thuggish husband Rob and have an altercation, Amit said: “No one has found him out. He’s going through this transition period where he’s thinking, ‘things are working out, I’m on top and in control and I like this. It’s making me feel quite alive’.
“When the collision happens and he’s in the car and he’s realised it’s Rob, a switch goes in his head. And he thinks, ‘OK, I could either be Faisal from before or take control of this situation.
“There’s this moment in Breaking Bad when Walter White (Bryan Cranston) has that ‘switch’ moment, where he’s taking control, so I used that as well.”
Amit revealed Faisal didn’t start out as a clumsy character. He told the BBC Sounds podcast Obsessed With…happy Valley: “One of the stumbles was genuine and then [writer] Sally [Wainwright] saw it and said, ‘Oh yeah, we need to build on that.’ So he ends up falling over about seven times during the series. But I think that’s me anyway – I’m quite awkward!”
Amit revealed multiple scenes were shot for the ending, so even he does not know the conclusion. But talking of securing the part in the show, which was watched by more than nine million viewers last week, he said: “It was such an honour and so exciting to work on writing like this. When I got the offer I was just over the moon. You have to stop at those moments and think ‘I’ll remember this’.”
Gripped viewers are also braced to see whether escapee Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) will try to kill Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire).
‘It was such an honour to work on writing like this...’