I love success.. but hate showbiz fakery
Line of Duty star Martin on the agony of sitting through awards shows
THE biggest show on telly is back tonight – but don’t expect straight-talking Line of Duty star Martin Compston to sit around lapping up glitzy accolades.
The ex-professional footballer, who plays no-nonsense DS Steve Arnott, reckons that while going to awards ceremonies may be in the line of duty, they can be humiliating – especially when the hit BBC show loses out.
He says: “Awards shows can be a good night out, if you’re all together, a great catch-up with the troops and it’s lovely if you’re winning something, but you realise soon it’s all bull **** .
“In Line of Duty we always get beaten, which is never great.
“Awards ceremonies are overrated. You think they’re this incredibly glamorous night out and they’re not.”
Martin, 36, was speaking ahead of tonight’s eagerly awaited return of the BBC One ratings juggernaut as it kicks off its sixth series.
DRAMA
Jed Mercurio’s edge-of-your-seat thriller focuses on the anti-corruption unit AC-12, which has witnessed the deaths of a host of bent coppers as they attempt to take them down.
Its sixth series has been extended to seven episodes.
Martin, who is married to American actress Tianna Chanel Flynn, says: “I feel like the last two series have been building up to this one. There is a lot going on.
“There will be a lot of big questions answered. But all the drama that everyone loves will be there too.”
What he doesn’t love is how shallow the industry can be.
He said: “I can’t do small talk... and awards ceremonies are the World Cup of small talk.
“It’s chat and people bulls **** ing and going, ‘I love you in this’… and half the time people don’t even know who you are.
“And all these fake promises – ‘We’re going to work this together’.
“And it’s expensive to have a PR but if you don’t you just get hounded. There were years I was there and I just felt lost, wandering around.
“The thing that kills me, if you’re not nominated or famous, when you walk up and there’s a bank of photographers and you can tell none of them are interested in taking your picture, it’s the most gut-wrenching feeling. You just sink into yourself.”
He says of the National Television Awards: “When you leave your seat, they have people dressed up to sit in your seat for you. In Line of
Duty, we’re so used
It all seems glamorous, but you’re starving and dying for a drink MARTIN COMPSTON ON AWARDS CEREMONIES
IT’S TIME TO SMILE Martin with his actress wife Tianna to getting beaten, we were up for the first award and then we got beat and then we just f ****** off.
“We were like, ‘We’re not sitting through this all night if we’ve got beat again’.”
Martin had never acted before when he was plucked from obscurity at 18 for the lead role in Ken Loach’s 2002 film Sweet Sixteen.
It won him a British Independent Film Award as
Most Promising Newcomer, a Scottish BAFTA for Best Actor, and British Newcomer of The Year from the London Critics Circle – shared with Keira Knightley for her role in Bend It Like Beckham.
But taking a swipe at awards juries, he claims: “James McAvoy in Filth [a 2013 Irvine Welsh film] was the best lead performance in a British film that decade.
“And Line of Duty Series 3 [in 2016] is the best writing and TV I’ve seen
– none of them won. James didn’t even get nominated. Then you see how subjective it is and how the juries have agendas. In the main, you’re sat there starving, dying for a drink.”
Since its low-key arrival on BBC Two in 2012, Line of Duty has become one of the most-watched British dramas of the past decade, now pulling in 13 million viewers – and earning a promotion to BBC One. ■■Line of Duty, BBC One, 9pm