‘We didn’t need sex scenes in the show’

By Etan SMALLMAN

Never before have I thought of an interview as resembling a first date. But when Andrea Riseborough tells me a lot of first meetings are “horribly awkward to watch”, I secretly suspect she might also be talking about our encounter, not just the opening scene of her new television “love story for the ages” Alice & Jack.

Meanwhile, after my half hour with her co-star and co-executive producer Domhnall Gleeson comes to an end, he apologises for a second time if he smells – he doesn’t, though his luggage has been lost in transit for three days – then struggles to release himself from the Channel 4 boardroom. The door fails to open when pushed, so he presses what turns out to be the light switch, and plunges me into darkness. Finally, with an embarrassed guffaw, he discovers the door is not that hightech, it just slides.

The six-part drama – which launches on Valentine’s Day – sees Alice and Jack collide for the first time after connecting on a dating app. Alice, who works in finance, is as brittle as broken glass – something of a specialism for Riseborough, who has been hailed for her capacity for portraying “wounded, damaged souls”. She says she relished playing someone “unapologetically spicy”, because “mainstream characters on screen are often presented with impossibly unattainable moral standards”.

Gleeson’s Jack is a doe-eyed medical researcher who is not quite sure what has hit him. They wash in and out of each other’s lives over 16 years. It is almost the same length of time as the careers of the two actors have been intersecting (this is their third collaboration, following 2010’s Never Let Me Go and 2012’s Shadow Dancer).

Gleeson (son of actor Brendan) has previously rejected the notion that he is either “conventionally handsome” or “a typical romantic lead”, but says now that he is 40, those ancient quotes are no longer accurate. Riseborough, 42, says she had never had the thought about herself.

“No, but I do have a funny brain, so maybe it’s my own failing there. I just think everybody is a romantic lead. It’s something that we all can commune over. That’s one of the things that I really love about the show – that it represents what love looks like for a lot of us, which is a commitment to really, really hard work. We’re all of us deserving of love and love often is so imperfect. My industry is very responsible for perhaps misrepresenting that.”

Gleeson, who says the only work he has wanted to watch or make since Covid has been “about connection and love”, puts it more starkly: “I think it’s just honest about the fact that, if you’re lucky, you’ll experience love, but love will f--k you up and you will f--k up love.” He was so burnt out by the project that he took a rare 10-month break. “I was tired. A lot happens in this thing.”

Neither is keen to share much about their own romantic stories. Gleeson declines even to comment on his relationship status (“That’s just a precious thing that I keep

Domhnall Gleeson and Andrea Riseborough on why Alice & Jack is a romance that breaks all the rules

the people are looking at each other, rather than what they are saying. I personally like silence.”

Last year, Riseborough was – according to The Hollywood Reporter – “Oscar’s most talkedabout nominee” after scooping her first nod, for Best Actress for To Leslie. The micro-budget indie, in which she played an alcoholic mother, had grossed just $27,000, but vocal support followed from Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Aniston, Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet (the last of whom said: “I think this is the greatest female performance on screen I have ever seen in my life”).

After the shortlist was announced, Riseborough should have been celebrating the unlikely coup. Instead, she found herself at the centre of a race row, with her critics saying her recognition came at the expense of two highly tipped black actresses, Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler.

Now that awards season has come around again, I ask what advice she would give to anyone else caught in the eye of an Oscars media storm. After a pause, she says: “Just… congratulations. Just congratulations,” as she hugs her oversized leather jacket. On whether the nomination has changed how she is seen or what she is offered, she says it is “hard to quantify”; she just wants to focus on getting her own projects off the ground. “Before the nomination, I was working to produce a certain number of things with film-makers who I absolutely love. They are the same films that [they] were before.”

While talking to Levin, I make the mistake of referring to Alice as – at least on the surface – an unsympathetic character. The writer looks at me as if I have just insulted his wife. “This is a character who is in a lot of pain, and who is kind of a walking miracle,” he says. “Just the fact that she exists, that she has been able to fashion a life for herself despite what she’s been through. It’s as if there’s an electric current running through her body, that’s what she’s dealing with every minute.”

I reassure him I fell in love with Riseborough’s performance, having watched previews of the first two episodes, but that is not quite enough. “I hope you are more in love with Alice by the end,” he urges with a smile. “I really do hope that you warm to the character. I think you will.”

Alice & Jack begins on Wednesday on Channel 4 at 9pm

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BBC Four, 9pm & 9.40pm

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