Matters of life & DEATH
EMILIA FOX on exploring office romance and mortality in the forensics drama
SILENT WITNESS MONDAY & TUESDAY, 9PM, BBC1 DRAMA
After more than 25 years on our screens, BBC1 crime drama Silent Witness is still ringing the changes at forensic pathology hub the Lyell Centre, with the addition of two intriguing new team members.
But the beating heart of the show continues to be Emilia Fox’s Dr Nikki Alexander, who has spent nearly two decades navigating her way through gruesome cases and personal heartache as the dedicated pathologist.
Ahead of this week’s second two-part investigation – a timely glimpse into the murky world of illegal immigration – TV Times joined the always charming Emilia, 48, to learn more…
Emilia, what’s happening in this week’s story, and in the rest of the series?
We’ve got an abandoned lorry in a quarry this week, and what looks like a peopletrafficking investigation, and we’re having to find out the identities of those who are dead and alive.
There’s also a great episode set at a music festival coming up, and one that focuses on social media – what people are projecting, and what the reality is behind the screen.
We were thrilled when Nikki finally got together officially with her colleague Jack Hodgson, played by David Caves, in the last series! How is their relationship going?
It has moved on, and they are still together, but pressures are put on them. They realised in the first two episodes of this series that they were each other’s Achilles heel as much as they were each other’s strength, so their love was put under a stress test. But things become more normal for them later in the series!
What’s it like to have Nikki kissing Jack after all these years?!
We didn’t want to suddenly have these two familiar characters acting out love scenes. It’s almost too intimate, isn’t it?! But we wanted to retain the idea that two people can love each other and work together.
Have you enjoyed welcoming new faces to the Lyell Centre with the arrival of Velvy Schur and Gabriel Folukoya, played by Alastair Michael and Aki Omoshaybi (see box below)?
Velvy brings a new energy and, as you’ll discover, he’s got a great backstory. By chance, Aki and
I live around the corner from each other, so I see him out with his wife and gorgeous baby! Also, his brother is a doctor, so we have a ‘phone a friend’ option to help with the pronunciation of medical terminology!
Poor Nikki has seen so much over the years – how does she avoid being traumatised?
Well, you could argue that she’s become very capable at dealing with all these extraordinary circumstances. But of course, her PTSD levels would be very high, and that has been explored in the past by Nikki going into therapy.
Silent Witness storylines are complex and you don’t shoot in chronological order. How do you keep on top of the investigations?
I make maps of each one, so that I know what I’ve found out, when and from whom, and also what other people know. Because you can’t just go in and play the scene without knowing what’s already happened in the episode!
Does filming the show make you more aware of your own mortality?
I think about it a lot! You can’t help it when we’re spending seven months of the year dealing with people’s last moments, and trying to piece that together. We are solving crime fictionally, but people are affected by real crime every day. And we are all affected by death as much as by life.
It makes me think how we need to value our lives. You never know when they, or the lives of the people we love, will be cut short. We need to live life to the full!
Has the show changed your view of the forensic medical profession, too?
It makes you think about what the unsung heroes of crime-solving do in real life. We have an advisor on the show who is a pathologist, and he is married to a midwife. The conversations they must have about the beginning and the end of life must be fascinating! That would make a good series…
Would you like to do Nikki’s job for real?
I wish I’d done something like that with my life. But the great thing about my job is that it gives you the chance to have those dual lives, even if they are fictional! It’s an extraordinary job and I never take that for granted.
Emilia Fox also teams up with Professor David Wilson to investigate more unsolved real-life crimes this week in a second series of documentary series In the Footsteps of Killers (Thursday, 10pm, C4; box set, All 4).