LIGHTER ARMOR
Richard Madden now.
After you’ve been killed off one of television’s most memorable shows in one of television’s most memorable scenes, whatever comes next career-wise might be, if not a letdown, then a reality check.
Unless, of course, you’re Richard Madden, who followed his character Robb Stark’s spectacular demise in “Game of Thrones’ ” infamous Red Wedding by starring in “Bodyguard,” a BBC series that swept the U.K. before coming across the pond via Netflix and sweeping the U.S. as well.
Madden’s David Budd is a British army war veteran racked by PTSD who is now working for the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of the London police. Separated from his wife, David is taking his children back to their mother when he manages to save a train full of people from a terrorist threat. As the hero of the day, he is drafted into bodyguard duty for Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), whose hawkish policies he despises even as he attempts to protect her.
Tense and thrilling, with at least three major plot twists, “Bodyguard” puts Madden back in the limelight as someone to root for.
I have to ask, coming from “Game of Thrones,” was portraying a PTSD sufferer easy?
I think I had my own kind of issues after “Thrones” killed me off, which was quite a traumatic experience! But I came to this with something different, and that’s what I loved about it, this PTSD element that I’d not really seen in television and film the way that [creator Jed Mercurio] had written it, and the way we wanted to portray it, so it was good to kind of understand and try and work out how to do that properly.
Did you talk to soldiers about their experiences?
Well, this is the problem with PTSD, people really don’t want to talk about it. But I did speak to some friends of mine who have been in the Army, and they really don’t like talking about a lot of things. But I managed to speak to a lot of kind of exforces men who have experienced the stories that I could tune into.
One of the great things about “Bodyguard” is it has at least two huge twists. Did you know when you signed on that those were coming?
I knew the first three episodes, what
was happening. I didn’t know what was going to happen in Episode 6, and that was something I actually tried pushing off as long as I could so that I didn’t preempt anything that I was doing in Episodes 4 and 5 leading up to these twists.
You were used to wearing armor in “Game of Thrones,” did that help at all?
“Bodyguard” was good because it was actually much lighter than the “Game of Thrones” stuff. “Game of Thrones” stuff can end up a bit of nightmare some days, you see all these men on set looking brave, and then when they call cut, everyone kind of collapses, and throws the cloak off, and drops the sword. You know, everyone’s not as brave when the cameras go off.
One thing that is different for you is you play a father, whereas in the past you’ve played mostly sons or brothers. How does that play into the role?
Yeah, I think there’s an idea of your own mortality that changes when you’re a father, as far as I’ve come to understand without being one. Particularly in “Bodyguard,” when you’re risking your life every day for someone, literally your life, but you’ve got children. And he wants to be a
good father to his son. That’s part of him struggling with his PTSD and his identity is not knowing how to raise his son properly, and knowing that he’s failing at that. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of self-destruction and hatred that comes into it.
And in the upcoming “Rocketman,” a biopic about Elton John, you play his manager and sometimes boyfriend?
It’s his first boyfriend, of about five years, and then he became his manager for many, many more years after their relationship ended. And it’s quite interesting to go from something like “Bodyguard” into “Rocketman,” where I’m singing and dancing, and also playing a bit of a villain. I’ve played a lot of princes, and kings, and good guys that have bad things happen to them. It was nice to be a bad guy that does bad things as well.