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Can you tell me how you got involved in Extremely Dangerous? It was a really brilliant project - a psychological drama as opposed to a purely action-based show. And also a chance to work with people like Sallie - whose work I've admired. I liked trying to get into this man's head, and what was going on in his mind, he's been through this awful tragedy, this intense trauma where he's getting flashbacks, and he's not quite sure if he's committed this crime. Sallie got right in there and got all that sort of stuff out and depicted that. It's not very often that actors are offered fuller, more complex roles, for in front of the camera. More often it's on stage that you get the more interesting parts. But increasingly with more innovative and imaginative directors and producers, there are more coming across to television, with people not afraid to get under the skin.
Everybody in this thinks you're a psychopath - how interesting was it to play a non-psychopath? Well that's the only thing for Neil Byrne. If he loses that he loses his resolve, he loses everything. The only thing that keeps him going is the fact that he knows he didn't do it. But there are dark times and moments when he almost starts to question himself. And he can't allow himself to do that, or for that to happen. He knows deep down in his heart that he's not the murderer. It's the only thing that keeps him going throughout the story. He wants to find the killers - that's his sole aim.
Do you think he means to kill them? Oh yes. That's definitely his aim. He has nothing else to lose - he's lost his family, his wife, his daughter, his freedom. The only things that are dear to him.
What do you feel about Murray's writing? Well that was one of the main reasons that I did the piece. It all started off with Michael Foster, who approached me with a treatment. It was just an idea at the time. And they got together and wrote the first draft and when I read it I knew that I wanted to do it. Just the quality of the first script, even before the three rewrites. And then more people became attached - Sallie, and the producers. The first script got such a good response from everybody from the word go. It's interesting writing, and with a cast of essentially character actors, it was going to be good. There was a really fresh feeling between everyone coming to it, which is a plus. I hadn't worked really closely with any of the cast before. I had worked with Juliet before, quite a long time ago. But generally none of us knew each other, and that gave the production a certain sharpness and newness on set. And so we had to get to know each other while we were working. It was a great cast. In the story, I'm meant to have got to know all the criminals in the gang that I'm infiltrating undercover. I think I got a little bit too close to them, a little bit too friendly with them and too attached, and there's always the guilt Byrne carries around that he exposed his family to the danger. And that's something he'll have to live with for the rest of his life, because it's that thing of people working undercover, people infiltrating criminal circles, getting very involved and overstepping that mark of where the job ends. For various people, being an informants becomes a truism. They get too close, too involved, because they've formed too much of a bond with their targets, and become attached, so they can't keep the original objective in sight. I think Byrne is in a similar situation, plus there's the possibility that he's going to uncover everything - the underworld syndicates having links with the government organisations. They realise that this man can uncover a whole world of wrongs, so they start plotting against him. And that's the starting point for Extremely Dangerous. It's something hr blames himself for. Being involved with this sort of work while at the same time having a wife and child. Purely by association they're now a target. He's put them in danger. And the script's not what I expected at all. It's on a completely different level to that. It's not a Fugitive take-off. It's not a thing where anybody's going to get let off the hook. It's relentless all the way to the end. There's no let up at all. Byrne has a definite aim - to regain his freedom, to discover who the killers are, and then find them. There's nothing for Byrne that exists beyond that act. Nothing after that matters. And he does get to everybody, ruins all their "work", and properly sticks the boot in.
How did you prepare yourself for the action scenes? I keep myself fairly fit for all the stunts and I quite enjoy them. Because of the nature of the piece, there is a fair amount of violence, but my role was to make it as real as possible, and not just have a fight coming out of nowhere because we haven't had one for five minutes.
How did you all gel on set? Well I'm not really sure what "atmosphere
on set" means. Sometimes the atmosphere's crap, it's not
very nice, you can all be getting along really badly, and the
end product turns out brilliantly. And sometimes you can all
be relaxed and getting along fine and what comes out is boring
and sloppy. At the end of the day, all you can do is concentrate
on what you're there to do, and see what comes out. And achieve
what the director and producer are trying to do. There has to
be focus. It doesn't really matter if you don't get on - I mean
obviously it's nice Next: Ralph Brown (Connor) |
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