David Morrissey (Thorne) interview

David Morrissey stars as DI Tom Thorne in Sky1's Thorne, a new six-part drama series based on best-selling novels by author Mark Billingham.

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> Read our interview with co-star Sandra Oh.

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For Thorne, you took on the unfamiliar role of producer - how that came about?

“It was my project - I was in New Zealand filming in the winter and there wasn’t a lot of extra-curricular stuff to do. It was a green screen job and we had a lot of time in trailers so I did a lot of reading and one of the things I read was Lifeless - one of Mark Billingham’s Thorne books and I really liked it.

“I was doing - as always in a geeky way - some research and read that Mark had said that he would like David Morrissey to play Thorne if it ever came to the screen. So I read a couple of other books and really liked them. When I came back to England I sought him out. We had a meeting, got on really well and became good mates so we decided to try to pull this together.”

How involved were you after that?

“Very. Sky came along and they’d read the books and were interested so we had the backing. We got some writers along and we were going through the story and I noticed that I wanted to create a place where directors could work. The last couple of years in TV I’ve felt that directors were (in an old school way I’ve always thought that directors were my boss) more and more like project managers. They were coming into projects late with very little time in pre-production and would have little time in post and not edit their material. I wanted to attract good, high-end directors.

“One of the first people I approached was Stephen Hopkins. I’d worked with him, and he was in LA so it was a long shot, but he loved it. As soon as he came on board it started to have this forward energy as a production, as a script. Then we got Ben Ross - a director whose work I’ve admired for ages. A very different energy for a very different story with a much more personal journey.”

How about casting?

“One of the great things about producing is saying, “these are the actors I would like to work with.” Stephen was on the same page and they all came in - Eddie, Aidan, Natasha and Sandra Oh all wanted to do it, so I got to work with the actors I’d wanted to work with for ages.”

Do you think there aren’t the roles out there so you have to help create them?

“No, it’s more that there are the roles but other people are putting them together. A lot of time as an actor you come into a project late; your flat’s been decided, your wife’s been chosen, lots of creative decisions have already made. Then you leave early and can sometimes find it frustrating. As a creative person you want to be involved in it from A to Z.

“Sky have decided that is wants to work with people it likes working with and it wants to invest in drama, which is wonderful. I think it wants to invest in long-term relationships in drama. It looks at our TV, the good times have always been about relationships between broadcasters and the people making the shows - respect between those two entities - and I think that’s what Sky is after.”

Is Thorne your standard TV cop?

“The detective genre is one that’s very well documented, it’s the sort of thing we love on British telly. One thing I liked about Thorne was his empathy with the victim. Some victims are just jobs, they bounce off him, but some people get through his guard.

“In Sleepyhead he’s dealing with a killer but then he realises that this man isn’t trying to kill, he’s trying to keep his victims in a sustained locked-in state. That affects Thorne in a big way. He can’t handle it when he sees this girl who’s locked-in just lying in bed. He identifies with her massively. It makes him angry and upset and destabilises him. Why? Why this particular victim?

“What I like about Sleepyhead is that I’m dealing with this past - the monkey on Thorne’s back that he’s not prepared to face but he has to deal with to move forward emotionally and professionally.

“Thorne’s also a guy who gets it wrong. He’s not the great case solver we know and love in British television; he does mess up, a lot. He takes risks and they don’t always come off. He’s not that maverick cop who does his job and everybody goes to jail. He’s a bit headstrong and sometimes people have to clear up after him.

“In Scaredy Cat his mother has died, she had cancer. He’s dealing with that, he’s been to the funeral and he’s sort of moving on. But in the course of his professional life a woman is killed and her child has escaped the killer. Thorne has to look after this kid and that’s where it all starts to kick in. He takes personal responsibility and that blinds him to some of the facts - he lets his personal grief and need get in the way. And that’s something people can recognise, I think.”

You once said you didn’t want to play policeman any more - is that’s a millstone around your neck in coming to this?

“You have to know the rules in order to break them slightly. I don’t mind that quote coming back to me because I said it when I was younger and I was being asked to play a lot of coppers. Worse, they were coppers without a story, coppers without a personality. What’s great about being a bit older is that you get all the personal as well as the professional.

“What I like about Thorne is that it’s coppers dealing with a lot of crap that’s going on in their lives and in their jobs. They’re not saints, they’re not the great bastions of justice that we want them to be. They’re flawed, complex and sometimes petty characters. I like that.”

Why are you drawn to flawed characters who have great power?

“I like looking at people in public situations who are trying to distance themselves from their private selves. So you’re playing someone who has the work front and the closed doors - like a politician.

“With Thorne, his public self is trying to convince the people around him to come on his journey and then there’s the private self where he’s dealing with his past, his friend, being on his own, his mum’s death, his father’s widowerhood. It’s where those two sides of him clash. What we would love is for all the emotional stuff to happen in our time off so we could deal with it, but it always happens at a time when you have deadlines. I like those complexities whether they’re in obviously public figures like a politician or a guy who worked in kitchen in Clocking Off.

“What it teaches you is to never make assumptions. So now you watch Adam Boulton and Alistair Campbell having a go and that becomes fascinating because you know that Boulton’s wife is Tony Blair’s ex-press secretary. So they know each other and they’re having a personal spat live on TV. I love that.“

How did you research the role?

“Mostly I’m just cross-checking with coppers I know. Sometimes they say to me, “you would never do that”, and I have to decide whether I will do it in order for the story to move forward.”

Don’t all cop dramas have to make that decision - the story or reality?

“I’ve known quite a few coppers and they all say that the bits you never see are the ball-aching paperwork. But that’s not very dramatic. They say that 45 per cent of their time they fill out forms. Well, 45 per cent of our drama can’t be me filling out forms, no one’s going to watch it. So we do take artistic licence.

“But then inside each story I would do some research as well. We did research the locked-in syndrome but it was changing as we were filming. The girl’s ability to communicate had changed from Mark writing the book to us filming. Now they’ve developed this system that we used that’s like an electronic board which is calibrated to her eye so that she can pick out letters. We were able to use that but say that it was a brand new thing - because it absolutely was.”

Is there any of you in the role?

“The only thing really is I think there’s a sense that he has an outlook on the world which is suspicious. I think he’s guarded in his everyday life and that’s how he moves forward. I think that would be an element of me at the moment; I’m not as open as I used to be. I find that quite interesting about him and me. I’m just slightly wary about the world, less trusting, and I don’t know where that comes from.”

Are you planning more Thorne adaptations?

“I would hope so, yes, because I think how he grows over the series of novels is really interesting. But also you could have an original screenplay written for that character. I know that Mark feels the same. We would like to sit with a screenwriter and look at doing an original and see how we go with it, because I do think there’s room for it to grow.”