Ross Kemp (Ultimate Force) Interview
Ross Kemp is back in a blaze of bullets when Henno Garvie and his crack SAS troop make a return to ITV1 in the three unseen episodes from Series 4 of Ultimate Force, starting on Sunday 18th May 2008.
Essex born Ross in his spare time enjoys tennis, rugby and martial arts. His other roles include Without Motive, Hero of the Hour, The Crooked Man and Line in the Sand. He has also starred on stage as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and appeared in Spartacus for American TV.
Ross hopes to make more documentaries for Sky. He also plans to make a programme on tiger poaching with SAS sergeant turned author Chris Ryan, whom he met through ULTIMATE FORCE.
Do you think you could ever do the job for real?
I’m a scaredy cat! I’ve got lots of friends who are soldiers and I admire them and thank them for protecting my way of life. But I’d never have made a good soldier myself. What we are trying to do is thank them by presenting them in a hopefully good light.
ULTIMATE FORCE seems to be incredibly popular with the services. In a way it’s a better recruitment campaign than the ads they do. We are in no way trying to be detrimental towards the armed forces, especially in the current atmosphere. I think they need all the help and backing they can get.
Are you glad to be back playing Henno Garvie, Red Troop’s tough sergeant?
I’m not surprised that ULTIMATE FORCE has gone to a fourth series but I’m thankful that is has. I enjoy the role and it’s easy watching, very digestible and quite comic. It’s very in your face but it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t. It’s got it’s own niche and it’s very popular.
I’m very proud of the series, what we achieve and how we get away with it in the locations that we have. Having spent a bit of time in East Africa, I never thought we’d get away with filming Africa in Oxfordshire but we did. Instead of the Amazon, we got 12 heavily armed people with blackened out faces into a speedboat just around the corner from Windsor Castle. There would have been a major security alert if we’d gone round the next bend!”
The new episodes see Henno getting close to the action once again. Your stunts include jumping off a building on to an open-top bus, while a lorry-load of fireworks explodes nearby. What was that like to film?
The amount of pyrotechnics we get through is amazing. Before half past eleven on one Friday I had blown up a helicopter and taken out a cocaine factory. We were very close to the explosion and it was one take with rounds firing and rocket launchers going.
Hopefully the more you do something, the better you get. Sometimes it means more corners are cut. I don’t think we’ve done that – I think Bentley is spending more money.
Do you find playing Henno physically challenging?
You have to prepare for it. I’m 41 years old now and everyone else in the cast is 15 years younger than me. They can run my socks off so I have to make sure that I’m relatively fit just to survive the filming!
I’m very used to guns now but every year I like them less because I’ve been handling them all day on ULTIMATE FORCE. In one of the documentaries I went to an armoury of confiscated weapons in Rio de Janeiro. I went through the weapons and the police were convinced I wasn’t a journalist but a soldier because I knew so much.
You get used to handling those things because it’s part and parcel of the job, just as if you playing a surgeon you’d get used to scalpels and injecting things. You have to, because they people we play are extremely comfortable with the weapons.
What was it like returning to the role of Grant Mitchell in EastEnders?
I was asked to go back and they offered me a blinding deal. I was apprehensive, though, because it’s a bit like going back to school. I agreed to go because I get to do some directing and get three dramas put into development. Hopefully it’s a step forwards, because ultimately I’d like to have my own production company.
Following the success of your appearance in Extras, would you like to do more comedy?
I wish I’d had the opportunity to do comedy before now, but we’re very famous for pigeon-holing people in this country. Ricky Gervais is a very funny guy and it was hard to keep a straight face at times.
