With his new series The Missing beginning on BBC One on Tuesday October 28 at 9:00pm, James Nesbitt has been speaking about what viewers can expect from the drama and his character, Tony.
What is The Missing about?
A family, a happily married couple and their adored and adoring four-year-old son called Oliver, go to France for the summer holiday. Through a series of fateful incidents, they have to spend the night in a little village called Chalons du Bois while their car gets fixed. It's during the football World Cup in 2006 and we spend the day having a lovely unplanned family day in the village.
By the evening, the car has been fixed and we plan to leave the next day. But Oliver has spotted a leaflet in the hotel about a local swimming pool and wants to go for a swim. Tony, who I think like a lot of fathers feels a bit guilty about working so much, says he'll do anything to please his boy and takes him for a swim while Emily [wife, played by Frances O'Connor] goes back to the hotel.
When Oliver wants a drink they go to the bar where there's a big crowd watching the exciting France vs Brazil match on TV. For one second, Tony gets caught up in it along with the rest of the crowd. He's been holding Oliver's hand and the next minute he knows he's not there anymore. From that point on it becomes a nightmare.
We follow Tony and Emily backwards and forwards between 2006 and 2014 as their marriage disintegrates and as Tony disintegrates. He becomes more determined, more obsessed and more driven by trying to find out what happened to his son.
How did you react to the scripts?
It's all very well having emotional material on a story like this but it has to be well constructed and believable - you have to be able to invest in it. The writing in these scripts was exceptional. The first reading was utterly gripping and terribly painful yet I became invested in the story just from the first page and was desperate to know what happened. I was fascinated and intrigued by the awful reality of something like this happening.
We know this is a story that the public are aware of, but the different journeys these characters go through can only be described as hell. The scripts are so arresting and beautifully detailed, intricate yet truthful. I was blown away by them and knew it was something I had to do.
How would you describe Tony?
He is very driven and protective of his family but he also has a bit of a dark past and a temper. As a parent he is doting and as a husband he is loving. There are certain triggers that can be pulled which turn him into a character who acts very explosively, spontaneously and almost blindly at times. But, at his core, Tony is a good and decent man whose side we're on.
What is Tony's relationship with Emily like?
It's been incredibly incumbent upon us to try and show the good marriage they had before Oliver's disappearance. Because it happened so quickly at the beginning, it is hard to show just how stable, happy and content they were before. They were good for each other and, because of Tony's childhood, Emily had been a very good stabilising force for him.
We really looked for those moments so it makes their slow disintegration much more painful. This horrendous thing happens and it begins to illustrate the cracks instead of pulling them together. Those relationship cracks get bigger until they become crevices and, in a sense, they become different continents.
What has it been like working with Frances O'Connor?
Frances O'Connor, who plays Emily, is just wonderful. She is very detailed and a brilliantly truthful actress. She's magnificent and delivers a quite brilliant performance. For the 2006 scenes, in the immediate aftermath, she has to go into pretty dark places and does it with utter commitment, discipline and sacrifice.
But, she doesn't carry it with her afterwards. It's been important for us to support each other off screen, even though we are disintegrating on camera. We've almost become closer off camera because we have to counter that.
Why should viewers tune in to watch the show?
The characters are believable and their flaws are believable. It's a story that people have come across before in reality that we still read about and hear about so it's accessible. It explores the human spirit, which sounds like a terrible phrase, but it's something that we're interested in. It is a story about loss, hope and despair. It's about the very worst we can be and the very worst that can happen to us but also about love - the need for love and the sadness when love is taken away.
