Downton Abbey's Irish star Allen Leech used his time on The Late Late Show to urge viewers to watch the true story of human trafficking Doing Money, which is set in Belfast and airs on Sunday on RTÉ One at 9:30pm.
Leech, who portrays PSNI Detective Inspector Dougie Grant in Doing Money, described it as a "very important" film for Irish audiences to see, and saluted the bravery of the woman at its centre.
"It's a true story about a young girl called Ana [played by Anca Dumitra] from Romania who was working as an au pair in London and got snatched off the streets by a Romanian gang," the Dublin actor told host Ryan Tubridy.
"And the first thing they said was her home address and who lived there back in Romania - her mother - and said, 'If you try to leave, we'll kill her'."
"She was trafficked to Belfast and forced into the sex trade," Leech continued.
"The problem there is the brothels, they pop up in Belfast and as soon as they're closed down... The frustration for them [the police] is they go in, they kind of disrupt the brothel but unless that woman says, 'I'm being trafficked, I need your help' they can't actually remove her from the place. And none of them are going to do that because they're so afraid of what will happen to their families.
"So that's what the story is: it's the true story of this woman called Ana and she's the only one that's brave enough in the end to come forward and say, 'I need your help'."
When Tubridy said that the issue of human trafficking is not talked about enough in Ireland, Leech replied: "That's why when I read it first... Obviously, it's Ana's story, but to be part of this and try and get it out into the public domain and spoken about is why I wanted to be on it."
Doing Money, which is a BBC Two film produced in association with RTÉ and supported by Northern Ireland Screen, airs on RTÉ One on Sunday October 28 at 9:30pm.
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