Latest news with #EddieMarsan
The Independent
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Eddie Marsan on racism, typecasting and Keir Starmer
Eddie Marsan stars as FBI investigator Tom Thurman in the BBC drama 'The Bombing of Pan Am 103', after escaping typecasting as a Cockney actor. Marsan credits director Mike Leigh for helping him land more serious roles and teaching him to be honest in his acting. Starring in 'Ray Donovan' increased Marsan's profile in America he says, leading to more diverse roles after he felt typecast in the UK. Marsan is critical of extremism and right-wing views, recounting his past experiences with racism and his departure from X (formerly Twitter) due to its extremist content. Marsan is launching a production company with his wife to create roles for character actors, including women, and plans to direct, drawing on his 30 years of experience on film sets.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
BBC's Lockerbie drama Bombing of Pan Am 103 is ‘not a story about one hero'
The BBC's new dramatisation of the Lockerbie disaster, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, is 'not a story about one hero', the cast have said, as it details the efforts of the police, the residents of the Scottish town, and people around the world in trying to catch who was behind the attack. On 21 December, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in a terrorist attack that killed all 243 passengers and 16 crew onboard, as well as 11 residents in the town. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history and investigations are still ongoing. The BBC series explores the attack and the events that took place in the aftermath. But while Sky's equivalent drama Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is focused on activist Jim Swire's attempt to find out what happened after his daughter was killed on the flight, BBC's drama takes a more rounded approach. It highlights the work of the many detectives involved from both sides of the Atlantic, and the way the community came together in the wake of the tragedy. Reflecting on the BBC drama's appeal, actor Eddie Marsan said: "I thought what was so beautiful about it was a story of a collective response to a trauma. The way the women of Lockerbie wash their clothes, the detectives and the way the team solved it — It's not a story about one hero. "It's about a community, having a collective, people having a heroic response, which I loved." Marsan portrays FBI agent Tom Thurman, an examiner in the Explosives Unit who helped piece together key information in the investigation. The actor added: "When I met Tom, he's such a fascinating man. He's got a twinkle in his eye, he loves to solve puzzles, and he was just a brilliant character to play. "I thought I couldn't out Scottish Peter Mullan, so I will become the guy from Kentucky with the twinkle in his eye instead." The six-part series has been created by Adam Morane-Griffiths, who conducted extensive research about the Lockerbie bombing through his work in documentaries. It was as a result of this that he came to realise it would be beneficial to a drama, and that's how BBC's show came to be. Simon Heath, who executive produced the series, said: "He had thousands of hours of interviews with all of the lead detectives in the case, he had access to Richard Marquise, played by Patrick J Adams, in the series. "I think when we first pitched the project and tried to get off the ground what we came up against was that a lot of places would like it to be the story of this one super cop who somehow solved everything and pieced together the truth alone," he said. "And it became obvious very quickly that that's not really what the story was. "I remember a an early image Adam showed me which really stayed with me, a really powerful image was in Longtown in this warehouse where they'd laid out all the plane parts... and there was something about all those puzzle pieces hung up there that spoke to the story. "I think a mosaic approach seemed appropriate in a way, and we wanted to look at some of the bigger investigative pieces but also some of the more personal fragments, the family stories, the stories of the Ladies of Lockerbie in the community. It seemed to us, I think, that all of those stories spoke to the work of piercing together what [happened]." What was most important for the team behind the drama was ensuring those impacted by the event were at the forefront of the story and could share their experiences, director Michael Keillor said. "I think the first thing with a real story like this is people involved, the families of the victims who we met prior to pre production, that was front of mind," he explained. "But everything we did right through the entire shoot, even when we were shooting as well, we were very mindful of where we were shooting. "The crash site, we had to put that somewhere where people couldn't see, it could be hidden away. The nose cone as well is such a strong image, especially in Scotland, that if anyone saw that it wouldn't really be very cool, so that was a big part of the sensitivity. "In Lockerbie itself, Julia Standard, our producer, had a town hall there and met people at Lockerbie to gauge the temperature there for people's feelings, and we only really filmed there for a couple of days for really important stuff. "It's incredibly front of mind. I've never done a drama based on a true story, especially one that's based on the Scottish story I lived through, as well as a massive story back home, so it was incredibly important for me to be very careful." Scottish actor Lauren Lyle, who plays DS Ed McCusker's wife June in the show, spoke of how there was a sense of responsibility over sharing the story in the right way: "I think being Scottish, it's a very personal story that I've grown up. I didn't live through it, but my parents did and my family did, and it's always been something that I've known a lot about and it's something people really talk about. "I know Simon [Heath, executive producer] because [his company] made my show Karen Pirie so I knew that the show was being made and we spoke and I expressed that it's such a, in a way, horribly iconic story and I said: 'If there is anything, I'd be really honoured.' "I didn't know anything about June and then I had a phone call, a couple of quite long phone calls with Ed McCusker and I think it just put into perspective the emotional reality. I think the women of the story put in the emotional reality of what happened. "He was doing it for her because they had this amazing romantic story of their life and their love together, and about five years ago she died of cancer and the last thing that she said to him was 'you have to tell your Lockerbie story'. "And I'm on the phone going, 'Oh my God, we I have to do it now.' So it was sort of an honour to be a part of something that I've always known about, and to do it for her as well because she'll never see it come to life, but for him to know that we have [is important]." The Bombing of Pan Am 103 premieres on BBC One from 9pm, Sunday 18 May and will be available on BBC iPlayer. Episodes will be released Sunday and Monday nights.
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Eddie Marsan interview: ‘Gangster films these days are just middle-class fantasies'
On 21 December 1988, Pan American Airways flight 103, travelling from Frankfurt to Detroit via London Heathrow, was set to make the transatlantic leg of its journey when it exploded over Lockerbie in south-west Scotland. All 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground were killed as the plane was ripped apart and fell from 30,000 ft onto the small town, causing a huge fireball. When investigators discovered that the explosion had been caused by a bomb, it confirmed the attack as the deadliest ever to hit the UK. The horror of that winter night and its aftermath, and the desperately complicated search for those responsible, is retold in BBC One's new six-part drama The Bombing of Pan Am 103. 'The investigation keeps you on the edge of your seat,' says Eddie Marsan, who plays the real-life FBI explosives expert Tom Thurman. 'But there's a heartbreaking element to the drama, and how it explores the humanity of the situation.' He was struck by how the Lockerbie community came together to support one another and all the victims' families. Marsan recalls that he was working in a menswear store in Bethnal Green, east London, and looking forward to starting drama school, when television news began reporting a plane crash that evening. He would go on to build a reputation as one of Britain's finest actors, in diverse roles such as the shy, reclusive Reg in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, the anger-filled driving instructor and conspiracy theorist in the same director's Happy-Go-Lucky and as Amy Winehouse's ebullient father Mitch in the recent biopic Back to Black. The Lockerbie bombing itself is the subject of various alternative theories, some more outlandish than others. The case remains labyrinthine and contentious, with many of its key details disputed. The trail led to the conviction in 2001 of Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on 270 counts of murder (and the upcoming US trial of fellow Libyan operative Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud, accused of making the bomb). Arrest warrants were issued for al-Megrahi and another defendant (later acquitted) after a three-year joint investigation by the FBI and Scottish police concluded that Libya was wholly responsible. Yet as far back as 1991, the CIA's former head of counterterrorist operations, who had overseen the Pan Am investigation for the agency, was telling The New York Times that 'it was 'outrageous' to dismiss the responsibility that falls on Syria, and possibly Iran, and pin it solely on Libya'. The involvement of Libya has, of course, been tested in court, and the government of now-deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi accepted responsibility in 2003. Yet there are still those who view the bombing as a revenge attack by Iran, carried out by a Palestinian terror group, for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airliner, in July 1987, with missiles fired from a US aircraft carrier, which killed all 290 people on board. Among those who do not believe the official explanation are Jim Swire, the British GP whose 24-year-old daughter Flora was killed on Pan Am 103. Swire was played by Colin Firth in Sky Atlantic's Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which aired in January this year. In it, Swire is shown grappling with a cover-up. 'I watched it. I was very defensive of the Scottish police and the FBI and the CIA,' says Marsan. 'I felt very protective towards them, [to] the kind of accusations in that, because I got to know those people. I got to know the FBI guys, and I got to hear the stories about the Scottish police and how they coped. I know what they'd gone through.' Marsan is an actor who studies the real-life historical figures that he plays, which range from the second American president John Adams in Apple TV+'s Franklin to John Darwin, the prison officer who faked his own death in ITV's The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe. For The Bombing of Pan Am 103, he read up on the case and met Thurman himself. 'He was a fascinating man, a fascinating study,' Marsan says, noting the investigator's strong Kentucky accent. 'He was obsessed – and dedicated to what he was doing.' Thurman is a controversial figure in the investigation, having been censured in a 1997 report by the US Justice Department's Inspector General into failings by the FBI's forensic-crime laboratory, which led to him being transferred. He plays an important role in The Bombing of Pan Am 103, not least in relation to a fragment of a timing device that was crucial to the original case. Some have gone so far as to suggest it may have been planted. Is Marsan certain that couldn't be the case? 'Well, I'm not an expert. I know that Tom's 100 per cent certain, and I believe Tom. 'What the series does is follow the investigation… it's a very complex web. I think what conspiracy theorists like to do is to find a simple solution. And I don't think there is a simple solution to what happened, but I think they got the right person in al-Megrahi.' Marsan is certainly a straight-talker: 'the thing about me, I'm a bit Buddhist and a bit Bethnal Green' is how he puts it. The Buddhist part grew out of controlling his anxiety through meditation. The Bethnal Green part came from growing up there, with his lorry driver dad and teaching-assistant mum, and leaving school at 16 with no qualifications. He lives in leafy Chiswick now but was back in his old manor recently to celebrate the OBE he received from Princess Anne at Windsor Castle in April with family and friends. The East End wasn't gentrified back when he was a kid in the 1970s and '80s, he notes. He's 56 now. He tells me that he is no fan of the slick big-budget London gangster fare that has exerted a grip on TV schedules recently – 'they're basically middle-class fantasies of what it means to be an East End gangster, and they don't acknowledge the trauma those people inflicted on those communities. I know what the Kray twins did to my community. I know people who were hurt by them.' He's pithy, with a telling turn of phrase. He finds the idea of actors needing 'lived experience' ridiculous, for instance. 'It's not an anthropological exercise. You don't go and find someone and think, 'Oh, he's the real specimen.' We're not Neanderthals. We're artists.' His career has criss-crossed the Atlantic, from Scorsese's Gangs of New York to the south London-set (and Bafta-nominated) Supacell. President Trump's idea of banning films produced outside the US baffles him – 'It's a very childlike way of thinking of how you make films, to be honest. It's like the bloke in the corner of the pub who's deciding how to run the world but never leaves that pub.' He's a believer that stories can be both parochial and universal at the same time, noting of Mr Jones vs The Post Office, 'I'm sure somebody in Vietnam could sit and watch that thinking, 'this is how bureaucracy can ruin lives'.' Marsan has ambitions to produce and direct himself, he adds, and much admired his pal Stephen Graham 's efforts in creating Adolescence, the drama about a young teenager who stabs a fellow pupil. Marsan is the father of four teenagers – one daughter and three sons – and says his family talked deeply about the drama over Sunday lunch. He thinks comments such as ElonMusk's dismissal of the series as 'anti-white propaganda', because the child was not black, represent 'the last kicking and screaming of white supremacy in the world'. And he asks the question: 'if it was a black kid who had done that, would we be so ready to think that he was influenced by society?' Writer Jack Thorne has said that it wasn't about race, but about boys and masculinity. Marsan suggests boys lack a 'heroic context', in contrast to girls, 'because the injustices that were blocking their way for hundreds of years have been highlighted. It can make you go, 'Right, I'm going to take that on'. What I worry about young men is that they can't find their heroic context. And the people who are stepping in, like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson or Russell Brand, all these people are trying to give them a belligerent heroic context.' He has little time for Brand's embrace of Buddhism, Christianity and transcendental meditation. 'I've meditated for 25 years, I go in a room and I shut the door, and I sit there and quietly meditate. It's a very private thing. And he meditates in front of three million people. It's not meditating. It's showing off.' His own interest in it grew out of the breathing exercises he learned at drama school. He still gets nervous on day one of a shoot, although he says, that 'the more experience you get as an actor, the more the quality of letting go comes into play'. It's what he relied on when he agreed to take on the play The Oak Tree at the Young Vic this May, in which the actor has no knowledge of the script before he arrives on the night. 'I just turn up,' he says. 'I can't get it wrong, because I can't get it right.' On his first day on The Bombing of Pan Am 103 he was confronted by lots of actors he knew, including Peter Mullan, who plays a Scottish police chief, all speaking in their native accents. 'I've known Peter for nearly 20 years, and he's speaking to me in his Glaswegian accent,' he tells me, 'and I say, 'I'm going to speak to you in a Kentucky accent.' He goes, 'Alright, knock yourself out'.' Marsan pulls it off, of course; his Thurman is a dogged, hands-on puzzle-solver. As for the upcoming trial nearly 40 years on from the original attack, Marsan says, 'If a member of my family had died in a plane in Lockerbie or anywhere in the world, I think justice is essential. I would demand it. I don't think the delay comes into it.'
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Reunion star says BSL filming experience was 'almost spiritual'
Eddie Marsan was a guest on Monday, 7 April's edition of The One Show, where he promoted his unique revenge thriller Reunion. In the four-part BBC series, which intermixes British Sign Language (BSL) and speaking actors, newcomer Matthew Gurney plays deaf man Daniel Brennan freshly released from prison. Ostracised from his community, he's out to unpack the events that resulted in him being sent down. Weighing in on the beauty of the filming experience, Marsan described it as "almost spiritual" due to the extra need for awareness on set. The Ray Donovan star told presenters Gethin Jones and Alex Scott: "It was wonderful to be involved in this. "Filmmaking is a collaborative artform but this takes it to a different level - to a point where it's almost spiritual because you have to work at communicating with everybody all the time." It seems his co-star Gurney made quite an impression on Marsan too, who compared him to a Hollywood great from The Godfather. Read more: Reunion stars hope BBC thriller will 'change the game' for deaf actors Why Rose Ayling-Ellis 'had to be in' bilingual BSL drama Reunion Lauren Laverne apologises after guest swears on The One Show "What was wonderful to see is usually characters with a disability are on the peripheries of stories, so they can only be a binary character - either a victim or villain," he explained. "And what's great about Matt's performance is that he's the central character and the nuance and complexity of that character, both morally and psychologically, he does it brilliantly. I likened him to Marlon Brando, he's amazing." Reunion creator and lead writer William Magar recently opened up on his vision for the show during an interview with the BBC. "One thing I wanted to achieve with Reunion was to show that sign language is not just one thing. Sign language can be used in different ways," he noted. "Some people sign and speak at the same time, and some use sign language solely. Others will use SSC (Scottish Sensory Centre) and add in elements of gesture. I wanted to show the variety of communication methods that deaf and hard-of-hearing people use." Cast members Anne-Marie Duff and Lara Peake both learned BSL for their roles. Reunion premieres Monday, 7 April at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TVLine Items: Stranger Things Vet Joins Rings of Power, Next Level Chef Double Renewal and More
Stranger Things vet Jamie Campbell Bower is venturing to Middle Earth, with a series-regular role on Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it was announced Thursday. Also joining the Prime Video series is Eddie Marsan (Heartstopper, Ray Donovan), who will recur during the upcoming run, which begins filming this spring. More from TVLine Sharon Stone Joins Euphoria Season 3 Cast Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal Lands Season 2 Premiere Date on HBO - Get a First Look at All the Awkwardness First Lanterns Photo Features Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre - James Gunn Says Series Is 'Really Special' Details about Bower and Marsan's characters are being kept under wraps. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Season 3 will feature a major time jump. 'Jumping forward several years from the events of Season 2, Season 3 takes place at the height of the War of the Elves and Sauron, as the Dark Lord seeks to craft the One Ring that will give him the edge he needs to win the war and conquer all Middle-earth at last,' the logline reads. Ready for some more recent newsy nuggets? Well… * Fox has renewed Gordon Ramsay's cooking competition series Next Level Chef for Seasons 5 and 6. Additionally, the network has picked up the holiday-themed offshoot Next Level Baker. * The animated preschool series Marvel's Spidey and His Amazing Friends has been renewed for Season 5 at Disney Jr. * ESPN will launch a shorter, daily version of SportsCenter, dubbed SC+, exclusively on Disney+, beginning Monday, March 3, our sister site Variety reports. * Disney+'s upcoming Marvel Studios series Wonder Man has tapped Ed Harris to play Neal Saroyan, the agent of actor-turned-superhero Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), Collider reports. * Apple TV+ has released a trailer for Number One on the Call Sheet, a 'two-part documentary film event celebrating the groundbreaking Black artists of Hollywood,' premiering Friday, March 28: Which of today's TVLine Items pique your interest? Best of TVLine Yellowjackets Mysteries: An Up-to-Date List of the Series' Biggest Questions (and Answers?) The Emmys' Most Memorable Moments: Laughter, Tears, Historical Wins, 'The Big One' and More 'Missing' Shows, Found! The Latest on Severance, Holey Moley, Poker Face, YOU, Primo, Transplant and 25+ Others
