Latest news with #KellyMacdonald
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I'm less apologetic now': Kelly Macdonald on her Trainspotting teen highs and hitting her stride in her 40s
One of the good things about playing a therapist, says Kelly Macdonald with a laugh, is that you get to sit down a lot. There's a fun scene in the new Netflix thriller Dept Q in which her character, Dr Rachel Irving, weary of her client DCI Carl Morck, plants herself down behind her desk to eat her packed lunch in front of him. Morck may be the kind of troubled detective we're used to seeing in police dramas, but Irving isn't a typical therapist. She's blunt, antagonistic even. It's a 'shitty' job working with police officers, she tells him. Another time she describes him as 'doolally', which in my experience is not something a typical therapist would say; Macdonald, who has had therapy, 'but not regularly', may agree. In the show – adapted from novels by the Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and brought to the screen by Scott Frank, who was also behind the Netflix hit The Queen's Gambit – Morck is made to see Irving after he survives a shooting. Brilliant but sidelined, Morck is tasked with reviewing cold cases, and moved to a shabby basement office that becomes known as Department Q. The first case for his small crew of misfit detectives is the disappearance of a lawyer four years earlier, who everyone thinks is probably dead. The truth, it soon emerges, is absolutely terrifying. Did Macdonald think she'd be playing a police officer on the show – a role she has played in Line of Duty, Giri/Haji, and Black Mirror? 'No. They specifically told me what it was going to be. But I think I've played a therapist before as well.' We're speaking over Zoom; Macdonald is in Los Angeles where she is filming Lanterns, an HBO adaptation of the Green Lantern comics in which – is this right? – she plays a detective. 'I don't actually, I play a sheriff. Very different.' She laughs. 'I wear a hat and everything.' Macdonald, now 49, has been there since January, and it's hard being away from her two sons, 12 and 17, though they've been out to see her and she gets home to Glasgow whenever she can. 'The guilt never gets easier,' she says. 'I think that's just a working mum thing – you never feel like you're doing either thing as well as you should be. They understand what I'm doing and where I am, and we've got technology at least, so we can see each other's faces.' She follows them on their phones, 'to see where they are, like a sneak, checking up on them. I was doing that a few weeks ago and I zoomed out, and suddenly it was just the Earth, and they were there and I was here. I know this, but it really did something to my brain. Because it's far.' Not to make assumptions about boys, but presumably they're more impressed by her work in Lanterns, or her role in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, than, say, Gosford Park? 'We don't really discuss it too much,' she says. 'I did show one of them the prop green lantern. It doesn't feel like I'm doing a comic thing – it's a drama.' One day they will surely be impressed that their mother was a 90s icon. Macdonald's debut was in Trainspotting, playing Diane, the sassy (underage) teenager Ewan McGregor's Renton gets involved with. Macdonald's parents divorced when she was a child and she grew up in Glasgow with her mother and brother. She didn't do much drama at school but she loved films and TV – even adverts stuck in her mind, and she would act them out. Macdonald remembers one summer when she was obsessed with the western musical Calamity Jane, and would go out to see which other kids were around her estate, and try to get them to act out scenes from it. None of them knew it, she says with a smile. 'Other kids weren't so interested.' Acting, for Macdonald, 'was my form of play. I was always pretending, and it was pretty private, like in my bedroom.' She was reminded of it recently because her older son is doing exams; Macdonald did fairly well at English because she would learn dialogue in her room. She wanted to be an actor but didn't really have much of a plan (a theme, it becomes apparent, throughout her life). Then someone gave her a flyer for open auditions for what would become Trainspotting. She was 18 and working in a restaurant. As she progressed through the stages towards getting the part, it was 'excruciating' she remembers. 'Especially when Ewan McGregor was in the room. He says he couldn't even see what I looked like because I was holding my script covering my face.' In hindsight, she says she can see Trainspotting and its stars were part of a British boom. 'At the time I didn't feel special, I didn't feel part of a …' She pauses. A picture of an old magazine cover came up online recently, and she clicked on it. 'It was, like, Cool Britannia or something. And I was in it. That's really funny today, it's very nice.' Did she not go to celeb parties? Hang out with Liam Gallagher and Kate Moss? 'I might have gone out with Kate Moss once,' she says, her face crinkling at the effort of dredging her memory. She didn't really hang out with actors and wasn't part of a 'scene' – she still isn't. She does remember going to premieres of films she wasn't in. 'I can't imagine doing that now,' she says with a laugh. 'I barely want to go to my own.' Her life in Glasgow – her home town, and that of her former husband, the Travis bassist Dougie Payne – is 'pretty boring', she says. 'I'm surrounded by boys and animals. I have a very low-key life, it suits me.' She misses it when away. 'I need to go and nest.' Was it a deliberate choice to create a down-to-earth life? She never did the Hollywood hustling thing, and doesn't do social media. 'I'm a pretty patient person and every now and then a great script does come along, luckily, and I get the opportunity to be a part of something.' It's not that she isn't ambitious. 'I want to do good stuff and work with good people, I just don't know what the thing is until it comes up, and that's kind of the way it's always been.' Macdonald has done great work, and worked with great people – four years in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, a role in No Country for Old Men, some lovely Brit films such as The Girl in the Café Nanny McPhee, and Swallows and Amazons, not to mention the TV juggernaut that was Line of Duty. With years of acclaim and experience behind her, it was fun to be in the 2017 Trainspotting sequel and not feel intimidated the way she did on the first one. 'I'd seen Ewan at various points in the interim, and it was just really nice to feel like I was with a peer, rather than someone way beyond my sphere. We got to hang out and I wasn't hiding in the toilets.' Even so, Macdonald still sometimes feels a little like she did back then. 'I mean, aspects have got easier, but when they say 'action', it immediately feels like it always did that first time. Like you forget how to walk, really simple things.' She laughs. 'I basically want to please my bosses. I want to please the director. If you get through the first day, it gets better after that.' She meets younger women, 'and I just am so impressed by them', she says. 'They are unapologetic, and will correct you if you're down on yourself about something small and piffling. But that's just the way I was brought up, to be self-deprecating, and they're having none of it. It's really impressive.' It took her until her 40s to feel more like that, she says. 'You stop giving so much energy to things that are silly and don't serve you. I just feel like I'm less apologetic about who I am.' If Macdonald is still fixed as that teenager in Trainspotting in many people's minds, she has been busiest, with her best work, in her late 30s and 40s. 'It's very exciting to read something and feel you can connect to it in some way, and you want to play-act the scenes like I did when I was a kid. Most of my working life, I'm in a room on my own learning lines, which is how I used to play.' It can feel like a slog when it's not working for her. 'But I know when it's a good one, because I'm quite happy to be back in that room.' Dept Q is on Netflix on 29 May.
The Courier
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
5 TV shows filmed in Tayside, Fife and Stirling set to be released
Tayside, Fife and Stirling have provided the backdrop for several upcoming TV shows. The region has played a part in bringing TV dramas, documentaries and gameshows to life over recent months. The programmes, involving stars such as Andrew Lincoln and Kelly Macdonald, will be released by the likes of Netflix, BBC and ITV. Similar film and TV projects have brought millions of pounds to the area in the last year. The Courier has rounded up TV shows recently shot in Tayside, Fife and Stirling that are set to be broadcast in the near future. The upcoming ITV drama saw The Lade Inn in Kilmahog, near Callander, taken over by more than 50 actors and production staff in August 2024. The thriller stars Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead and This Life), Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting) and Indira Varma (Obsession). Set in the fictional Scottish village of Coldwater, the series is written by award-winning playwright David Ireland (The Lovers, Ulster American, Cyprus Avenue). The story follows John (Lincoln), a repressed man who is shocked to find himself in middle age, secretly raging at his life as a stay-at-home dad. A release date for the ITV production is yet to be announced. Production crews descended on Inverkeithing, Dysart, Kinghorn and Anstruther to film scenes for the second series of hit ITV crime drama Karen Pirie last summer. Several roads, including the town's High Street, were closed off to traffic for more than four hours on Tuesday evening as filming continued in and around a chip shop. Produced by London-based World Productions, the show is based on best-selling Fife author Val McDermid's second book in her Karen Pirie series, A Darker Domain. The lead role is played by Lauren Lyle (star of Outlander), who is given a 40-year-old murder case to reinvestigate. A release date is yet to be announced, but author Val McDermid says the series is 'set to arrive on ITV imminently'. Burntisland provided a filming location for Netflix's upcoming detective series Dept Q in June 2024. The series stars Trainspotting actress Kelly Macdonald and Matthew Goode, who is known for his roles in Downton Abbey, The Crown and The Imitation Game. Dept Q is an adaptation of the novels of the same name by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. The series revolves around Carl Morck, a former top-rated detective in Edinburgh assigned to a new cold case whilst wracked with guilt following an attack that left his partner paralysed and another police officer dead. The series will be released on Netflix on May 29. Actor Robson Green visited Broughty Ferry this week to film with Gladiators star Sheli McCoy. The Soldier Soldier star went paddleboarding on the River Tay on Tuesday during filming for an episode of BBC Two series Robson Green's Weekend Escapes. The show, which sees Green travel across the country meeting famous faces along the way, is currently in its third season. The actor told The Courier that the episode will centre around activities 'that are good for your mental wellbeing', as recommended by Dundee-based gym owner McCoy. An exact date for the episode release has not been announced, but it is understood that it may not be on TV screens until early 2026. Filming for the BBC's new TV gameshow Race Against the Tide also took place in St Andrews this week. The Fife town's West Sands beach provides a backdrop for the BBC's Race Against the Tide. The show sees competitors build sand sculptures against the ticking clock of the incoming tide. The six-part series is hosted by Scottish comedian Iain Stirling – best known as the narrator of Love Island – who will issue additional craft challenges throughout the show. The series will be available on BBC Two, BBC Scotland and iPlayer but a release date has yet to be announced.
Scotsman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Five-bedroom £1 million Edinburgh flat used in new Netflix drama Department Q up for sale
This superb ground and garden level flat was recently used as a location for Department Q, due to premiere on Netflix on May 29, starring Trainspotting star Kelly Macdonald. 22 Lennox Street is a light and airy period home in an extremely sought after and quiet location in Edinburgh's New Town, which offers generously-sized and beautifully presented accommodation. Externally, there is a patio to the front of the property, and a lined under pavement cellar store – a perfectly-sized space for a home office, utility room or studio. To the rear, there is a substantial garden with an expanse of lawn, raised terrace and an extensive seating area. Residents can also gain access to Dean Gardens. John Forsyth of Savills said: 'There is a fantastic sense of space at this very stylishly decorated property, and the garden is a real highlight. Definitely one to view for anyone seeking an elegant New Town home.' For viewings call Beth Hocking, Savills PR Director, on 0131 247 3739 or email bhocking@ Department Q is an adaptation of the novels of the same name by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. 1 . Filming location This superb ground and garden level Edinburgh flat was recently used as a location for a new Netflix drama, Department Q, due to premiere on May 29, starring Trainspotting actress Kelly Macdonald. | Savilla Photo Sales 2 . Sitting room On the ground floor there is a grand, south facing sitting room with fine period features and high ceilings. This room benefits from working shutters, a feature fireplace, and detailed cornicing. | Savills Photo Sales 3 . Garden To the rear, there is a substantial garden with beautiful lawn, raised patio area and a spacious seating area to the rear. This truly is a wonderful garden to embrace all year. Residents can also gain access to Dean Gardens, which provides over seven acres of wonderfully landscaped gardens and walkways through to Stockbridge and down towards the Water of Leith. | Savills Photo Sales 4 . 22 Lennox Street The property has two entrances, a private front entrance at garden level and a ground floor entrance via a shared vestibule. Externally, there is a patio to the front of the property, and a lined under pavement cellar store, a perfectly sized space for a home office, utility room or studio. | Savills Photo Sales Related topics: EdinburghNetflixProperty
Scottish Sun
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
I loved feisty new Netflix role.. she won't put up with any bulls**t, says Kelly Macdonald
'I read a couple of self-help books and had the odd session myself. I also picked up bits and pieces from talking to others who've had lots of therapy' PLENTY OF ATTITUDE I loved feisty new Netflix role.. she won't put up with any bulls**t, says Kelly Macdonald Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) KELLY Macdonald has revealed she studied self-help books to become a 'f***ing feisty' therapist for her latest TV role. The Trainspotting legend plays Dr Rachel Irving in the big-budget Netflix cop drama Dept. Q that was filmed almost entirely in Edinburgh. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 6 Kelly Macdonald has revealed why she loves her latest Netflix character 6 Actors Matthew Goode and Jamie Sives are two of the main stars in new Netflix show. 6 Guilt star Mark Bonnar as the Lord Advocate in Dept. Q. 6 Scots actress Chloe Pirrie also has a major role in the cop drama. But Kelly delved into self-improvement manuals to prepare herself for the series which also stars fellow Scots including Jamie Sives, Kate Dickie and Mark Bonnar. She says: 'Playing a therapist appealed to me. I liked Rachel's attitude - she's certainly got one. 'I read a couple of self-help books and had the odd session myself. I also picked up bits and pieces from talking to others who've had lots of therapy – so you get an idea of these things and how they work.' Kelly, 49, also relished her on screen clashes with Matthew Goode who plays DCI Carl Morck - the cop tasked with setting up the new cold case unit staffed by a bunch of police misfits. But after his colleague DI James Hardy (Sives) is shot Morck is sent to Kelly's in-house therapist character for counselling. She says: 'I liked that Rachel was just as f***ing feisty as he is and she doesn't take any of Morck's bulls**t. 'I remember that first scene they have together, where he's basically trying to escape (from the therapy session). 'She calls him on it, she can immediately see what's happening and says, 'I don't care, come into my room or not. It's up to you.' 'I think that's quite enticing for a character like Morck. She's not afraid of him, and instead is sort of intrigued. He's like a 4D puzzle that needs to be worked out. For Rachel, he's an interesting case.' She adds: 'So I found her chippy-ness quite interesting. She's quite unusual for a therapist. She's pretty smart and she can read people well.' However Matthew admits he feared other clashes on set - like the dodgy car director Scott Frank gave him to drive. He says: 'They got me this old Ford Sierra in a lovely colour. 'That car had serious problems with its brakes though, so whenever he (Scott Frank) told me to drive fast and really hit the curb I'd be thinking, 'okay but I really hope it stops and I don't plough into anyone.' 'Occasionally I would turn the car off and walk away, and I'd hear it start up again, ha! I'd have to go over and give it a kick.' 6 Kelly Macdonald has revealed the techniques she used to get into character Credit: Getty The series is based on the books Department Q (corr) by bestselling Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, with their Copenhagen setting swapped for the cobbled streets of Edinburgh. But taking on the lead role was daunting for Matthew, who played aristo Henry Talbot in Downton Abbey, as he was one of the few non-Scots on set. It was also the first time he had ever visited Scotland. Matthew, 47, from Exeter, Devon, explains: 'When I was in university all my friends would head off to Edinburgh for the festival, but I always had to go back home to Devon and work on the farm. 'So embarrassingly, I only visited the city last year. When I got there I just thought, 'this place is staggeringly beautiful'. 'It's also really bloody windy. They have these huge communal bins for everyone to put their rubbish in and I was in my flat at night and I thought a bomb had gone off. 'It was just one of these bins that had been blown over and was heading down the street as we filmed between January and June and had several storms.' He adds: 'I stayed in New Town, a couple of floors above a fishing tackle shop, which I made the most of a few months in when I took myself off salmon fishing for a couple of days. 'I'm really glad it was set there, which is the genius of Scott for transposing this Nordic drama to Edinburgh.' However Edinburgh-born Jamie - who played Jake McCall opposite Mark Bonnar as his brother Max in the hit BBC crime caper Guilt - admits he had to give some local lingo lessons to US director Scott. He says: 'I just felt sometimes it needed a bit of 'Scottish-ing up'. 'Scott had Hardy saying, 'oh boy' at one point and I told him I was going to change it as he was more likely to say, 'oh f***' or 'away and boil yer heed'.' But Jamie had to spends much of the series lying down after he's shot - although maintains that was tougher than his usual roles. He explains: 'To be honest, the fact he was paralysed was the most challenging aspect of the part. 'Any time we did a scene where I was in the hospital bed I had to really concentrate to ensure I didn't move – you can't ruin a take by twitching a toe. 'So just keeping absolutely still was a discipline in and of itself.' But the Scot, who also appeared as chief nuclear operational engineer in Chernobyl, discovered there was something very familiar about his co-star Alexej Manvelov, who plays police station civilian worker Akram Salim in the series. Jamie says: 'We were chatting one day, and he said to me, 'Have you seen Chernobyl?' 'To which I replied, 'I have, and have you seen Chernobyl?' And he said, 'Yeah, I was in it' and I said; 'Yeah so was I!' So we bonded over that.' Meanwhile Mark Bonnar, 56, also from Edinburgh, enjoyed his lofty part as Lord Advocate Stephen Burns. And he got up to speed for the role by watching BBC Scotland's Murder Trials documentaries which charted real-life court cases including Bill McDowell being found guilty for murder of lover Renee MacRae and her three-year-old son Andrew who disappeared in the 1970s. He says: 'Stephen was great fun to play, especially as he enjoys his high status and doesn't want to give any of it away to anybody, making him a great foil for a complete maverick like Carl Morck. 'But I watched the BBC Murder Trials documentaries and soaked up as much as I could about how these people hold themselves.' However there was another reason why Kelly enjoyed taking on her therapist role - as it meant she was only an hour away from her Glasgow home that she shares with her two sons. She says: 'It was nice being a sort-of local, because a lot of my work is out in Los Angeles and you have to drive everywhere and it's so stressful. 'So yes it was very nice to be able to work so close to home on Dept. Q and I loved my little therapy scenes - they were like doing short plays.' *Dept. Q starts streaming on Netflix from May 29.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jason Ritter talks ‘Lanterns,' working up the nerve to ask to wear the power ring
Jason Ritter may not be playing a member of the fabled Green Lantern Corps in Lanterns, the upcoming Max series adaptation of DC Comics' Green Lantern mythos, but he wants you to know he's eager to don the power ring if called to duty. 'I have to say, personally for me, being a fan of Green Lantern growing up, getting to see the ring in person was cool to me,' Ritter told Gold Derby about admiring the intergalactic peacekeepers' iconic emerald ring on set. 'I haven't quite gotten to the point where I am like, 'Can I try that on?' I'm hoping to at some point to just try it on, say the oath really quick, see what happens.' More from GoldDerby 2025 ACM Awards winners list: Lainey Wilson wins Artist-Songwriter of the Year After 12 career nominations, Scott Ellis could win his first ever Tony Award for producing 'Yellow Face' Everything to know about 'The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum': Cast, release date, director Ritter plays Billy Macon, a character who may or may not have roots in the comic book canon. Macon is married to a dutiful small-town sheriff (Kelly Macdonald) and is the son of an outwardly charming but conspiracy-minded cowboy (Garret Dillahunt). The family becomes embroiled in a murder investigation conducted by Green Lanterns Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). Max Lanterns, Ritter said, has one foot in an adventurous, science-fiction-fueled superhero world, and the other firmly planted in more earthbound reality. 'It's both,' the Matlock star explained. 'It's very grounded. The performances all feel very real. Batman has always been sort of 'no magic,' in a city, a rich guy with a lot of cool, wonderful toys, as the Joker said, so there's that level of reality that suits The Penguin. Whereas Green Lantern can fly, can manifest things, and the universe is involved. So it's a much bigger world, but it does feel kind of rooted in reality.' Ritter said that not only was he eager to sign on to a Green Lantern-driven project, but he's also excited to join Warner Bros.' new DC Universe roster of films and TV series, overseen by James Gunn and Peter Safran. This new slate formally launches throughout 2025 with Creature Commandos, Peacemaker's second season, and the big-screen Superman. The actor loves imagining how the tapestry will all come together. He's also enjoyed diving into some of the fan theories percolating about his character online. 'I looked a lot when I first got cast, and I was very honored by some of the ideas before they announced who my character was,' he said, noting one particularly intriguing bit of speculation: that Ritter would be voicing a longtime fan-favorite member of the Green Lantern Corps. 'I don't actually know how you pronounce it because I've only read it, but Ch'p, the little squirrel,' Ritter laughs. 'I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's so nice that you were saying that – That would be awesome!' [But] I can totally dispel that one. No, I'm a human man.' 'But the truth is, as we've seen before in these shows, a character who's one thing in one season can go through a change, evolve,' Ritter, who's halfway through shooting the eight-episode season, added. 'So I have no sense, aside from what's going on in this season, my character can have secrets that I don't yet know, not even having gotten a final episode yet.' Best of GoldDerby 'I've never been on a show that got this kind of recognition': Katherine LaNasa on 'The Pitt's' success and Dana's 'existential crisis' How Charlie Cox characterizes Matt Murdock through action scenes in 'Daredevil: Born Again' 'Agatha All Along' star Joe Locke on learning from Kathryn Hahn, musical theater goals, and the 'Heartstopper' movie with Kit Connor Click here to read the full article.
