Ten years into his married life with Holly, Nathan is unnerved when Bob (Bertie Carvel) – an unwelcome face from the past – turns up at his door with some shocking news. Harbouring a terrible secret and trying to escape his past, Nathan is rocked to the core at the visit, which triggers a series of catastrophic decisions…

Directed by Niall MacCormick and adapted by Luther’s Neil Cross from his novel Burial, The Sister is a psychological thriller with a dark twist. We spoke to Neil about adaptations, the supernatural and spreadsheets…

The series was originally named Burial, then Because The Night and now it’s The Sister. Why the renames?

I never liked the name Burial, so I didn’t want the show to be named Burial. Burial was a compromise title between me and my publisher back when I was young enough to make such accommodations. But I’ve never been entirely happy with it. I really liked Because The Night, but it was focus-grouped and disliked, which threw me into a whirlwind of despair because I couldn’t think what the hell to call it. However, when I was stuck in Mexico City as things started to go really insane, I decided to divert myself by trying to think of a definitive title for the show, and it’s now called The Sister.

I’m very pleased with [the name], it’s great. I don’t want to apply the word ‘great’ to us, but like all good scary stories it’s both every day and inexplicably sinister. Like The Lodger! I’ve always found The Lodger to be one of those. It’s the most everyday phrase in the world, but it’s really scary. But yeah it sounds like a Daphne Du Maurier short story, or a great unmade Hitchcock, but it’s one of those titles that’s never been used. It’s like trying to name a band, all the good ones are already taken!

What can you tell us about the show and what to expect from it?

I haven’t thought about an answer to this question, ridiculously. It is… I’m going to use the word ‘dark’, because that’s inevitable, but it is in essence it’s a psychological thriller about how the mistakes and misjudgments of the past can come back to haunt us. And the word ‘haunt’ there is not accidental.

What was the kernel at the heart of the story that made you really want to tell it?

It’s based on a novel that I published quite a few years ago now, when I had a full head of hair, and a heart full of optimism! A novel that was published under the name Burial. I was at that time reading an awful lot of Patricia Highsmith, repeatedly, and an awful lot of Daphne Du Maurier. I really, just in terms of narrative taste at the time, I wanted to write that kind of psychological thriller than Highsmith would tell, where two – always men, in Highsmith’s world – two men who reflect and contrast one another take a step into a different moral universe.

I wanted to tell a story of a Hitchcockian everyman – I use the word advisedly – albeit somewhat younger, [who] does what could happen to so many of us, which is on a bad night does a bad thing, and spends the rest of his life tormented by guilt over this thing that he did and got away with.

The actual inspiration was the most quotidian thing you can imagine. In common with almost every other living Briton” I spent my teens, my twenties and my early adulthood drinking far too much. The drink itself and the effect on health and stuff, and the effect on my bank balance, never particularly worried me. I never had a drink problem, I had what Billy Connolly once described as a ‘behaviour problem’.

Again, I’m making no special claims to this experience and its universality, which is the point, really. What stopped me drinking, what I hated about drinking, was the moment where you wake up in the morning and there’s that oceanic surge of self-recrimination and self-hatred where you think ‘oh sweet Jesus Christ, what did I do? What did I say?’ and the anxiety that follows that. Looking back now I spent most of my young adulthood perpetually anxious about stupid shit that I’d said and done, and the way to deal with that anxiety was to drink a little bit more so that I had something new to be anxious about.

So there was that experience, coupled with a very quotidian statistic, which was the vast majority of murders in the UK are carried out not only by people that we know and love, but by people who are drunk. I just extrapolated from my own experience of being an asshole at parties to think ‘what must it be like to wake up in the morning and remember that you killed someone the night before? How must that feel? What does that do to you as a person? How do you rebuild your life?’ That was the nugget that led to the story, really.

How was the process of adapting your own work many years later?

It was good fun. I’m very fond of Burial. Burial is one of those – this isn’t an attribute of everything I’ve ever written – but Burial is one of those stories which has always been with me, it’s always been alive. I never felt like it was finished. Going back and reading the novel was a bit like reading a teenage diary. I’ve never read a sentence I’ve ever written without cringing in self-hatred and embarrassment, thinking about how much better it should have been. So that was interesting.

I’m still very fond of the story, but I agreed with myself several years ago, in discussion with another writer about this kind of thing, that we should ban from our industry the word ‘adaptation’. The word should be ‘transformation’. Because everybody knows that what appears on screen at best bears only the most tangential relationship with the source material you can imagine. There’s that rule: only mediocre books make good films. The Godfather – although I fucking hate it, The Godfather – is the ‘My Way’ of cinema. It’s loved by mediocrities. But it’s a capital-G Great film inspired by a mediocre novel, at best.

So I knew that when it came to moving Burial to the screen, it had to be transformed, and that was the single biggest, not emotional but narrative challenge. It was deciding the form it was going to take – that decision took me longer than the actual writing process. On the page, I’m a very linear writer. I start at the beginning and I write through to the end. There are no fancy tricks, there’s no post-modern jiggery-pokery [laughs], it’s telling a story in the leanest, cleanest, most tense narrative I can. I realised for various reasons that wouldn’t be appropriate to an ITV adaptation. It’s a medium and message question. It’s going to be screened on ITV over four hours with part breaks. Writing for part breaks, advert breaks, is in itself this learned skill. It’s really hard! [Laughs] who knew?! It’s really difficult because every ten minutes has to be a little three-act structure in its own right. I reinvented a very linear novel, transformed a very linear novel, into what, on screen, is a series of three nested timelines – 2010, 2013 and present day, which is something I’ve never tried before. It was really good fun and stupidly hard. But I love how it works on screen.

Did you have to have lots of spreadsheets on the go?

Oh my God, I lost my mind! I did. I just lost my mind. Weirdly the first episode, episode one, I wrote incredibly quickly. Once I had the idea of the timelines, I sat down and I wrote episode one in four days, and I haven’t had that experience for years. I thought: ‘God, this is going to be easy! Good decision, Cross’. And it just got progressively harder until episode four was like yomping on Port Stanley. It was really hard [laughs]. But worth the effort, obviously.

Could you tell us a little bit more about Bob and his relationship with Nathan…?

Well, I don’t know what to say about Bob, really, other than that I love him. Bob’s a monster, various versions of whom I have met over the course of my life. He’s also kind of a part of me. Bob is the monstrous part of myself. But the character is owned and transformed and brought to glorious life by Bertie Carvel. Bertie has done an amazing job making Bob incredibly compelling and charismatic and sinister and sad and funny. Bertie is really, really funny. I think Bertie enjoyed playing him, and I think the glee he took in inhabiting this character shows on every frame of footage. I wasn’t on set for Burial because I was on set for another show, but I’d watch the rushes every day and watching Bertie… watching dailies, watching rushes can be a great experience. It can be a terrifying, soul-crushing experience [too] but watching Bertie as Bob every day was a thing of joy. It always brought me happiness.

You get to blend genres with The Sister – psychological thriller, supernatural horror – do you find that gives you more creative flexibility?

Yes and no. It’s interesting… I grew up associating psychological thrillers with a slight fizz of supernatural at the edges. I think in some ways its source was just the way that books were packaged when I was a child. You’d walk into a book shop in the early- to mid-Seventies and Agatha Christies all looked like Dennis Wheatleys. I think in some sense in my mind the two genres are Lego’d together anyway.

What interests me about the treatment of the supernatural in Burial and in The Sister, is that… I give these words to Bob, but there’s something called I believe ‘post bereavement hallucinatory experience’ – [when] an overwhelming number of people experience in some way, post-bereavement, the presence of a dead loved one. Be it a parent or a spouse or a child or a brother or a sister. People might see them or smell them or hear them. What that said to me – and indeed what that said to Bob –  is the quote ‘supernatural’. Whatever the nature of the objective experience, whether people are objectively experiencing the objective post-death presence of a loved one, or whether it’s some kind of psychological compensation method, or whether it’s some sort of blur between the two, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the experience of the quote ‘supernatural’ is almost universal.

At some point, it will happen to all of us. So weirdly the supernatural elements of the story are more every day than the thriller elements of the story. It’s the kind of thing that is more likely to happen to you in your every day life than murder and redemption. They did it in Coronation Street! Vera Duckworth saw Ivy’s ghost at the top of the stairs and that was the end of the episode. It was fucking terrifying! We don’t see her. We saw Vera, we saw her face, we saw her looking upstairs; there was a close-up of her and she just went ‘Ivy?’ And that was the end of the episode. It scared the shit out of me. I don’t think it was ever resolved as to whether she’d actually seen Ivy or hallucinated Ivy. But the fact that it is a part of everyday life. People experience ghosts, whatever they might be.

After doing a show like Luther do you find yourself being typecast as a crime thriller writer? Do you resist that, and if so how?

The truth is that I am scared of that. The reason I wasn’t on set for The Sister is because I was in California and Mexico making a show for Apple, called Mosquito Coast, which has got no elements of the supernatural or serial killers or any of that stuff. I love writing outside the genre. I do, it’s liberating. I can tell different kinds of stories and create different kinds of worlds, but there’s always this gravitational pull back to it. The truth is that I’m most comfortable in dark and scary stories. It’s just what I enjoy reading and watching and writing. I don’t know if it’s typecasting or if it’s psychological limitations, or if it’s a limitation of my skillset, but ultimately it’s something that I always come back to, and when I’m back in it I feel most at home.

The Sister is coming out at an interesting time with the current epidemic. Do you think it will provide the escapism that people will be craving at this time?

Do you know what? I have no idea, I genuinely do not. Clearly we’re going through a liminal and transformative cultural experience, and it’s very interesting in as much as we are simultaneously experiencing it together and alone. I don’t think there’s ever been an experience quite like that before; where we’re all locked away from each other, and yet able to communicate with each other. I can’t pretend to have an idea about what it’s going to do to the kind of stories that we want to tell each other. I really have no idea…

The Sister currently available on-demand on ITV Hub.

The post The Sister: Interview With Neil Cross appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

Ten years into his married life with Holly, Nathan is unnerved when Bob (Bertie Carvel) – an unwelcome face from the past – turns up at his door with some shocking news. Harbouring a terrible secret and trying to escape his past, Nathan is rocked to the core at the visit, which triggers a series of catastrophic decisions…

Directed by Niall MacCormick and adapted by Luther’s Neil Cross, The Sister is a psychological thriller with a dark twist. We spoke to Russell Tovey who plays Nathan about his character, genre projects and choosing a role that his mum will like…

What can you tell us about The Sister and your character of Nathan?

The Sister is a four-part thriller written by Neil Cross of Luther fame. It’s the story of a guy called Nathan who makes a choice and a mistake ten years previous to when the show starts. He’s compartmentalised it and he’s survived it and he’s continuing to survive and keep it buried. Then something happens from his past and you are seeing the unravelling of a good man who’s made a bad decision…

What drew you to this show and this character?

This character, the writing, the fact that, as an actor, it’s going to be one of the most emotional, traumatic roles I’ve ever taken on, and that felt amazing. My first lead role in a drama, out-and-out lead, number one, and I felt completely ready to do that. To work on Neil Cross’ writing, in this genre, with this script, it felt perfect.

Neil Cross has a background that covers thriller, horror, sci-fi – how does his background come together to feed into this show?

[It’s a] psychological thriller – this is a guy who’s keeping a secret, so [it shows] what that does to people when they’re hiding stuff, when they’re having anxiety and panic attacks from trying to contain it all. Then you also have the paranormal effects of the fear. The fear is of the unknown, of being haunted, of something out there that you desperately don’t want to believe in but all you are doing is believing in it. He’s manifesting this energy around him, and all he’s trying to do is shake it off, but the further he’s in the more he’s manifesting. It’s terrifying.

So it uses these more supernatural elements to tie into themes of repressed secrets?

I think adds to his anxiety. It’s the anxiety of what he’s done, and then the punishment he’s going to get feels worse than just going to prison on a human level. It feels like there is something else out there that is desperate to fuck him up.

You’ve said before that you’re keen to play characters that have these traumatic backgrounds…

A bit of darkness in them, but yet they’re human, and they’re flawed as we all are, but there is love in them. There’s deep, deep love in Nathan, and a deep, deep desire to be loved, and to be forgiven, and for his secret to come out and for him to be punished, but to still be love.

Every time I play a character I want my mum to like them, and I want my mum to want to give them a cuddle. With Nathan, I think she would turn up at the prison and give him a cuddle and be like ‘you made a mistake, but let me give you a cuddle because I feel sorry for you’. I want to give him that sort of energy. People are going to be conflicted with this guy. I think they’re really going to like him and care about him, and I think their heart is going to break for the situation because he shouldn’t be in it. I think people are going to be really conflicted. That was my job with being offered this role – I had to give love to this character.

It seems like Nathan is intentionally contrasted against Bob – what can you say about the relationship between those characters?

First of all Bertie Carvel is a genius and I love him. We both work in different ways, and our energies really do work. He’s so quirky and so mercurial. You don’t really know what’s going on with him. Basically, he’s a ghost hunter. He’s someone who wants to believe in the afterlife, he wants to believe in the paranormal, and when it starts coming true he [is the person] who’s conjured it. He’s manifested it, and now he’s scared of it because he’s got it.

It’s about these two guys: one that’s never wanted it and has got it, and one that’s brought it on him and then doesn’t want it. It’s like they’re both conflicted, but they’re joined by this event that they can’t escape. Nathan hates [Bob] –  this guy has come into his life and he’s altered it forever.

You follow that relationship at key points over ten years?

From the start. The first scene you’re like, bang, straight in. Who the hell is this person? What the hell has happened?!

What were the challenges in portraying a character over such a long period of time?

I guess the challenges were definitely for the make-up and costume department because you’re playing three different ages. But it’s about giving energy to it. We see him at a stage when life is good, nothing’s happened. He’s hopeful, he’s ambitious and he’s cheeky and kind of cool. The future looks really exciting. Then something happens and it’s suddenly taken away from him. The future that he was meant to get [is] never fulfilled. He takes a different course.

Did it help you engage with the character, being able to play him as he was before this trauma?

Yeah of course. I really wanted to – you’ll see when you watch it – I wanted him to be joyful at that stage, and I want people’s hearts to break because they’re like ‘look at how fun he was and look how much life he had, how upbeat he was, how kind and kooky’. That’s a cool guy. He would be someone you’d want to hang out with.

Then to see [this thing] happen, I want people to be like ‘fuck that guy’. And that can happen to anyone. I try to pitch it as someone having a really lovely life and then they have one too many drinks one night and they run someone over. Or even if they don’t have the drinks, they knock someone ever and they die. What effect that would have on your life even though you’re a really good person. An accident that happens, how that can then just shatter you. You hear it all the time, how one event can shatter you and it shouldn’t have happened but it has. I wanted to find the sadness in that.

And then you add these creepier elements that turn that up to 11…!

But you can’t play that as an actor. You have to play the truth of every scene. You can’t play ‘I’m in a thriller!’. What’s beautiful about [The Sister] is they allowed silence to be very loud. They allowed silence to have its moment. As an actor, it’s instinctive, I love a pause. I love a beat. I love that in a script when there’s an ellipsis. Give me that. Give me time to fill the next instinctive moment. This was full of those so I was like ‘sign me up!’. As long as it’s contractually obliged that you play all ellipses, pauses and beats, I’m in!

You can say a lot more with silence…

With nothing! Yeah. It’s all about that. That’s what TV’s about, it’s all about what you’re not saying, and your reactions to what the other person is saying. Whereas theatre is about what you’re saying. I love that, the fact that you’ve got both of those things with theatre and TV and film, the reaction shot is more than what’s being said.

Are there any elements that you’d describe as horror in the show?

Well I guess if you’re talking about ghosts and the afterlife and paranormal activity, that is horrific, to some people that’s terrifying. More terrifying than reality. So horror plays into it. I think it’s going to appeal to science fiction fans. I think it’s going to appeal to horror fans, thriller fans, crime fiction fans and people who just like a drama about emotional connections and love and family and honesty.

Would you say that shows like Game Of Thrones has moved ‘genre’ more towards the mainstream?

I’d put that all the way back to David Tennant’s Doctor Who. That made being a geek acceptable. People could come out and be like ‘I watch Doctor Who’ and people would be like ‘cool, so do I’. Whereas before it would be like ‘I watch Doctor Who’, people would be like [snorts] ‘what? Don’t admit that! Don’t talk about that!’ Now you’re allowed to be a geek. You can come out and show’s like that have then made that genre, sci-fi, the mainstream. We can talk about that show in those channels, but the reality is this is a mainstream show about a guy’s unravelling.

In the present day elements of the show, Nathan is married to Holly – what can you say about that relationship?

They completely love each other. She is everything to him. She is the most important person in his life. They’re desperate to have kids [but] they can’t have kids. In his mind, it’s because he’s a bad person because of what he’s done. He feels like that energy is going through him into his sperm and it’s not working. They go to the doctors and they say there’s nothing wrong here, and for him that plays into his psychological anxiety.

Amrita Acharia [who plays Holly] is heaven, we had such a nice time doing this. She’s an actor that has the same energy as me and we both would lock into this mood, which is important, and this rhythm. There’s a definite rhythm between us that really feels like we’re both existing in the same world. For her, she doesn’t know what’s happened or anything. For her she’s playing her own anxieties like ‘does this guy still love me? Or does he want kids?’ Her anxiety is ‘maybe it is me that can’t have children…’ We’re both playing our inner monologue. Fundamentally [this is] a total love story. You want them to be together forever.

How do you pick a project?

I can normally tell within ten pages of reading something if I want to do it or not. It’s normally the dialogue of the character. I’m like ‘okay, I want to say that, I want to say those words. Okay, I know who this person is, I know what I’m going to do with this’.

I did another show called Flesh And Blood  [and] Stephen Rea said he can usually tell within one page of reading something. I was furious about that! It takes me about ten pages! But I know when something’s right for me, and that’s an instinct from doing it for so long. Sometimes you get pushed into things and people want you to do something and you sometimes – I did in the past – go ‘alright, I’ll do it’, or something else persuades you to do it. But the reality is now I just want to do the ones that I know I can do justice, and I know I can give everything to that.

And whether you think your mum would want to hug them…?

I think ‘my mum would like this guy’. Or ‘my mum won’t like this guy’. Or ‘am I going to die in this one?’ Every time I die in something I have to warn my mum. In Years And Years I was like: ‘Mum, I’m going to die in this one’ she was like: ‘Not again!’ When it finished she rang me up and was like (between sobs): ‘You’ve… got… to stop… dying… in everything… I hate it… I don’t like it… it was brilliant you were brilliant but please stop dying!’ I was like: ‘Alright mum, it’s fine, I’m here’. She’s like: ‘I can’t keep seeing you like hanging or overdosing or getting run over or drowning’, She’s seen her son die in every worst possible anxiety of a mother! She’s seen it all played out.

What do you hope that viewers will get out of The Sister?

They’re going to be thoroughly entertained and want to know what the hell happened and why someone would have got involved in something like that. I think they’re going to want to work out psychologically why this has happened. I think people are going to be really frustrated, like ‘just tell us what happened and why. How am I going to get out of this?!’

Is it one of those things where every episode ends on a cliffhanger?

Yeah of course. I think people are going to really be annoyingly compelled to stick with this and I think they’re going to fall in love with Nathan. I hope, touch wood, maybe that’s being big-headed, but I hope that they really fall in love with him and just want to stick with him.

The Sister currently available on-demand on ITV Hub.

The post The Sister: Interview With Russell Tovey appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.