Nicola Walker on her Unforgotten role and being nervous onset post lockdown

Virgin Radio

21 Feb 2021, 11:36

The actress joined the Graham Norton Radio Show earlier to talk about playing detective Cassie Stuart, acting with a mask and trying not to give away any onscreen secrets.

She joked to Graham: “I’ve written down here ‘Nicola do not tell who the killer/killers is/are. Do not tell Graham what happens at the end of episode one’. "My character for the first time is not around which I found really, really weird because she's still struggling a little bit after Alex Jennings last series and so she's at home and the team go in and find a classic dismembered body in a freezer and that's where it begins.

"Cassie was having a bit of a difficult time. Alex Jennings, his murderer last year was a psychopath, and I think that broke Cassie. She's been on leave and I think a leave that she wants to be permanent and she's done, she's finished.

"She doesn't want to go back but she has to because if she doesn't complete, and it's a matter of three and a half months, she doesn't complete her 30 years service she will not get her full pension and her father is getting worse rapidly.

"She knows she's going to need money so this first episode sees Cassie going back but she's going back and she's livid."

On her dementia-suffering onscreen dad, she said: "It's complicated. As you know, which I think happens a lot, he was living with Cassie after his wife died and he's made a new relationship and moved in with her and that is really difficult for Cassie to cope with because she feels that she's been pushed out.

"She was always the one that she imagined would be the one that would take care of her father but she's been pushed out by Jenny."

Telling Graham about filming during the pandemic, she said: "We filmed it last year so we started in late January and we were all doing brilliantly - and then something happened and now when I go to work I have to wear a mask all day.

"We only had five more weeks to shoot and so we managed to get back up and running towards the end of last year and got the five weeks done. Most of that stuff brilliantly was set in the police station which was far more manageable to cope with the COVID protocols in that space, so we got it done which we were all shocked by. "The first day walking on set that we all know really, really well, I was really nervous but then everything that was put in place by the end of the day felt like the best was being done to take care of everybody.

"It makes the working environment very, very peculiar in particular the mask which is on constantly apart from when you are inbetween action and cut. The mask brings up problems for acting in that when you do the rehearsal it's quite hard to judge your performance when you only really get one go at it - you get a technical run and then the take and that's your go so that's very strange... but really as an industry I think it's doing remarkably well."  

 Unforgotten season four will air from Monday 22nd February at 9pm on ITV.

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