Tell us about Showtrial.
I play Sir Damian Campbell, father of Talitha, who is the accused in the story. Showtrial is hard to define as it looks like a traditional courtroom thriller, but really it’s a series of interlocking stories that collide off each other. You are peeling off the layers of an onion to get to the heart of it. It feels like a cross-section of our entire world right now.
Through Talitha, you find out about Sir Damian Campbell, a humble billionaire and property developer. You find out Talitha is a spicy character who has a difficult relationship with her father. The story is finding out if she’s guilty of what she’s accused of, but the real story is who are all these people and what makes them tick.
Tell us more about your character…
We don’t call him Sir Damian enough; right at the beginning he says it’s just Damian, but really we’d like to call him Sir. We never find out his backstory, but he’s a self-made man, he married into aristocracy and acquired the identity of someone very high up in society, but is able to get along with lots of different types of people. He isn’t cynical and really believes in what he is doing – building houses for people, building social need. He is very blunt and direct.
It was one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. I had to know if she did it straight away. You get caught up in the drama of all these people. I thought Damian was interesting, fun and an original character. Normally the space reserved for a billionaire in drama was shorthand for a bad guy. I think that Damian is someone who doesn’t know who he is as he has spent his whole life creating an image of who he’d like to be but his story is finding out who he is, who his wife is and who his daughter is. He’s a workaholic so doesn’t have the time to figure out his daughter’s pain.
What have you enjoyed most about playing Damian? Have you found anything challenging?
I’ve actually had a really good time playing him as he’s got such a good sense of humour and it’s so much fun to dress up in posh suits and go to groovy modern houses and pretend you own them!
What was your favourite location to film in?
My lake house glass place in the Cotswolds. They showed me a photo of this place and I thought ooh it’s perfect! A fortress made of glass, a perfect metaphor for this character. It was striking and so surreal. We got to do some drone shots which was fun.
Do you have a favourite prop or wardrobe item of Damian’s?
Damian’s watch! Usually it just tells the time but for this character it tells you how much it cost. It’s a Breitling. He never looks at it, always just uses his phone!
