Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson on Alice & Jack: "Romance is messy, people get hurt"

They first met and played boyfriend and girlfriend in 2010 film Never Let Me Go, shot in 2009, and Gleeson was immediately entranced by Riseborough's way of working.

"There was this one moment where I was listening to some music to get myself ready for quite an emotional scene," he explains. "I was opposite all these actors that I thought were amazing - Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield and Andrea. Myself and Andrea were boyfriend and girlfriend and it was our big scene.

"I was listening to music just trying to get myself in the place where I could go in and be really emotionally vulnerable, and Andrea came over and asked me what I was listening to. I told her, and she said, 'Oh, do you mind if I listen too?' I said, 'Of course,' and she took one of my earpods and we just sat together, sat next to each other and didn't talk, and just listened to the same seven-minute song before we went to set.

"There's no reason that works or doesn't work, it just really worked. And I just felt on the same wavelength, I felt in the same emotional place. I felt very connected."

Next, the duo went on to collaborate in Shadow Dancer, a 2012 political thriller from director James Marsh, in which they played brother and sister.

Now, here they are, collaborating in a series for the first time, and as co-leads for the first time. The project to bring them together is Alice & Jack, a six-part show which charts a 15-year relationship between two people who seemingly can't be together, but can't be apart either.

It's an epic love story, and one which Riseborough notes has a deeply personal origin.

"Vic Levin, our creator and writer, this is based on something very close to him, to an experience that he had," she explains. "It's a celebration of a love that he experienced in his life. He's lived with this story for a very long time."

The project went through multiple iterations over the years, with the first and last scripts first being sent to Gleeson some time ago, but it came and went. It then came to Riseborough in 2019, and she came on board, after which Gleeson re-entered the project.

Unusually for TV, it was produced and shot by production companies Fremantle, Me + You Productions, Groundswell Productions and De Maio Entertainment before a distributor had been confirmed.

According to Gleeson, this meant that there were "no notes from whoever, it was just allowed to be", and that the team could try "to make the best version of what we could, and then sell it afterwards".

This model of production is more in line with the independent film world with which Riseborough is better acquainted, noting that she and Gleeson "know cinema a lot better than we know television".

Both have, of course, got experience with both: Riseborough has appeared in the likes of National Treasure and Black Mirror on TV, while her film roles have included The Death of Stalin, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and To Leslie, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.

Meanwhile, Gleeson, son of Brendan, has also appeared in Black Mirror and recently starred in The Patient, while his film roles have included parts in the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, as well as one-off productions such as Ex Machina and Calvary.

However, Riseborough says that this production model meant that they could keep the project "as true to Vic's original vision as possible", while it also meshed well with the directors they brought on board, Juho Kuosmanen and Hong Khaou, both of whom are known for their indie films.

"When I first read the script, and loved its rhythm and its wit, and really how heartbreaking it was as much as hysterically funny, I imagined what it would be like to see it through a more cinematic lens," Riseborough says.

"The pairing of Vic and Juho and Hong, it gave us this really interesting combination of mainstream television and independent cinema. And I think the thing that was then created, and the feeling as we were making, was very unique."

When we first meet Alice and Jack, they are on a date, which seems not to be going well, but which still leads into a one-night stand.

Alice is clear that she doesn't want the relationship to go any further and the two part ways. However, despite being two very different people (he's an optimistic, hopeless romantic working in biomedical research, while she's guarded, pragmatic and working in finance) they find themselves drawn together time and again, unable to ignore the love that is burgeoning between them.

Gleeson sees this as being something "inexplicable", a realisation for Jack, in the moment where they first kiss, that Alice is now his "home".

"He doesn't have parents," he explains. "From what I understand, orphans a lot of the time, or if you lose even just one parent, there’s a loss of feeling home, the feeling of having a home can go. He kisses this person and he goes, 'No, this is my home.' That's a connection that goes deeper than anything else."

Meanwhile, for Alice, Gleeson thinks she is similarly "blindsided", while Riseborough says it's "inevitable".

"I think their inevitable collision is the world being put to rights," she says. "I think with any great love, that is how you feel inside of it. There's a rightness about it - even if it's painful, and it's confusing, and it's tragic, and it's unpredictable, and it's elating, there's still a sense of rightness that comes with being in love or finding a mate. They are two halves of a whole."

Following their initial meeting, the episodes then chart their stories over the following 15 years, as they move in and out of each other's lives. Early on, he meets someone new (Lynn, played by Aisling Bea) and moves on with his life. But still, that pull towards Alice remains, with Gleeson calling her Jack's "soulmate".

Both Riseborough and Gleeson note how crucial their own working relationship was in helping to craft their on-screen romance.

"Basically, as long ago as the relationship between Alice and Jack spans in the series, I've known and worked with Andrea that long," Gleeson explains. "We've washed in and out of each other’s lives in much the same way as Alice and Jack have, in a funny sort of way. It’s work as opposed to romance, but it's mattered to me a lot."

Riseborough adds: "Those first two experiences were film, so really, in many ways, a different world. But to have a history with someone and a trust and a mutual respect creates an environment where you feel that bit more bolstered to be really vulnerable when telling a story like this.

"This is a very, very vulnerable story for both of the characters. It's as raw as it is funny. So it was wonderful to have that history with Domhnall."

Throughout our discussions, there are a couple of words which keep recurring when it comes to these two characters - "flawed" and "messy".

Riseborough says: "Both Alice and Jack are quite extraordinary characters and very human. Flawed, well-meaning, but their relationship is catastrophic in so many ways, and hopeful and full of joy in so many others."

Gleeson adds: "I really loved it, seeing where it began and how messy they could be, and how they could both mess each other up, and then seeing how it ended, which obviously I don’t want to spoil, but it was just one of the most beautiful, profound things I've read.

"And knowing that we were going to get there with a lot of f**k-ups in the middle… I was like, 'This is incredible.'

"They really hurt each other over the course of this series, and really hurt other people as they try to figure out whether they can be happy together, whether they should be happy together, whether they should just be apart, whether they should live in silence, whether their lives are better without each other, or whether they can only live together. I just think that's amazingly fertile ground.

"I also think that, normally, romance is presented in quite an idealistic, naive way. The notion of a romantic story, it normally means a few laughs and loads of love, and a wedding, and then that's it. I feel like romance is a real thing in life but grown-up romance, real romance, is messy, and people get hurt, and it can take a long time. And I think that's what this is. That's what makes me love it."

Riseborough concurs. She sees the moment that they come into one another's orbit as "a moment of a circle being closed in the most inevitable way", but notes that this type of story has often been told on-screen in a conventional manner, one which she doesn't see as truthful.

"I crave seeing real human behaviour reflected on screen," she explains. "And I think I'm drawn to projects that do that. We are, I think, often misrepresenting the human experience for the sake of what has become quite conventional storytelling. And that's its own language, but it's not necessarily reflective of life.

"I think it's very refreshing to see human behaviour on screen. And it's strange, we're strange creatures. And I don't know if there's been a preconceived notion of us as audience members having an aversion to seeing that, but I know, as an industry, we've certainly perpetuated telling the same sort of story.

"And so I'm always interested in being part of telling a story that deeply resonates with the disappointment and hysteria of life, rather than one focused on a protagonist who may have an impossible set of moral standards that we none of us can attain."

This 'messiness' didn't always make for the easiest or lightest of shoots. The characters frequently hurt one another, something Gleeson found "really difficult".

"I kind of struggled with all that sort of stuff," he says. "I wanted to live in the love zone because it's a nice place to be, it’s a nice thing to be creating love on set, it’s a nice thing to be finding pure moments of happiness and contentment.

"It does affect the way that you feel, in the same way as if you read a novel that's romantic or watch a film that truly has love in it and makes you feel it, at the end of it you feel differently than if you've watched a horror movie. Your body feels different. So if you're acting that stuff all day, it makes you feel different too.

"So yeah, it got on top of me. I didn't like it when Jack is being cut loose or feels useless or feels like he's hurting people. It's not nice, but that's the job."

However, this, to Gleeson's mind, all plays in to the 15-year time frame, as he notes that: "The more you learn, the more you hurt people, the more you become hurt, it ages you. That's part of getting older, is experience chipping away some of that puppy dog enthusiasm. And yet at the same time, Jack's life becomes way richer."

He continues: "There's enough time in 15 years for your life to change not just in a situational way, but for multiple aspects of everyone's life to change. In 15 years, I don’t think anybody looks back and says, 'Right, nothing's happened in 15 years.' There's enough time there for you to change multiple times, for people to change.

"And that's what happens in a long term relationship… by the end of that long term relationship, those two people are not the same. You've changed multiple times. And what's interesting is to find out whether you still love each other over that amount of time, like, whether you love this new person."

Riseborough agrees, saying: "With any love great love story, you think back to the beginning of that relationship, and even if it wasn't so long ago, you feel like a completely different person. You feel like a child looking back. And that's how it feels for Alice and Jack.

"In the course of so many years in anyone's life, for all of us, so many things happen, to the point where, some of them, you blank out, some of them you skip over. You can't even retain the vastness of what you've lived through. And the series takes you through very familiar transitions that we all of us experience throughout a long, intimate relationship with somebody.

"They never look ideal, those transitions or those experiences. But I think that's where the audience will deeply identify with the imperfection of this love story.

"So many of us have the great fortune to have a great love story, to be part of a great love story. And so few of us have the fortune to be able to actually live that out in a way that looks conventional, or in a way that looks like the way my industry has been responsible for misrepresenting it, which is this perfection.

"Relationships are incredibly hard, and putting yourself aside to truly, truly love somebody and deeply care for their interests is a courageous act."

Next up, Gleeson will be seen starring in Echo Valley alongside Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. He's playing a "really, really nasty, half-psychopathic drug dealer", a far cry from sweet, suburban Jack, and calls the opportunity to work alongside Moore and Sweeney "f**king brilliant".

He will also soon be heading off to shoot a new Guy Ritchie film, Fountain of Youth, which will also be starring John Krasinski and Natalie Portman.

Meanwhile, Riseborough will be seen in HBO's The Regime later this year, which stars Kate Winslet as an autocratic chancellor who finds her rule starting to crumble. It was a "joyful, valuable, full experience" for Riseborough, while she notes that working with director Stephen Frears was a "great honour of my life."

But before all that, viewers will get to experience Alice & Jack, and Riseborough hopes that everyone who gets a chance to enjoy the series is "captivated by it in some way".

"Perhaps the most important thing about it for me," she adds, "is that we all of us have the right to love, no matter what our circumstances were growing up, no matter who we are in the world, and that love can look like many different things. And more often than not, it looks quite extraordinary."

Meanwhile, Gleeson notes that the series was originally made up of eight 30-minute episodes, which have since been edited into six 45-minute parts. It's a decision he doesn't understand, and says he wishes viewers had been able to see the half-hour episodes.

However, he's still evidently deeply proud the project, the ending of which he calls "really profound". He also says that he hopes viewers "enjoy the journey".

"I hope they find it infuriating, and enlivening, and funny, and moving, in the same way that life is," he adds. "I hope it's a condensed version of what real life is like, when it comes to those things. I hope the ups and downs are big ups and downs, I hope they're angry with us and delighted for us at every different stage.

"And I hope that by the end, they feel like they’ve found out something beautiful."

Alice & Jack will start airing on Channel 4 from Wednesday 14th February at 9pm. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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