Broadchurch star breaks down process behind creating Black Doves politician
Andrew Buchan pulls back the curtain on the new Netflix thriller.
Andrew Buchan has opened up about avoiding playing a "caricature" of a politician in Netflix’s new spy thriller, Black Doves.
The Broadchurch actor plays Wallace Webb, a member of parliament with ambitious aspirations to be a "force of change for good" within the government and assume the main seat in number 10.
Though he doesn’t know it, Wallace sits in the middle of something much bigger at play: the Black Doves on-going spy operation, as he is Helen’s (Kiera Knightley) cover, her husband.
Wallace is blissfully unaware of his wife’s double life as a well-versed spy and one of the few "idealistic" characters in the show.
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Buchan admits that politicians can be tricky characters to play, but he was conscious of humanising Wallace so he didn’t feel like a replica or "caricature".
"Somebody asked me, ‘How did you relate to the character?’ But I just wanted to play him as a 3D human person. I think the most important thing to me was to not play him as a 2D caricature," he responded when asked about his experience being one of the only ignorant parties left out of his wife’s double life.
Speaking to the wider political landscape, Buchan wanted to offer something different to what viewers would hear or see on TV from real politicians.
"There's a lot going on at the moment – politically in the world – and sometimes when you listen to them on radio or wherever, there's a rhythm to the way certain politicians speak," he continued.
"They all leave pauses in what feels like the same places. They all use the same hand gestures. So I definitely wanted to pull back from all that and just make him, hopefully, a bit more real. Flawed, but real."
With so many twists and turns in the series, Buchan admits that even hopeful and principled Wallace might not leave the series unscathed.
"Some of his principles may have to suffer maybe along the way," Buchan adds. "Wallace seems to be semi stable or constant, maybe in amongst [the chaos]."
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Black Doves is available to stream on Netflix now.
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