Blindspot's Ross Kemp on why he was "worried" about returning to acting
"I was genuinely nervous."
After swapping acting for the drama of high-stakes documentaries, Ross Kemp has returned to his roots for Channel 5 thriller Blindspot, in which he plays an "apathetic and possibly corrupt" police detective who is responsible for uncovering what happened to a missing woman.
"The reason I probably haven't acted is because people just think, 'He's a documentarian, that's what he wants to do,'" the former EastEnders star told RadioTimes.com. "But if I think I can do it, like I did with the game show [Bridge of Lies] – when I picked up the script I could visualise it quite quickly, I thought the format worked – I'll do it."
Kemp admitted that he was "nervous going on set" after such a lengthy stint away from fictional storytelling.
Read more:
- All Creatures Great and Small casts Shetland and Doctor Who star for season 4
- First look at Heartstopper and Bridgerton stars in new teen romcom
"You don't know whether you can still do it," he said, adding: "I was genuinely nervous and worried about it. But I also hope that, having not touched anything in nearly 20 years as an actor, and that's ultimately what I trained to do, hopefully I haven't gotten any worse, and maybe I've improved slightly with age.
"I was overly confident [when I was in EastEnders] and a bit of a twit at the time, and I would suggest making 130 documentaries around the world has changed me."
Kemp went on to say that he "enjoyed the process" of making the series, adding: "I'm normally in a car with the cameraman, the sound man, a local fixer and someone who's allegedly not very nice, or is the victim. This is very different. I had to sit in the back of the car and get driven to work by a man that also had a hot coffee waiting for me.
"And I’m also just not used to how slow filming can be. I had to readjust in terms of the pace."
Newcomer Beth Alsbury stars alongside Kemp as Hannah Quinn, a disabled woman with "a wry sense of humour", who alerts the authorities to the victim's disappearance.
The official synopsis reads: "One day she sees a man she knows is a violent criminal lead a young woman into a blind spot in the camera coverage. He emerges alone but when the police arrive there is no sign of the woman, who appears to have vanished into thin air.
"Hannah is convinced that she has been murdered, but her fears are dismissed by the apathetic and possibly corrupt policeman Tony Warden, who is in charge of the case. Hannah remains undeterred and will soon find her own life in danger as she fights to discover what really happened in the blind spot."
Watch Blindspot on Tuesday 4th July at 9pm on Channel 5. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight.
Take part in the Screen Test, a project from Radio Times and the Universities of Sussex and Brighton, to explore the role of television and audio in our lives.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 12 issues for only £1 with delivery to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Authors
Abby Robinson is the Drama Editor for Radio Times, covering TV drama and comedy titles. She previously worked at Digital Spy as a TV writer, and as a content writer at Mumsnet. She possesses a postgraduate diploma and a degree in English Studies.
