Bloodlands star says character is "lying to everyone" in season 2
The latest addition to the Bloodlands cast, Victoria Smurfit, has spoken about her character Olivia and how she beats Brannick at his own game.
BBC One drama Bloodlands returns tonight, with James Nesbitt reprising his role of Tom Brannick – the Northern Irish detective who didn't turn out to be as innocent as originally thought.
However, in season 2, it seems as though Brannick may have met his match with Olivia Foyle (Victoria Smurfit) – the widow of an account whose murder threatens to expose his identity as assassin Goliath.
Teasing her upcoming role, Smurfit said during a Q&A for Bloodlands series two that she found the new character "really exciting".
"At all times, whoever she’s in the room with, she’s lying to at least all of them," she said. "And that was really fun. So in order to try and do that, I thought if my mouth says one thing and my eyes say something else and then my body says something else.
"What I was trying to do was to play the three levels differently, because you have to switch, because I’m having one conversation with Jimmy, with Brannick, and then another conversation with Charlene’s character (Niamh McGovern) and then my lawyer or whoever else is in the scene."
She continued: "And they’re completely different stories that I’m telling them in the same line, the same paragraph. So it was really, really exciting. There was no room for dialling it in on this show."
Creator and writer Chris Brandon added that he wanted Brannick to go up against someone who "loves the game as much as he does and all the baggage that that game comes with".
"These two are an equal match for each other, and it’s this great dual, these two people antagonising each other and trying to charm each other but also trying to rip each other off and trying to navigate around each other," he said. "It was important that he met his match and we get to really enjoy that."
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Meanwhile, Nesbitt teased that there are times in the series where Olivia bests Tom. "I think Chris and [producer Jed Mercurio] had had a chat about something, that it might be important to see that actually she was king of creating little chinks in his armour."
"In the way that there may have even been the notion of him kind of falling for her, and that weakening him in the sense. And Victoria was very good at that.
"I think she was incredibly disarming, sexy, intelligent, frightening, cold. I think she demonstrated all the things in him that he didn’t want to admit," he added.
"And I also think she got at vulnerability at times and actually that really weakens you. Particularly if you’re an ex-sportsman and someone knows your weak spot, that really weakens you."
Bloodlands season 2 starts tonight at 9pm on BBC One. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
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