Richard Armitage: 'Fans should be suspicious of my Missing You character'
Armitage plays his first ever police officer role in Netflix's Missing You.
Set to star in his fourth Harlan Coben adaptation, Richard Armitage has been in quite the range of roles in series like The Stranger, Stay Close or Fool Me Once.
Now set to return to our screens in Missing You, Armitage does admit that fans should be suspicious of his character this time around.
Playing the role of DCI Ellis Stagger, Armitage spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com about how fans should react to his character.
He said: "They should be [suspicious of Stagger]. The joy of working with this kind of material is that every single character has some kind of sub-plot that they have to hang onto, some kind of element of secrecy.
"I think with Stagger, he’s holding on to 11 years. He was a contemporary of Clint [Donovan, played by Lenny Henry], they came up through the force together.
"So, in that first episode, when you realise what’s happened to him and you’re seeing that effect in his daughter who is now working with Stagger, you just know there’s something going on.
"I can’t tell you what it is, but it is that classic thing of building up this sort of pressure cooker plot."
The main plot of the series centres on Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar), who finds her ex-fiancé on a dating app 11 years after he disappeared one day.
His reappearance leads to Kat uncovering more about her own father's murder, and in the process, she discovers some long-held secrets from the past as well.
As a former colleague of Kat's father Clint, it's safe to say that Ellis is intertwined with Kat's life, especially with the two working together and Ellis being a father figure type to her.
Read more:
- Richard Armitage says Missing You feels different to other Harlan Coben series
- Richard Armitage says Missing You character has 'devastating secret'
But what appealed to Armitage specifically about this new role?
He said: "Very hard to answer that question without spilling the beans. No, I’ve never played a police officer before, a cop. Taking on a role of authority was appealing to me. And also, knowing where the story went.
"The sort of secrets that this man has to keep buried, I just thought that little pressure cooker was going to be interesting and exciting."
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Armitage previously said that the format of Missing You is also something that sets it apart from the previous Harlan Coben series he's done in the past.
Speaking about the way the stories unfold, he told Netflix: "One of the reasons this feels different is there isn’t a dense sub-plot surrounding a second character.
"There are two story threads that converge at the end, but they are being handled by one character, Kat, and because there is only one person dealing with everything, the train moves at a faster pace."
Missing You will stream on Netflix on 1st January 2025. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Authors
Morgan Cormack is a Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering everything drama-related on TV and streaming. She previously worked at Stylist as an Entertainment Writer. Alongside her past work in content marketing and as a freelancer, she possesses a BA in English Literature.
