The Devil's Hour writer reveals why Peter Capaldi asked for rewrites

"When I was writing, we sort of knew for the most part that Peter was going to be playing Gideon, which was lovely, because I really had him in mind when I was writing those lines," Moran told RadioTimes.com.

"Gideon is scary, intimidating, he might be crazy, he might not be crazy, he probably is a little crazy... he's capable of very dark things but he has this real humanity to him."

Moran described how Capaldi asked for more of the character's humanity to be drawn out and explored across the series.

"One of the things Peter said when he first read the scripts was that he wanted to find even more of that, so I did a pass on all of [the episodes] based on his first read, just to really nail that more human, softer side which he really brings out. He plays a beautiful balance between the two sides of the character."

Capaldi himself explained that he wanted to ensure Gideon felt like "a human being" in order to ground the fantastical aspects of the series.

"The great trick with any supernatural or fantastical show is to make it believable, because it's really about suspension of disbelief," he said. "The more complex you can make the characters, the more you can play that trick.

"If characters are projected into a supernatural or fantastical environment, they have to respond as a human being might, even though the environment is very different, so I just wanted to reflect more of how a human being would respond."

The Devil's Hour explores the surprising link between the character of Gideon, a woman (Jessica Raine) suffering from waking nightmares, and a detective (Nikesh Patel) investigating a string of brutal murders.

Capaldi previously teased that viewers would need to watch all six episodes before discovering Gideon's true nature.

Read more:

• Peter Capaldi says The Devil's Hour character "isn't what he appears"
• Peter Capaldi won't return to Doctor Who: "I've done my time"
• Peter Capaldi teases mysterious Devil's Hour role: "He's not what we think"
• Peter Capaldi might be a time traveller in tense The Devil's Hour trailer

The Devil's Hour launches exclusively on Prime Video today – try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days.

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