Interview: Jason Isaacs, actor

Published on Sunday 5 June 2011 21:12

NO, LILY Rose Allen's mum is saying, the screenwriter of new Edinburgh-set detective drama Case Histories wasn't doing her a favour – or currying favour – by naming a character in honour of her pop star daughter. Alison Owen is the producer of the BBC series, and says one of the characters in the first episode was originally called Lily Rose in the Kate Atkinson novels upon which the show is based.

"I loved that about it when I read Kate's book," laughs Owen, co-founder of Ruby Films, mother of Lily and former partner of actor/comedian Keith Allen. "Kate and I just liked the same girl's name, I guess!"

Another thing of which Owen is certain: Case Histories, adapted from three of Yorkshire-born, Edinburgh-based Atkinson's novels, has "absolutely" benefited from being entirely based in the capital.

"All the books have different settings, and we wanted to bring them all to one place. Edinburgh – where the second book is set – is so fantastically cinematic. It's very fresh, it hasn't been used an awful lot in terms of a television landscape, and when it has been used it's been in a very dark, forbidding way. Whereas we felt Edinburgh had more to offer in terms of being beautiful and bright and fun."

Owen is also unshakeable in her conviction that Jason Isaacs was the right man to play Jackson Brodie, the soldier and copper turned private eye about whom Atkinson's legions of (largely female) fans are swooningly protective. Divorcee Brodie is "of a certain age"; he's smart enough to (mostly) always get his man; he's tough but emotional; and he's buff. What's not to like?

Isaacs – known the world over as nasty Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films – was also sure he was the man for the job. "It was one of those strange, slightly mystical Harry Potter moments where the harp goes off in your head," says the 47-year-old Liverpudlian, "because I read all the audio books for Kate Atkinson so I've played all the parts!"

Playing Brodie is a plum job for London-based Isaacs, and not just because – after a couple of years in the US – he was closer to his young family during the five-month shoot. He's no fan of "police procedurals" per se. That kind of role "feels like a pension," he admits. But he appreciated that Atkinson's books weren't your run-of-the-bullet-ridden-mill crime fiction.

"They sell to tens of millions of people around the world who would never dream of reading crime books. She's interested in the strange quirks of human beings. In this mixture of the strange, the surreal, the comically absurd and the tragic. In survivors and loss and sex and love."

Brodie may be a Yorkshireman living in Edinburgh, but the actor considers himself an "honorary Scot", courtesy of his early years at the Fringe, later visits to the Film Festival, and "a bunch of Taggarts plus (1989 drama] Capital City and I was Scottish in many American things…" He's so used to affecting a Scottish accent that, on set, they would often have to redo takes because he was unthinkingly talking in a brogue.

All of which takes Isaacs back to the good old days, fresh out of drama school and trying to use accents to get ahead in acting. While studying at London's Central School of Speech and Drama he had met the woman who would go on to be his wife and the mother of his two daughters (now aged nine and five). But the future dark wizard had also met his own Lord Voldemort – the young, Irish and fiercely competitive Jimmy Nesbitt.

"Jimmy and I would go and play snooker, and neither of us had any money," recalls Isaacs. "But the loser had to pay for the table. And we were broke! You had to win because if you lost you'd be f***ed."

The former flatmates are, of course, top-of-their-game actors now, as busy on the small screen as they are on the big one. Nesbitt, last seen on TV playing surgeon Monroe, is currently on the other side of the world, playing a dwarf in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Isaacs, meanwhile, will next play the lead in a new American TV series, Awake – another detective, albeit one living in a weird dream world where his deceased wife isn't dead. Maybe.

And then there's the small matter of a well-known project by another Edinburgh-based author. The final Potter film, The Deathly Hallows Part 2, comes out next month. Will Isaacs be relieved that it's finally over?

"Not at all. It was a fantastic thing to know that every year or two you're going to back to a holiday resort with all your favourite friends, knowing there's great things to do there. That's what filming Potter was like. I wish it went on forever."

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on June 5th 2011