How a chance encounter with his childhood bully inspired Spooks star Richard Armitage to write a bestseller about atonement

Actor turned author Richard Armitage has starred in enough thrillers to know what makes a good story so when he was approached by a stranger at his mother’s graveside, the star of Spooks, The Stranger, Obsession, Stay Close and Red Eyes was inspired to write The Cut, now a number one bestseller for Audible.

The follow up to his 2023 best-selling debut novel Geneva, which he voiced along with former Spooks co-star Nicola Walker, The Cut is as full of twists and turns as the plots of the shows that have made him a household name.

“It is based on a real conversation that happened to me,” the 53-year-old says at a bar in Edinburgh, where he has come for talks about turning Geneva into a TV series and to launch The Cut.

Spooks and Red Eye star Richard Armitage has written a bestselling psychothriller novel for Audible. Pic: Ray Burmiston.

“I was at the cemetery with my dad putting flowers on my mum’s grave and there was another man across the way doing the same for his mother. He came up to me and said ‘I’m really sorry for what we did to you as kids. I’ve followed your career and you’ve done really well for yourself’. I walked away with my dad and said I don’t remember who that was, and it made me think he’s carried around this memory but I haven’t. I thought what a good premise for a story about atonement.

“Initially it was a story of revenge but I thought no, it’s about atonement, about coming back to your past and righting the wrong.”

What was the man referring to, what did they do to Armitage at school?

“Bullying,” he says. “It wasn’t just me. I witnessed bullying and racism and toxic masculinity, where girls are treated in a certain way by boys, and so I’ve tried to write about all of that.”

Richard Armitage's TV career took off when he filmed North and South in Edinburgh in 2004. Pic: Ray Burmiston.

Things changed for Armitage when he left his school in hometown Leicester for a vocational college for the arts at the age of 14.

“I was around like-minded people and it definitely changed everything because I wasn’t ridiculed there. It’s what everybody else did, and I just came into my own and the things that I had been bullied for were celebrated. So in the end I took that history and turned it into a career which I don’t know I would have done otherwise. I guess I pushed back.”

Given that Armitage didn’t recognise his former classmate, he’s obviously dealt with his schooldays trauma. How did he do that?

“I think my mantra is ‘I’ll show you’, ‘I’ll prove to you’ and that becomes a bit of fuel in the fire. When somebody is going to belittle or diminish you, I think ‘I’ll prove to you’. Even as a 52-year-old, when somebody knocks you back, and as an actor you get it all the time.”

The Cut is available now, on Audible written and read by Richard Armitage. Pic: Audible

It’s surprising to hear that an actor with Armitage’s level of recognition and success has to deal with rejection.

“Yes, 99% of the time you get ‘it’s not for us,’” he says, “or ‘thank you for auditioning, it’s not for us today’, and there’s a part of me that says, ‘OK, I’ll show you in my next role. I’ll make you regret not hiring me’. I do it not in an egotistical or a smug way, but you think, I’m going to do better.”

From TV to film roles such as The Hobbit and numerous stage appearances, 53-year-old Armitage is a familiar face, but it’s not just the face he’s known for. He also has a voice that’s perfect for voicing audiobooks and narrating documentaries. It has been described as ‘smooth as silk’. How does he keep it that way? Honey and lemon or fags and Lagavulin?

He laughs and says: “No, I don’t drink.”

Richard Armitage's first novel for Audible, read by him and Spooks co-star Nicola Walker, was later released in print and is now in the process of being made into a TV series. {ic: Audible

Which is a surprise because his characters do and they’re always very specific, be it Hendricks and tonic or a large glass of Lagavulin.

“That’s a lot of observation of friends that have very specific drink tastes and I’m always fascinated with people that will only drink one type of whisky. Why is that? he says.

An observer, Armitage had been sitting in the furthest corner seat of the cafe where we arranged to meet and compliments me on the mac I’m wearing on one of Edinburgh’s more dreich days.

“Yeah, I pay attention,” he says, “and it’s not deliberate. I’m just curious about people. I think it comes from those early days at drama school where you’re collecting ideas from other people, subconsciously doing it.”

He’s pleased to be back on familiar ground because Edinburgh is the city where his TV career took off after he was cast as the lead in North and South in 2004.

“One of the most significant moments of my career was shooting North and South here and I remember sitting on the steps of the trailer, very nervous because I was terrified of shooting, and lighting a cigarette and looking out over Edinburgh, and smelling hops, and just pinching myself. Coming back now I thought ‘there’s that smell’, and walking up the stairs to the Old Town, I was thinking I shot a scene here. It carries so many strong memories for me. I’ve always been very grateful for that opportunity,” he says.

Richard Armitage as Dr Matthew Nolan in Red Eye, with Jing Lusi as DC Hana Li. Pic: ©ITV.

Twenty years on Armitage has an armful of acting credits to his name, but he now has a successful parallel career as a writer, with thriller writing royalty like Harlan Coben praising his work, saying of The Cut: “A chilling, atmospheric thriller with characters you'll never forget."

Armitage played the lead in Coben’s 2020 Netflix mystery thriller miniseries The Stranger, so did he give him any advice?

“Yeah, he said stick in your lane, Armitage,” he laughs. “No, he said ‘the worst kind of writing is no writing at all’ and if you think you’ve got writer’s block, just write anything, it doesn’t matter if it’s no good’. That was really good because sometimes you start writing and think this is rubbish, but you come back the next day and there are a couple of things in there that are good. Even if it’s just structure, you can go back in again and finesse it.”

So what can Armitage tell us about The Cut, a psychological thriller he wrote specifically as an audiobook for Audible Originals, without ruining the suspense?

“It’s the story of a group of teenagers in 1993 at their graduation. One of them is killed and one of them goes to prison. Then in the present day a film crew arrives in the village where the murder happened to make a ‘found footage’ horror film, but that horror film is not quite what it seems.”

When Audible invited Armitage to write for them he didn’t hesitate.

“I immediately said I’d love to write something. I think they approached me because they realised I had an audience and I’d read a wide range of different authors. I was asked to write something where I would be voicing a character appropriate for what the listeners know of me as a performer, so I’m not just carrying the author’s story, I’m developing a character for the listener to imagine me playing. So I came up with a story idea then we put together a structure and built it from there. This time round, with The Cut, it was a little quicker than Geneva.”

How does acting in thrillers help with writing them?

“I think it’s similar in a way,” says Armitage. “Coming from television you know you’ve got to grab the audience really quickly with something that thrusts them bang into the middle of the action.”

“I didn’t have any experience of writing long form but have always written about my characters. I start with a few pages and those became more expansive. Also from working in television I understand structuring and story arcs so I knew I had the tools to do it. But putting them together was something else,” he says.

“In my acting work I had trained a little in the Stanislavsky method which was all about filling in the history of a character so you are creating a bedrock to place the believability of a character onto. That definitely helped me with writing. It means you overwrite and just use the bits you need. And it means the characters, even when I’m not writing, are evolving in my head. You can go to sleep for a couple of nights and wake up and they’ve been busy. They have a life of their own.”

Returning to both a 1990s world of Sony Walkmans and school discos in a village in the Midlands, and a contemporary Hollywood film set in The Cut, wasn’t such a leap says Armitage who was raised in Leicester and now lives between New York and London. Are there any similarities between him and his characters, for example the one who plays the cello and went away to school at 14?

“There’s a little bit of me in all of the characters. The connection to music was something I wanted to weave into this story, but it also connects to my philosophy on audio books.

"Storytelling was my doorway into the arts because I wasn’t a literary-minded person. I’ve always had a bit of a hang up about not feeling intelligent enough because I come at storytelling from an emotional rather than a literary place. I don’t think I’m an intellectual. I was a musician that became a song and dance man then went to drama school, so it’s always emotional rather than cerebral, and I believe in the audio book experience.

“My goal is to connect with the listener on that same level, whereas I think the printed word can sometimes be an intellectual pursuit. And I really want the listener to feel something, not think something.

“As a kid I remember some of the stories I read myself with my eyes, but more vividly I remember my mum or teacher reading to me and that’s what I think about when I sit down to read an audiobook. It’s the most basic human way of conveying a story, to read it aloud.”

What was his favourite story to have read aloud to him as a child?

“I remember my English teacher Mrs O’Leary reading The Hobbit and particularly the cave scene with Gollum, when Bilbo Baggins first finds the ring, and she did the voice. I hate to say this, but she did it better than Andy Serkis in my memory, and I’ve never forgotten.”

Things came full circle when Armitage appeared in Peter Jackson’s film version of The Hobbit, as dwarf king and leader Thorin Oakenshield.

“Ha yes, I was in it, 40 years later.”

For Armitage, twists and turns in his plots are crucial and also result from his acting experience combined with his musical know-how.

“It’s like cadences at the end of a movement of music. In television before a commercial break you’ve got to have a little hook that brings you back into the story, or at the end of an episode that makes you want to watch the next one. But I don’t like cliffhangers that feel forced. It’s got to be valid.

“I am also a strong believer in not over-explaining, giving the listener or reader space to fill in the unsaid for themselves. Because we like to play detective and I assume the reader/listener is more intelligent than I am.”

Armitage is now writing his third audio book as well working on the TV adaptation of Geneva, and has a West End show on the horizon too.

How is the TV adaptation of Geneva, which is in the early stages of development with Sony, coming along?

“We’re starting to work with a screenwriter who will pull the book apart and then we’ll build up a pilot episode. It’s really exciting to collaborate on that,” he says.

Does he have any idea yet who will play Sarah, the female lead? Could Nicola Walker reprise her audiobook rendition on screen?

“She’s totally on my wish list,” says Armitage. “Whether she’ll do it or not I don’t know.”

You’d think Armitage would be a certainty for the leading male role, Daniel, but he laughs.

“If we get it made soon enough. Otherwise I’d have to have a facelift because I think Daniel has to be late forties.”

He’s also focused on his third novel, another thriller, again with the focus on making the audience sit up and listen.

“I want to make it even more connected to the listener, almost to the point of being interactive. I’d like them to feel like they’re a character in the story. I don’t know how to do it yet. I want the hairs on your arm to stand up. You know like when you’re watching TV and you shout out ‘don’t do that!’

"In a world where trigger warnings are given as something negative, I want to trigger my audience.”

The Cut by Richard Armitage is published by Audible www.audible.co.uk

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