Why being back on The Rig is a coming home for Emily Hampshire

Emily Hampshire at the premiere of The Rig, Season Two, Edinburgh. | Lisa Ferguson

Emily Hampshire is back in Scotland, back on The Rig as Rose Mason, in season two of the Amazon Original thriller filmed in Edinburgh, following the crew of the Kinloch Bravo oil rig as the planet continues to bite back.

The Canadian/American actor, who before the first season of the hit international series was best known for Schitt’s Creek and Twelve Monkeys, is fresh off the plane following a transatlantic flight, and happy to be in what has become a second home. She’s even slipped into a chic black kilt for the premiere, although her crash course in accent and tradition was so effective she hasn’t realised until now.

“Oh yeah, I do,” she says, looking down at her kilt. “I didn’t even think of that. It’s just natural to me now,” she says.

The Rig takes up from the cliffhanger it left us on, with a tsunami that has hit the east coast of Scotland and much of Scandinavia and we’re on the verge of a major extinction event.

The six part series from Wild Mercury Productions, written by David Macpherson, directed by John Strickland (Line of Duty, Bodyguard) and Alex Holmes, sees time running out for the planet. With the surviving crew moved to a hidden offshore facility, the Stac, located deep in the Arctic Circle, this time round it’s deep sea mining that’s bringing the force known as The Ancestor out of the unknown depths of the ocean.

Emily Hampshire with Martin Compston and Iain Glen at the premiere of Season Two of The Rig in Edinburgh, where it was filmed. | Lisa Ferguson

Along with cast returnees including Iain Glen, Martin Compston, Rochenda Sandall and Mark Addy there are new faces such as Star Trek’s Alice Krige, Ross Anderson and Phil McKee.

If the kilt comes naturally, playing a scientist doesn’t and Hampshire admits “I wouldn’t say I’m the best at science. And you can’t improv science. I tried, and you can’t. I was trying to have a straight face with Martin [Compston] and I said ‘the world was created 400 years ago, so…”

But she has been doing her homework and half an hour later is talking quantum sensing - advanced sensor technology that detects changes in motion, and electric and magnetic fields, by collecting data at the atomic level. “It’s fascinating,” she says. “Usually I’m not like a sci-fi, fantasy person, but because this is rooted in real science, in the earth and all of that, I do believe this could happen. Maybe not as beautifully as The Ancestor is depicted, but yeah, because I don’t think it’s supernatural. To me it’s reacting. Plants exist, they are living beings, this is a living thing and it’s doing its thing.”

What can she tell us about season two of The Rig?

“Season one was all about the sins of the past and season two is all about the future, and I think Rose was right about The Ancestor so she has gotten the respect of the guys and Magnus. So she has all these people kind of backing her now, but in season two she meets an old mentor from the company and a lot of this season is Rose up against the company she used to work for.”

And it isn’t just being back on The Rig that is putting a smile on her face.

“I love Scotland, you have no idea how much. I get here and go out on the balcony and see the castle, and I love the people here, Martin and Iain and everyone. And our first season was in the height of Covid with people wearing masks and it was already difficult to understand Scottish, so this season I liked that I could understand everybody better.”

Hampshire is following in family footsteps by visiting Scotland.

Emily Hampshire as scientist Rose Mason | Prime Video

“What’s weird is my dad went to dentist school in Glasgow and lived in Scotland for years and loved it. I think he felt the way I feel about it, like it feels like home instantly, and a home that I am always excited to get back to.”

The Rig was the first Amazon Original series to be filmed entirely in Scotland with a three-story oil rig stage built at the FirstStage studios in Leith and footage shot on a North Sea rig. Having just watched episode one on a big cinema screen, Hampshire is delighted with the results.

“It looks amazing. Iain and Martin and I were like ‘oh my god’. We’d seen it on a laptop and to see it on the big screen - and we would be most critical because we know what wasn’t real in terms of visual effects - but it was so epic. It felt like a huge blockbuster movie in scope.”

“I hope other people see this and do things in Scotland. It’s the same in Canada, because you do a lot of local things when you start out and know everybody. You feel very proud and for Schitt’s Creek to have come out of Canada meant a lot.”

The cast of Schitt’s Creek the CBC show in which Emily Hampshire played Stevie Budd from 2015-20. | Getty Images for Vulture Festiva

Schitt’s Creek ended in 2020 after five years and as a slow burner, by the time it was winning awards, Hampshire says the cast were looking for work. Does she miss being Stevie Budd?

“Oh, definitely. I’m not as cool as Stevie. I remember the first time somebody recognised me they were like ‘ohhhh Stevie!’ and I got more excited than them. I was like ‘Yes!!!’ and they were ‘Oh. You're nothing like Stevie’. She laughs.

“Stevie’s somebody I can sit in and relax and be cool. Is she like me? The most she’s like me is that I would take off my Converse, baggy jeans, T-shirt and put on Stevei’s Converse, baggy jeans, T-shirt. We’re both people who are not going to be wearing heels.

“I do miss playing Stevie, and I love her journey. I feel like she was standing in for the audience because not everybody can relate to the Roses, and it’s so nice to be in a show where people felt connected to you in a way that made them feel better, like they too could be like Stevie. She learns that she doesn’t need to go to New York to do this motel thing, she just needed to know that she could. It’s like the Wizard of Oz - it was in you all along, you just had to learn that for yourself! And that shows up in my life. Yeah, I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Is that likely, what happened with talk of a Schitt’s Creek film?

“Yeah, we’ll never do the show, but a movie or something when the timing’s right.”

Back in the Arctic, in season two The Ancestor is back bigger and stronger, but so is Rose and the struggle continues.

Emily Hampshire comes face to face with The Ancestor | Prime Video

”Last season she was really part of the company, trying to climb the ladder and this season she’s really with the crew and learning to be a good leader. And I felt I was going through that in my life because I’m starting to write things myself where I’d be someone’s boss, which was difficult for me, so I really feel like Rose and I are on parallel journeys. In season one it was a lot of just being obsessed with her career and not wanting relationships, even though she had Fulmer but that was on her terms, and she’s all work and no play. I mean I’m still kind of like that, but not so much.”

“Rose also meets an old mentor of hers in Lennox, played by Alice Krige and they have history but Rose isn’t sure she can trust her. It’s really all about her becoming a leader. She fails a couple of times, but she’s earned the respect of Magnus. They were competitive and combative and now it’s more of a collaboration and she realises that she can’t do everything alone and needs other people, and that is something I feel too.

“I don’t like to ask people to do anything for me, so I end up doing everything myself, and you can’t do that. It’s never as good anyway. I always feel like I get a lot from anything I do, a lot from the character.”

Hampshire, 43, left her Montreal home at 16 for Toronto to pursue an acting career, after seeing Les Miserables at 11, and landed roles in TV and film soon after.

“I left home pretty early, so I’m used to being on my own,” she says. “I feel sometimes like you don’t want to depend on people and then it not happen or something.”

Rose, like Hampshire, is finding she’s more open to reaching out to others, faced with the force of The Ancestor who seems to be attempting to communicate, despite the climate emergency powers it unleashes.

“What I love about The Ancestor, kind of as a metaphor, is that it’s that Other. You can even go back to when people were first coming out as gay and people were afraid, when you don’t try to know someone and understand them and see them as human. The Ancestor is not human, but it’s like the effort to understand The Other is something that Rose is striving to do. Coke [played by Mark Addy] is the reverse, just having that instinct to kill it, get rid of it, and not seeing that maybe it’s not the enemy, maybe it’s helping us, trying to communicate something.

“I think opening herself up in that way to The Ancestor is helpful with letting herself be more open with Fulmer because the scariest thing for Rose was to let yourself go there and know you could be hurt.”

“Revisiting Rose and having her grow is really satisfying as an actor. I used to think when I was younger I only wanted to do movies because I wanted to do different stuff all the time but there’s something special about having a character learn life lessons and change over the course of seasons.

“You peel these layers back. Rose has a hard shell. She started trying to be impenetrable because in that world you need to be as a woman. Things have changed but when Rose started, women don’t get to her position. Season one I was looking for a woman to talk to who had the same position and there wasn’t one, so I spoke to a geologist. That job exists, but it was only men. To make her way up in that world, you’ve got to have a tough exterior. Now as she’s trying to connect with The Ancestor she’s also trying to connect with Fulmer, being intimate in a way that lets herself be vulnerable. That’s the hardest thing for Rose, and she goes there this season.”

The cast of The Rig at the Edinburgh premiere of season two of the Amazon Prime Video Series The Rig. | Picture: Jamie Simpson / Prime Video

Does Hampshire think she has anything in common with Rose?

“Yeah, her work ethic, her obsession to know something. When I get a project I go into a bubble and that’s all that I care about and I’m very tenacious.”

And differences?

“Definitely her science mind. The geology stuff. I don’t know that stuff so I need to take a crash course. I want to be as good as her and know I’m not. Also last season when everyone was leaving and she stayed, I think I might have left on the chopper.”

Would Hampshire say she’s good in a crisis, like Rose?

“Regular real life stuff I turn into a crisis. Leaving my house or going to a premiere or anything basically outside my house, that feels anxiety-producing, but a real crisis, say with a family member, I know what needs to be done.”

Like season one, season two of The Rig was a very physical shoot and sometimes Hampshire found it challenging.

“Rose wears a metal underwater suit, like a personal submarine, and it was the heaviest thing. I’m usually somebody who wants to be a trooper, doesn’t complain, gets frostbite and says ‘no, no, I’m great’, but I think I was crying by the end of that day. That was the hardest physical thing, just walking in it. But it looks cool.”

Away from The Rig, Hampshire has been working on her writing, and is working on a comedy with Canadian actor, producer and writer Elliot Page (Hard Candy, Juno).

“His company hired me to write this show and it’s been two years in the making so I’m very excited. It’s irreverent comedy, a bit like [TV series] Community. We’re doing it with Universal. I just love being on that side of things, writing for other actors is really fun.”

She’s also just wrapped two feature films, one being a buddy action comedy movie with Vince Vaughn and James Marsden (Jury Duty).

“It’s called Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice and was one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read. Then I did a movie called All Night Wrong, with Maria Bakalova who was in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. That was fun.” - that’s why I have these nails - she flourishes bright red talons - and I can’t do anything. I had to go on Reddit to find out how you take out contacts.

Having been an actor since she was 16, what would Hampshire be doing if she wasn’t?

“That might be why it’s so far worked out, because I have no other option. I did get two days cashier training on one movie, and I’ve learned how to ride a horse and how to do a magic trick.” She laughs.

“But actually I’d want to be a writer. I love acting, but writing to me is like acting without the anxiety of people around. You get to play the parts in your head, alone, and don’t need someone to hire you. If I could make a living I would do that.”

Emily Hampshire is back in Season Two of Amazon Prime's The Rig | Lisa Ferguson

Looking at Hampshire’s varied back catalogue - horror, the supernatural, comedy - is there anything she likes best?

“What I like doing most, because it’s fun, is comedy. In Twelve Monkeys, because the comedy came out of her having delusions of grandeur, I got to sing Pink’s U + Ur Hand to Hitler, who I killed, and sing 99 Luftballons in German, and it was the greatest job ever because when do you get to do all of that as an actor? Like never.”

“You know, The Rig was a project I was scared of doing. I didn’t feel I was good enough, especially because she’s a geologist and I haven’t graduated high school. I didn’t feel qualified. So doing this has been the greatest thing for being more confident. I remember telling John Strickland I don’t feel I can be the boss of all these guys… and he said Rose feels exactly like that but she’s trying to fake it till she makes it, and I realised she’s just like me.”

Series Two of the UK Original The Rig is on Prime Video worldwide now.