Interview: Richard Armitage talks Red Eye

Red Eye is ITV’s new six-part thriller set on the red eye flight from London to Beijing. Whilst escorting a doctor being renditioned, an incident on-board leads DC Hana Li to uncover a wider conspiracy.

Red Eye is the collision of three worlds – DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi), Journalist Jess Li (Jemma Moore) and MI5’s Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp). All three women are thrown into the same life threatening conspiracy when a British doctor (Richard Armitage) is arrested for murder upon flying home from Beijing.

What first excited you about Red Eye?
I got the script with [writer] Peter Dowling’s name on it and I remembered watching this brilliant film he made with Jodie Foster called Flightplan. I was slightly obsessed with it at the time, I just loved the scale of the aeroplane and the fact that the whole movie was set on this labyrinthine beast in the air. When I read the Red Eye synopsis, I realised that he was taking inspiration from that movie and expanding it into a six-part series, and I thought the idea of setting such a claustrophobic story on a night flight was just brilliant. I liked the challenge of playing somebody of Nolan’s status and intellect, being thrown into a prisoner situation where he has no authority.

In a way, the aeroplane is its own little democracy because he’s not on any country’s soil, so he’s thrown to the lions. I thought it would be really interesting to see somebody like him realising that he needs to fight for his freedom. After I read the first two episodes I just really hoped the show was going in the direction I thought, and actually it went much further, which was brilliant. I love the fact that the scale opens up and we find ourselves dealing with an international problem working up to a big finale. It’s always frustrating when dramas have a disappointing ending, but this is great. So much so that I want more, it was so delicious I’d love to see these characters thrown back into another political situation for a second season.

We’re never quite sure if we can trust Nolan, was it fun to play with that ambiguity?
Yes, because he’s a doctor, so on paper he should be extremely trustworthy. I trusted him at the beginning of the script, but then there were points in the story where I started doubting him – Is he a spy? Is he some sort of courier or mule? He had gained my trust but then I wondered if this man was
really everything, he was telling us. It flips between scenes, and you wonder what he’s up to, which is really interesting to play.

You were shooting in and around London – were you disappointed not to film in Beijing?
I’ve been to China before, so I could draw on my experience of it. It’s always nice to travel, but actually it wasn’t really necessary for this shoot. The world they created for Beijing was pretty amazing. I walked onto that set, and it was a wow moment, I really felt like I was down a back street in Wangfujing, it was fantastic. I was more disappointed we weren’t up in the air in the aeroplane, but that would have been a six-week flight. I still feel like we should have got some air miles from somewhere for the amount of time we spent in that’s business class cabin!

Did you enjoy filming on the aeroplane set?
I was braced for it to be hell, because it was a five-week shoot on the plane and we were in a hot spell, so I thought it would be claustrophobic and horrible. But by the second day, we’d made our home in the business class cabin and we just loved it, it was brilliant. Kieron [Hawkes], our director, and the crew developed a special camera rig so that they could create these seamless shots moving through the aeroplane, which was very much in the vein of Flightplan, so I think it looks really good. I love the lighting palette as well – the detail was amazing, so it looked like we were above the clouds. I believed everything I was looking at, and it was always a surprise to me after a take when they opened the doors and we walked down the steps into a black sound studio, it really felt like we were in the air. It was an amazing experience, and we missed the cabin after we left, especially Jing [Lusi]. Every time I’ve been on an aeroplane since then I’ve been sniffing around in the back looking for staircases and lifts, things you don’t always see as the public!

Jing described Red Eye as a ‘turning point for British Asian representation’ – is that something you felt aware of on set?
I certainly felt the celebration of a lead female protagonist of Chinese origin. I knew how special it was to cast Jing and I know that so much effort went into making that representation as authentic as possible. In fact, the team consulted every actor that came on set, there was a lot of cultural exchange and collaboration, whether it was about a line of dialogue or something bigger. I felt it and I really appreciated it – it was sensitive and respectful.

How do you hope viewers will react to this series?
I hope that they will buy into the concept and also be shocked and jaw dropped by the claustrophobia and the extraordinary events that unfold as things run completely out of control. I hope they will ask themselves how they would respond if they were thrown into this situation, I’d like them to put themselves in in Matthew Nolan’s shoes.

Red Eye starts Sunday 21 April at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.