Crossing the line
Channel 4 drama Trespasses tells a forbidden love story set against the backdrop of the Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland. Star Tom Cullen and producer Amanda Posey discuss making the series, why Cullen was the perfect casting choice and how the actor perfected his Belfast accent.
Tom Cullen has never met fellow actor Jamie Dornan. Yet Dornan proved to be a huge inspiration for Cullen in preparation for his latest role, starring in Channel 4 drama Trespasses.
The four-part series, based on Louise Kennedy’s novel of the same name, is a tale of forbidden romance, set against the backdrop of the Troubles in 1975 Northern Ireland. Lola Petticrew plays Catholic schoolteacher Cushla, who one night while working behind the bar in her brother’s pub meets Michael (Cullen), an older married man – and a Protestant. He is also a barrister, known for defending IRA suspects, and is friends with cultured Bohemians who both enrage and intrigue Cushla.
Cushla knows a relationship would spell disaster, yet when their worlds collide, they are irresistibly drawn to each other.
Cullen and Petticrew light up the screen with their undeniable chemistry as the leading pair of star-crossed lovers. Yet Welsh actor Cullen is still perplexed he even landed the part of Michael, owing to the need to perfect a Northern Irish accent to play the role.
“I watched my first audition back and I have no idea how I got it. They must have had faith that I would work hard enough, because my accent was diabolical,” he tells DQ. “It was occasionally slightly Belfast, sometimes a little bit Scottish. Then a lot somewhere else – unspecific foreign lands.”
But aided by the “patience” of dialect coach Jude McSpadden, he worked tirelessly to perfect his accent, even taking time out from weddings he attended in France to practice his accent.
And as for the part Dornan (The Fall, The Tourist) played in the process, Cullen reveals he listened endlessly to the Northern Irish actor’s episode of long-running BBC radio series Desert Island Discs.
“I must have listened to it hundreds of times – on every school run, every jog, every coffee run, every waking moment I had. I’d lie in bed listening to it just to get the sounds into my head,” he says. “I joke, because poor Jamie Dornan probably has no idea who I am, but he’s like my best friend.”
Cullen wasn’t familiar with Kennedy’s novel before landing the part, but his mother and stepfather, both “voracious” readers, were really excited about him appearing in a screen adaptation of the novel. Then after reading writer Ailbhe Keogan (Bad Sisters)’s scripts, he did pick up the book and was thrilled by how faithful the adaptation was.
“Louise’s writing is so textural. Her words are just so gorgeous and so vivid in their simplicity,” he says. “Dawn [Shadforth, director], Ailbhe and the producers have done a phenomenal job in finding those textures that feel really faithful to Louise’s prose.
“Honestly, when I first read the script, I was just like, ‘This is way beyond me. Why am I auditioning for this? They’ll just cast the really famous movie star.’ As the process went on, the more and more confused I got to the point where I was in this screen-test scenario and Dawn just pushed me. I just remember my head spinning and desperately trying to be a normal person, but just panicking inside. Then I got the call to say that I got it, and it still dumbfounds me to be honest.”
Producer Amanda Posey (Brooklyn, An Education) from Wildgaze Films had read an early copy of Kennedy’s novel when it was still at the manuscript stage and snapped up the rights to adapt it.
“I was very lucky,” she says. “There was no doubt it was a wonderful book and a wonderful classic story of forbidden love.” There was also no doubt in her mind that the book merited adaptation as a TV series rather than a film, with Trespasses becoming her first TV project. All3Media came on board as the international distributor.
“I could feel the way a film might constrain it, that it would just be about the love story. You wouldn’t be able to explore the settings so well,” she says, noting how a series format also allowed her to explore Cushla’s relationship with her alcoholic mother Gina (Gillian Anderson), her friendship with fellow teacher Gerry and the ramifications of the kindness she shows to pupil Davy McGeown. “It also felt like you could do something quite interesting with the climax coming at the end of episode three. You know something bad’s going to happen. You don’t know what it is or who it will be to, and then having episode four to really deal with the fallout of that felt like a good structure in a four-parter.”
The central relationship between Cushla and Michael dominates the series, with the scenes that explore the physical side of their relationship being just as emotionally charged as the quieter moments where they are unable to acknowledge the affection they share for each other.
Shadforth carved out a couple of days in the production schedule for rehearsals, though the first time Petticrew and Cullen met was at the script readthrough. “I was just so nervous, because I was in a room full of Irish people, and there I was trying to do my best Belfast accent,” Cullen remembers. “So the first time Lola and I really talked to each other was during the readthrough, and there was just this instant, palpable chemistry. I remember thinking, ‘Oh wow, this is good.’ Then we rehearsed together and we just connected as people, as humans, as friends.”
The pair also rehearsed their intimate scenes with an intimacy coordinator. “We started with the more intense sex scenes, their physical connection. And then we worked backwards, so when there’s those charged, quiet moments in the pub, or a look and a stare, all of that was just right there,” Cullen says. “But let me tell you, working with Lola Petticrew is the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”
Conversely, Michael “is the hardest part I’ve ever had to play, because in every scene I had to tread this very thin line because there’s so much stacked up against him,” the actor continues. “Just the fact that he is married, but also some of the things he does and he says, there’s a murkiness and an unreachable slipperiness to him.”
That the story is told through Cushla’s POV meant viewers need to feel that slipperiness to Michael, but they also have to love him. “Otherwise it doesn’t work. You have to understand why Cushla is in love with this guy,” Cullen says. “And it was really hard for that reason. I was constantly having to work on how to make it both things. My partner, Alison Sudol, who reads everything I do and is like this wise sage, said they’re like two dandelions growing out of this thin, tiny crack in a slab of concrete. I really attached myself to that image, that these are two people who are desperately trying to rise above the narratives that are forced upon them.”
“We cast Lola first. We had actually approached a number of different Michaels,” reveals Posey. “It was very hard to cast Michael because some of the guys who felt appropriate, you just didn’t feel would have the sensitivity or vulnerability that was needed for Michael. We were really lucky with Tom. A lot of it relied on Tom’s incredible sensitivity as an actor, and the way he made Lola feel completely comfortable and completely respected. Then the triumvirate of those two with Dawn meant they really trusted each other.”
The entire series was filmed in Belfast, with some locations used as “semi-studios.” A police interrogation room was built in the basement of a warehouse, while a room was also constructed for the interior of Maze Prison. Everywhere else was shot on location, with the production team identifying the perfect settings for the 1970s-era story. The interior of the pub was recreated from an actual derelict pub, where a hole was cut into the ceiling to allow for extra lighting.
Then when it came to the explosion inside the pub that bookends the series, “we shot in a place called Portaferry. It had this corner building that was derelict and empty and inside was just plants and overgrown,” Posey says. “Our production designer completely re-clad and built that exterior of the downstairs, but what it meant was that actually, most of that explosion is actually in camera. It’s SFX. We had one chance to do it.
“It was scary. Our SFX people were brilliant in Belfast, so it’s a really effective explosion, even as it is in camera. Then our VFX added rubble falling out, dust and smoke flying and just finessed it, really. But we were very lucky that we could do that.”
The weather also contributed to the challenges of filming, with Posey recalling meeting all four seasons in one day in Belfast. “We’d have this glorious sunshine. Two hours later, hail; two hours later, dark, black clouds; two hours later, wind blowing. You couldn’t predict what you were going to have, and this story takes place between spring and autumn.”
The solution was to film the exteriors in the earlier part of the shoot during late summer last year. Then when filming took place in the Lavery house during the last two weeks of the schedule, “it was absolutely bitter. It was snowing,” she adds. “Luckily, we were able to be inside in that house.”
For Cullen, Trespasses stands up as “a story of hope.” “It’s really easy to forget how similar we all are, and we must be careful of the narratives that are pushed on us by people in power that might not be true and might not be ours,” he says. “We must try to stay true to ourselves, because if we do, there is always hope. That’s what I really got again from reading the book and watching this show, that there’s power in community and there’s power in bridging lines and divides, and there’s strength in staying true to one’s moral compass.”
Posey adds: “What I love about what the series can do is that it can completely immerse you in those few months, in that short story of their love story, in a genuine and visceral and moving way. But you actually come away thinking about the world they’re set in, in a different way. It just turns the light on to that world, but without it being about it.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Say Nothing: In 1970s Belfast, an idealistic young mother is drawn into the IRA’s clandestine operations, only to discover that the lies she tells for the cause slowly destroy the family she is fighting to protect.
Bloodlands: A Northern Irish detective with a buried past reopens a politically explosive cold case, forcing him to choose between protecting his family and exposing secrets that could reopen old sectarian wounds.
Derry Girls: In 1990s Derry at the tail-end of the Troubles, a group of teenage girls (and one bewildered English boy) chase school crushes and bad decisions while armoured cars and bomb scares rumble in the background.
RELATED CONTENT
Under the Lights
DQ heads to Belfast to see filming for Blue Lights season three as the BAFTA-winning BBC police drama delves into the hidden world of white-collar crime while members of the PSNI force tackle issues relating to mental health, grief and trauma.
Doing the dirty work
Mudtown series producer Hannah Thomas outlines how a key scene in the opening episode sets up the show’s central clash between a magistrate and a local crime boss, and reveals how its impactful courthouse bathroom setting was recreated in an old Newport factory.
Code of silence
Say Nothing writer and executive producer Patrick Radden Keefe discusses the dramatisation of his own book about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and explains why the Disney+ series serves as a cautionary tale for divided societies threatening to tip into violence.
tagged in: All3Media, Amanda Posey, Channel 4, Tom Cullen, Trespasses, Wildgaze Films