Lady Luck
Thekla Reuten tells DQ about joining the cast of Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and ponders what she might do with a bit of good fortune.
Fortune didn’t always favour James Nesbitt during the first season of Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, in which he plays a detective given a magical bracelet that gives him unlimited good luck.
Circumstances have become trickier still for Nesbitt’s DI Harry Clayton in season two, with his world thrown further into chaos after his discovery of the existence of a second bracelet that belongs to a mysterious stranger called Isabella.
Enter Thekla Reuten, a Dutch actor whose big-screen credits include In Bruges and The American. She has also previously appeared in British TV dramas Restless and Hidden, and US series such as Showtime’s Sleeper Cell and long-running ABC series Lost.
“I’m always after the story,” she tells DQ about how she chooses her parts. “It can be theatre, which is how I started out, it can be film and it can be television. Who knows what medium will be invented in the near future? But for me it’s always about the story and the people involved. That’s what grabs me.”
The decision to play Isabella appealed to Reuten for several reasons, most notably her intrigue at a cop show tinged with comic-book sensibilities. As its full title suggests, the show, produced by Carnival Films in association with POW! Entertainment and distributed by NBCUniversal International Distribution, was co-created by comic-book legend Stan Lee.
“It’s a thrilling combination,” she says. “Isabella was described as a mysterious, glamorous woman because she’s very experienced with her bracelet – she’s had it for 10 years, which we learn in the first episode. It can be very hard when a role starts out so mysteriously but she pushes the storyline forward so we’ll find out about her with Harry while watching the series.
“What I did love about her is she’s a mother and, because of the bracelet, she also leans towards being a comic-book character because she has this power and she knows how to work with it. She has seen that Harry’s found it all quite vexing for the first season, and he seems to want to get rid of it. But she wants to show him the other side of it. Also, they’re the only two people in the world with a bracelet and it’s lonely. It’s made Harry very isolated during the first season, while she’s had it for 10 years. So there’s an instant connection when he sees another person with a bracelet; it’s a shock as well at first but he’s intrigued.”
Though she had never met him before, Reuten says working with Nesbitt also soon became part of the charm of joining the cast in season two. She describes the leading man as “lovely, generous and down to Earth” and says they shared the same ideas about their characters and their screen relationship from the first script read-through.
“I could ask him lots of questions about the superhero element and these two worlds combining, and we just had a really good connection over that, talking about how we could give Isabella and Harry their world,” explains Reuten, who was hoisted up onto wires alongside her co-star for publicity shots for the show, which returned to Sky1 in the UK last month.
“It felt very organic and lovely. In working with him in the middle of London, he was very open and kind to people approaching him, and very patient if they wanted to take a picture. You just feel he’s loved by a huge audience and they are happy to approach him. It’s been a big pleasure.”
Viewers of season one will remember the central role the UK’s capital city plays in the series, with producers keen to present a postcard view of London by using various landmarks as backdrops throughout the series.
Reuten spent six months living in London during filming last summer and says it was the perfect way to see the sights. “I knew London a little bit, being here every now and then for a day or two, but with the locations that my character goes to – I was on the Millennium Bridge [which can be seen behind Reuten in the top image], in the National Gallery before opening time, at Piccadilly Circus on a Friday afternoon, in the West End and on rooftops with all these amazing views of London – it felt like being on a London holiday!”
She recalls “bumping into” Somerset House during one expedition around town on a day off, only to discover a couple of days later that she would be filming at the historic location.
“I saw on the call sheet my character was going to walk through the fountains of Somerset House – that’s one of my favourite scenes,” she says. “That’s a big extra when you work on a show and you can spend your days off at Somerset House in the fountains and it’s all yours for a whole morning. It was also really special to be in the National Gallery before opening – somehow being in front of those paintings on your own makes it really different. There’s something about it, it’s really magical. So I’m very thankful for those enormous treats that come with a job that I’m already very happy doing.”
More challenging were the shoots at the aforementioned tourist hotspots of Piccadilly Circus and the Millennium Bridge, where Reuten and Nesbitt were tasked with completing their scenes as star-spotting crowds grew around them.
“The Millennium Bridge is a public place so you’re not allowed to stop people there,” says the actor. “So they were being guided around us. We had quite a lot of heavy dialogue and we were doing this while people were there checking out Jimmy. You have to work hard building a little wall around you but it’s great, it’s wonderful! You just have to focus really hard and shut the outside world out.”
She continues: “We were in the West End on a Friday night, it was Halloween, and trying to walk there with Jimmy and play a scene was a big challenge. People were very happy because they’d had a little drink – they were all dressed up really weirdly so if they jumped into shot, you couldn’t use it. Normally you could just ignore it but, with those crazy outfits, that was impossible. So that was fun!”
Ultimately, viewers will see Isabella take DI Clayton on a new journey as he continues to question life with the lucky bracelet, but Reuten also points to the family stories that make the series stand out from the crowd.
“What I like about the second season is that the stories about Harry and his family are stronger,” she says. “Obviously, when you do a second season, you build from the first one. And the characters that Amara Karan (DS Suri Chohan), Darren Boyd (DI Steve Orwell), Steven Mackintosh (DSI Alistair Winter) and Sienna Guillory (Eve) all play, that goes to the next level as well. I really like how the show has these private lives and the different cases, and then my storyline pushing it forward. Isabella pushes the story of the bracelet to a more extreme situation.”
But what would Reuten do if she were given the power of never-ending luck?
“I really wouldn’t want to have it – that’s what I know from being in the series!” she jokes. “It’s fine the way it is. Where you have it, you enjoy it – and yet it can be gone before you know it.
“I definitely know a few changes in the world I would like to make, and there are quite a few obvious ones! It’s a really strange world at the moment, with lots of negativity and divisiveness. In the end, I hope everyone sees that it’s not the way we should want to have the world. So I would use a little magic on that.”
tagged in: Carnival Films, James Nesbitt, Lucky Man, NBCUniversal International Distribution, POW! Entertainment, Sky1, Stan Lee, Thekla Reuten