Suchet’s small-screen success
Poirot star David Suchet returns to the small screen after a seven-year absence with a leading role in The Au Pair. He explains why this Channel 5 thriller lured him back to acting and reflects on the role of his lifetime playing Agatha Christie’s iconic sleuth.
For an actor as esteemed as David Suchet, most recognisable for his 25-year portrayal of Agatha Christie’s iconic detective Hercule Poirot, it’s quite remarkable that he hasn’t appeared in a scripted series for seven years.
Not since 2018’s newspaper drama Press has he had an on-screen role, though since then, keen viewers of fantasy series His Dark Materials might have recognised his voice as the gyrfalcon Kaisa – a ‘daemon’ in the form of a bird.
But rather than enduring a self-imposed absence, Suchet was simply seeking the right project to bring him back to the screen – and he found it in forthcoming Channel 5 thriller The Au Pair.
“I’ve been notable by my absence on television for a very good reason,” he tells DQ. “I’m in the very fortunate position of being offered work, and the reason I’ve been absent is because I haven’t accepted what I’ve been offered. I never look for anything, I never have. I never even looked for Poirot. I’ve always been an actor for hire.”
When Suchet received the script for The Au Pair, he found it to be an immensely satisfying “page-turner” – and even stopped worrying about reading his role, instead just following the story to find out what happened at the end. It was a part he couldn’t turn down.
Coproduced by France’s Pernel Media and Ireland’s MK1 Studios, and distributed by ITV Studios, the four-part drama follows Zoe Dalton (Sally Bretton), who seems to have it all – a successful husband, Chris (Kenny Doughty), two adorable stepchildren, Amber and Noah, a thriving tailoring business and a gorgeous countryside home in a picturesque English town.
However, she is also experiencing marital issues, and the pressure mounts when her diabetic father, George (Suchet), moves in next door. Zoe then reluctantly agrees to hire an au pair, but the arrival of Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski), a beguiling young French woman, triggers an unsettling shift in the household as instincts and suspicions arise, hinting at hidden agendas and long-concealed truths.
“From a seemingly lovely family situation, the arrival of the au pair, which should be helpful to my daughter, the whole plot changes – but why?” Suchet teases. “Watch this space, because almost nothing is what it seems. It’s a Hitchcockian psychological thriller in its darkness and in its ability to wrongfoot you.”
Describing the show as an elevated thriller that delves deep into the complexities of family, trust and secrets, Suchet enthuses over the “wonderful” role that demands he play a character who has more than enough secrets of his own. “The nearest to me understanding my character is it’s because of him that we find out the real drama of what’s happened,” the actor says, adding that George “isn’t evil” but may be a victim of his own actions as they finally catch up with him.
“Where the director and I very carefully mapped out my character development – what I know, what I didn’t, what I am surprised about – how I react at the very end really caught me by surprise in the moment on the set,” he says. “All I can say is that I never ever anticipated it or guessed.”
Written by Michael Foott (Desperate Measures) and Andy Bayliss (The Good Ship Murder), The Au Pair is directed by Oonagh Kearney (Vardy V Rooney) and was filmed on location on the outskirts of Dublin.
Suchet is full of praise for the Irish crew and Kearney, and cinematographer Evan Barry (Dead & Buried) in particular. “He really was superb and photographs characters like they should be photographed,” he says. “He sees and understands character. The way he lights the set is fantastic. I like to work very closely with the cinematographer, with the camera and lighting. I had the most fantastic time.”
Though he may be synonymous with Poirot, Suchet also spent 13 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, headlined three other TV series and has played a variety of different characters “all my life,” in movies, on television, on stage and on the radio. But when people ask him how he has enjoyed such a varied career, he tells them he doesn’t know.
“I don’t know how it’s happened. I feel very blessed,” he says. “You would think I would be typecast. Apart from Poirot, which is a long-running series, in the other series I’ve headed I’ve always played different characters. I’m a character actor.”
Yet it’s Poirot he credits with giving him such a long-running career, describing the role as “the greatest gift of all.”
“It gave me the best present any actor could be given – choice,” he says. “I used to do one West End or Fringe theatre [play] every two years when I was doing Poirot, and I was in countless other television shows. I made many movies in the US. I wouldn’t have done it without Poirot. He gave me my profile.
“I’d already been acting since I was 23, I was established. I was known in the industry – but Poirot exploded it [his profile]. Then because I do different things, I don’t like being the same thing all the time. The lovely thing about Poirot is I adored him but he opened the door to so many others.”
It was in 1988 that he was first offered the chance to play Christie’s moustachioed sleuth in 10 hour-long episodes on ITV, with the show debuting a year later. But from that moment on, he only ever worked for the broadcaster on a series-by-series basis.
“If you’d come to me nicely and said, ‘David, I want you to do 25 years of this fantastic character,’ I’d have said, ‘No way.’ Because it wasn’t back-to-back, I had a gap, I’d do theatre, a gap, do a movie, have a little gap. It was all because of Poirot,” he says. “Who would have guessed it? And my gratitude is to the audience. In 1996, I got a letter from ITV saying that’s it, finished, thank you very much. I came back in 2001 having appeared on Broadway, with new producers and ITV who said, ‘The public wants you back.’ That led me to be able to be in every single one. My thanks are to the public.”
Over 13 seasons and 70 episodes of the series, titled Agatha Christie’s Poirot or just Poirot, Suchet appeared in an adaptation of every single Christie novel and short story to feature the detective, ending in 2013.
“But I only played the character that she wrote,” he says of embodying Christie’s detective for so many years. “I didn’t come with a new interpretation. I lifted it from her books, which, of course, the readership loved.”
But what did Suchet love about the character? “He can be strict. He can be angry. He could be irritating,” he says. “But in his heart, he’s a kind man and he’s a great moral compass. When you’re with him, everything’s alright with the world. I’ve never been watched so much all over the world as during lockdown. People got comfort. They could never guess the stories. So that’s brilliant writing. But they felt safe with him.”
In later seasons, Suchet had a dual role as an executive producer on Poirot – a position he describes as “quality control” owing to the fact he was the only person to be ever-present across every episode. Now looking ahead, “I might like to direct. I’d love to do that, because I love working with actors, and if a really good script came my way as a director, I would say yes. I’ve got a lot of people I want to work with.
“The interesting thing about producing was you have a say over so many things, to encourage and to make things better but also to keep things on track. With Poirot, it never changed too much. We’d have directors coming in wanting to change me, wanting to change little bits and pieces, wanting it to be more funny or this, that and the other. But as an executive producer, I could say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t do that.’”
With ambitions behind the camera still to fulfil and seemingly no end of offers for on-screen roles, it’s clear Suchet isn’t considering retirement any time soon, providing the right roles come his way.
“I’m not allowed to,” he laughs. “Even as a result of the work I’ve done, the people working with me are coming to me with other ideas and they’re all lovely, and not necessarily drama. There could be more documentaries. What a lucky guy.”
When he does call time on his career, though, he’s in no doubt that the screen industry will be in good hands with the next generation of talent coming through, not least his young Au Pair co-stars Margot Pue and Ripley Barden.
“Young actors today are much better than when I was young,” he says. “We’ve got two in this series now, Margot and Ripley. They’re brilliant, fearless and so real. We tended to act but they’re much more in the moment now. Acting on television has got better.”
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tagged in: Agatha Christie, Channel 5, David Suchet, ITV Studios, MK1 Studios, Pernel Media, Poirot, The Au Pair