Aidan Turner says filming tower block stunt in The Suspect was “terrifying”

By Patrick Cremona

Published: Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 12:00 am

Aidan Turner has revealed that filming one scene in upcoming ITV drama The Suspect was “terrifying”.

The series opens with a rather dramatic sequence that sees Turner’s character Joseph O’Loughlin step onto the ledge of a tall building to save someone who’s considering suicide.

And although filming on the real building took place using stunt doubles, Turner himself had to confront his fear of heights by acting on a constructed set – which was still fairly high up.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press at a Q&A ahead of the show’s launch, he described his genuine fear during the shoot and revealed how this actually made his job as an actor a little easier.

“I’m not good with heights,” he explained. “And we’re still quite high up, which is great when you do these things because you could just infiltrate your own real emotion.

“Playing fear, or dialing that up… if there wasn’t a height, if you’re doing a green screen thing, for instance, I mean, they’re really tricky, Because to try to evoke that emotion from yourself, it’s harder, you tend to overcook it.

And he added: “Those shrieks or whatever I’m doing in the scene are real. It was kind of scary, but it still felt very safe, which is great. I think it’s a great introduction for the character too. And it’s a great way to start.”

Meanwhile director James Strong said that putting the scene together was “quite complicated”.

“You just take it apart and look at all the different elements and it is about constructing the jigsaw,” he said. “All the different pieces of… where we can have Aidan for real, where’s it got to be the stunt team, where’s it got to be green screen and all those little elements, and what the VFX can give us, credibly, that you believe, and can kind of sell the sequence.

“We did actually do as much of it as we could for real, so we were hanging people off that huge building in Paddington,” he added. “So I think when you’ve got that real base then it helps sell it. But it’s a complicated sequence of all those different elements that come together.”