Hot off his cameo appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Charlie Cox is starring in a new eight-part TV drama – but he almost missed out on his role of Michael Kinsella in Kin.
Cox was originally attached to another project and so wouldn’t have been able to be a part of the series, which his wife – TV producer Samantha Thomas – was already involved with.
“I read it because my wife was producing it and she asked me what I thought – I was committed to something else,” Cox explained to RadioTimes.com.
“I read this and it made me feel a bit s**t about the other thing I was supposed to be doing! Thankfully, that thing fell apart and I then said to my wife, ‘Do you think that they would have me?’ – so I got on a phone call with the creator and it was a pretty easy thing.
“It was great, because obviously it meant that both her and I got to work on something that we’re really passionate about and loved, but also meant that during a pandemic we got to stay together as a family and go to Ireland and not be separated.”
Set in Dublin, crime drama Kin is written by series co-creator Peter McKenna and also stars Irish actress Clare Dunne as Amanda Kinsella, wife to Michael’s brother Jimmy (Emmett J Scanlan) who becomes embroiled in a gangland war after a family tragedy.
“I remember feeling, for the first time in a few years, that I had read a script where I just got completely taken away to some other place,” said Dunne. “I don’t really remember stopping reading, genuinely. I feel like Peter is in this zone as a writer now where he’s confident, he’s assured. He knows that on the page sometimes there’s actually a small amount of words, but they say a lot. And I think that’s the mark of true confidence on the page.”
Though the events of the series are fictional, Cox added: “When I accepted the job, I didn’t quite realise the extent to which there is this kind of activity in Ireland, and it can be quite frightening. Our show is not based on any real-life family or real events, but of course there are going to be parallels drawn.”
!["Charlie]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2022/02/kin-charlie-cox-ciaran-hinds-afbafca.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"kin-charlie-cox-ciaran-hinds\"")
The opening episodes of the series follow Cox’s character as he emerges from a stint in prison and struggles not to be drawn back into a criminal lifestyle, a journey which parallels that of Dunne’s Amanda. “It’s gonna be tricky for him,” said Cox. “This family, they’re spending their whole time trying to stay out of prison. But they are prisoners already – prisoners of their own making, by the lifestyles they’ve chosen to live… or in some cases have been forced into, I guess there is a distinction there.
“When we meet Michael, he’s got one thing in mind and that is spending time with his daughter, and how long he can survive on the periphery of this family is going to be a question that’s asked throughout throughout the whole first season.”
On top of exterior pressures, long-hidden secrets also begin to emerge across the eight episodes that threaten to tear the family apart from the inside – with Cox and Dunne both having conversations with writer McKenna about their characters’ backstories before filming began.
“I had a few conversations with Peter and obviously he’d thought about some things and there’s other details that maybe I’ve then included or added to help me,” Cox explained. “It’s about equipping yourself with enough, the right information that will help explain to you – and maybe therefore the audience – how you’ve got to where you are, and why you make those kind of decisions that you make.”
!["Clare]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2022/02/kin-clare-dunne-9fbba94.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"kin-clare-dunne\"")
“He [McKenna] was kind of like… you know you’re in the gym and you’ve got a personal trainer and they sort of pump you up a bit?” Dunne laughed. “Peter was also pumping me up a bit about Amanda, telling me, ‘This is one of the biggest roles that you’ll have ever played so far in your career, because you’ve never done TV before, and this is going to be a massive jump into the deep end.’
“But in that conversation, he did tell me a bit about her past and where she comes from. At the same time, he said, ‘I’m really open for you to interpret or make some decisions or come to me with thoughts. As we approach the start of filming, during filming, just always talk to me.’”
Prior to the shoot, the cast also spent time in rehearsals workshopping their characters’ backstories, not all of which was uncovered in the first season of Kin. “I still think there’s probably more to be discovered on that, actually,” said Dunne. “If you watch Ken, the past sort of sneaks into the story. And it’s really intriguing.”
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Though Dunne and the majority of Kin’s cast – including Scanlan, Aidan Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Ciarán Hinds – were all born in Ireland, Cox had to adopt a Dublin accent to play Michael. “It’s so much work!” he said. I do accents all the time, I’m always doing accents for some reason. But I have to work really, really hard – hours and hours of drilling sounds and working with an accent coach and listening to podcasts.
“For me, a really, really truthful accent comes when you’ve lived in it for a couple of months. And you’ve kind of got to the next level of nuance and it’s in your body, you know?”
According to Cox, his cast-mates were “very kind and very supportive”, “so they were either very good liars or they were genuinely very pleased with how it sounded.”
Kin was shot in late 2020 in Dublin, with Cox insisting the cast are all “desperate” to reunite for a possible second season. “We’re waiting to find out,” he said of the show’s future. “I believe the signs are good. I believe there’s good whisperings and there’s a good chance we will go again this year. I have not had confirmation of that. But there’s certainly a lot of story to tell in that arena.”
Kin is streaming exclusively on Sundance Now (an add on subscription via Amazon Prime Video Channels) from Thursday 24th February.
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