Our House’s Tuppence Middleton talks “challenge” of show’s 2 timelines

By Flora Carr

Published: Thursday, 17 February 2022 at 12:00 am

Downton Abbey’s Tuppence Middleton has spoken about the “balancing act” required for her latest role in ITV thriller Our House, which takes place over two separate timelines.

Middleton plays the lead character of Fi, a woman estranged from her husband (played by Line of Duty‘s Martin Compston) who returns home one day to find all her possessions gone, and strangers moving into “their” new home.

Speaking at a press event attended by RadioTimes.com, Middleton said that “the appeal of taking the part” in the four-part drama was that she’d “get to play these two contrasting storylines” set in the past and present-day, but that the two timelines also posed a challenge.

She continued: “You have this present-day thriller, which just kind of unravels and becomes more and more incredible as it goes along. And then you have this tragic love story. And you’re sort of charting the breakdown of this relationship. And really, for me, it was about making the differences between those [timelines] clear and also charting the journey in a way that felt like you were keeping the momentum going without giving the game away too soon.

“It was a real balancing act of trying to work out where you are in this character’s headspace at a certain time, because a lot of what happens to Fi during the course of the four episodes is really quite awful, and awful in different ways… Every day was a challenge because there was just so much happening to Fi,” she said, adding: “I’d say just the whole shoot was a challenge, in a really great way.”