“I found keeping the secret really fun.”
Gripping BBC drama, Vigil, draws to a close tonight which means we should be bracing ourselves for a crazy finale that will likely throw even more twists and turns at us before the credits roll.
The show is set onboard a nuclear-powered submarine and Suranne Jones leads the Vigil cast as Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva of the Scottish Police Service who turns up on board to investigate a mysterious death.
And we’ve already had a mega-sized twist revealed last week when Lorne MacFadyen’s character, Lieutenant Matthew Doward, was uncovered as a villainous traitor! The news may have come as a shock to some, but for MacFayden, he knew the whole time and it turns out that keeping this secret was a fun experience for him.
Speaking about when he learned of his character’s true motives at a recent BAFTA Q&A, MacFayden said: “Well, I remember I found out when I was cast which was really exciting to hear. And then I remember at the read-through James (Strong] coming up to me and being like, so you’re our guy. And I remember for a while, at least, it being a bit of a secret between me and James – intentionally as well.
“I know that James did that before when he directed Broadchurch,” he added of the Executive Producer’s track record of keeping secrets. “He didn’t tell anyone who the killer was, and that sort of informed their acting decisions in order to not react differently to me when I was on set. I found keeping the secret really fun, as well. I just found that keeping it from my family and friends was the best thing ever, especially as it was like two years, pretty much since I was cast. And so that’s a long time to hold on to that.”
As for how the reveal played out on screen, MacFayden could not be happier with the end result, adding: “I loved that kind of arc of just being a sort of shadowy, and quite sort of polite character for a lot of it, and then being thrust into the action like that with a really violent reveal. I thought that was a really cool way of doing it.”
We’ll hopefully see in the final episode tonight whether Lieutenant Matthew Doward will be caught out or not, but either way, we expect it to be quite the ride.
For more to watch, check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.