{"id":27131,"date":"2022-12-14T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1755398"},"modified":"2022-12-14T12:14:48","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T11:14:48","slug":"litvinenko-is-a-feat-of-acting-from-david-tennant-says-neil-maskell","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/litvinenko-is-a-feat-of-acting-from-david-tennant-says-neil-maskell\/","title":{"rendered":"Litvinenko is a \u201cfeat of acting\u201d from David Tennant, says Neil Maskell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Morgan Jeffery\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Litvinenko star Neil Maskell has said that filming emotional scenes opposite David Tennant for the ITV drama was \u201can honour\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maskell\u00a0told RadioTimes.com<\/a> that he was left amazed by Tennant\u2019s \u201cfeat of acting\u201d as he portrayed the final days of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector who fell ill on 1st November 2006 after being poisoned with polonium-210 and died weeks later, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2021 that Russia was responsible for his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very nervous of saying anything that might be disrespectful of the realities of the actual situation in that room in 2006,\u201d said Maskell, who plays DI Brent Hyatt \u2013 a police detective tasked with interviewing the dying Litvinenko \u2013 in the series. <\/span>\u201c<\/span>But it affected me in two ways, really.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs an actor, a big part of your job is, very early on, you set the parameters that you\u2019re going to play the part in, right? For instance, if you\u2019re playing Doctor Who<\/a>, the parameters are quite broad \u2013 you can go quite small, or things can be f**king wild. So you\u2019ve got loads of room, it\u2019s a dance, and you can do what you want \u2013 and if you\u2019re really mustard like David Tennant is, or Jodie [Whittaker] who\u2019s just done it, you can dance inside all of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cReally, that\u2019s the widest parameters you\u2019re gonna get and other than that, as you\u2019re working, you\u2019re always working inside different parameters that you set in terms of the character\u2019s volatility, or how mercurial they are, how they might skip through emotions or whatever\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Neil Maskell as DI Brent Hyatt in Litvinenko.<\/span><\/figcaption> ITV studios for ITVX<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Maskell explained that he was left stunned by Tennant\u2019s ability to convey so much in his performance despite the majority of his scenes taking place with an ailing Litvinenko confined to his hospital bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s in bed, he\u2019s laying still. He is modulating the very slow progression of a poison working its way through his body until he dies\u2026 and he\u2019s fighting that as an incredibly fit man \u2013 Sasha Litvinenko ran 10k a night, otherwise he\u2019d have been dead within hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo see him [Tennant] find dynamic and modulation across those scenes, the feat<\/em> of acting, without moving, and to mark the deterioration and to hold on to, for instance, the very technical thing of hitting cues and delivering lines and having big chunks of dialogue that you can\u2019t just put loads of big gaps in and let the scene die\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo watch him do that as an actor in the same room \u2013 and for him and Margarita [Levieva, playing Litvinenko\u2019s wife Marina] to be in such synthesis and there to be such truth in a relationship between them and her responses to his deterioration\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just\u2026 Actors always go on about how much of an honour it is to work with people and whatever, but genuinely that was something to see, up close, for however many days it was \u2013 five or six days.\u201d<\/span><\/p>