David Morrissey on The Walking Dead, Basic Instinct 2 and his new ITV drama The Singapore Grip – HeraldScotland

DAVID Morrissey is telling a story. One that explains everything you need to know about why he is an actor. When I was doing The Walking Dead, I remember being in a forest in Georgia, he begins. There were snakes everywhere. Spiders and ticks. It was so hot. The heat was hitting you like a baseball bat in the face. It was just awful.

As is the nature of things these days, we are talking on Zoom. Im in central Scotland, hes in Suffolk. But for a moment were both in that forest in Georgia.

It was really tough, and we had tough scenes to do, he continues. It was Andrew Lincoln and I doing this mad scene. And he turned round to me at one point and said, Isnt this great, David?

And I was like, Yeah, its great. This right here is my dream. This is what I always wanted to do. I never wanted to do anything else. I wanted to be here in this field right here, right now doing this. This is all Ive ever wanted to do.

In short, despite spiders and snakes and ticks (and the odd zombie presumably) or maybe because of them David Morrissey loves his job. He always has. That was true of the teenage Morrissey working in a youth theatre group in the Everyman Theatre in his hometown of Liverpool and its true now of the 56-year-old veteran of stage and screen (big and small).

Which means, of course, that this year 2020 has frankly been a bit of a bummer. Ive actually found lockdown really hard, Morrissey admits, because I love work. I love what it asks of me. I love the challenges. So not having it has been tough. I have found not being able to work very challenging.

Still, he knows hes in a privileged position. He knows, unlike others, he can take some time off, can mess around in his garden without worrying too much about the mortgage.

And there has been the odd upside. Like getting to hang out with his son, one of his three children from his marriage to novelist Esther Freud (Lucians daughter).

Ive just come up to Suffolk for a bit, he says when we speak in late July. Ive been in London for most of it. I was in my home in London and I was with my son whos 25. I felt very lucky to have this time with him really. I wouldnt normally have such a concentrated time with him. Hed be off somewhere else. We just cooked and watched TV and read. I was very blessed.

Since he made his TV debut with Willy Russells Channel 4 drama One Summer in 1985, Morrissey has been one of the most familiar and reliable screen presences in British TV and film, appearing in everything from State of Play to Blackpool, and The Deal (in which he played Gordon Brown) to the Jason Statham thriller Blitz (playing a sleazy journo; as if such a thing existed). He even has the Basic Instinct sequel on his filmography.

More recently, he has been starring in Skys Druids v Romans drama, Britannia. Indeed, by the time you read this he might have returned to shooting the third series. We were about five weeks in. We could see lockdown coming at us. But now weve been told well probably go back to work at the beginning of September with a lot of new rules and a lot of new things well have to adhere to.

And then theres the reason we are talking today. A new ITV drama, The Singapore Grip, Christopher Hamptons adaptation of JG Farrells 1978 novel about the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in the Second World War.

The Singapore Grip is itself an ambitious piece of television with a prestige cast that tries to encompass a huge historical moment while being true to the comedy of the novel. It also gives you a chance to see Charles Dance topless, a vision that will put more than a few middle-aged men to shame when we remember that Dance is 73. (Or is that just me?)

The story it tells is one of British military incompetence. Perhaps no real surprise that its a historical moment that tends to get written out of the national story.

It does, agrees Morrissey, and to my shame I didnt know much about it either. Churchill did say it was the biggest military capitulation in British history. So, its not something we wish to examine, which is true of our colonial past in general.

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The Singapore Grip is a story of empire and the imperial mindset; its sense of belief and its ridiculousness. The Christopher Hampton script was, Morrissey is happy to admit, a big part of the draw. But so was the character he was asked to play, Walter Blackett, something of a fabulous monster.

Morrissey has played a few of those in his time. Blackett, though, offers a different flavour. He is a businessman with an eye for the main chance, someone desperate to make a deal even when the Japanese are knocking at the door.

David Morrissey as Walter Blackett in The Singapore Grip

Hes a very complex character, but also very simple in his greed, Morrissey suggests. Its quite interesting to play that. Hes all about profit, hes all about money, hes all about power and control. He wont accept that the world is changing. And I found that fascinating. The pig-headedness of him.

I dont get to play that class that often. And, also, its funny. I thought of it as satirical. Theres something about the life of those people, that upper-class world and that colonial world which is absurd. I mean, its absolutely absurd what they are trying to do, the system they are trying to impose; the idea of having a little bit of England in the middle of Malaysia, or Singapore or India or wherever they are. I mean its absolutely ridiculous.

Walter, he says, is a man who is driven by profit. Hes a racist. Thats a given. Hes a warped capitalist, I would suggest. Hes somebody who feels he has this entitlement of being where he is, even though what hes doing is stripping the country of its own minerals. Hes somebody who feels very strongly that the more money he makes that there will be this trickle down effect, that he is doing good. And, actually, thats total bollocks.

In his blindness of what he is doing and his surety of empire, there is something outrageously funny about it. Because he is so sort of sure of himself. Theres an element we see of that all the time particularly, I hate to say, in Trump. We look at him and we laugh at him, but, also, we are absolutely appalled by him.

Theres something about Walter that makes us laugh, but I think his world view is not one to be consigned to the annals of history. I think its alive and well amongst us right now.

All of which rather begs the question, how do you play an entitled, unapologetic racist?

I dont have to like him, but I have to understand him. I have to have empathy for him. This is a man who grew up in an education system, he grew up in a family, he grew up in a world that told him these values were absolutely true.

Hes not going to question it. He has no conscience. His morals are set in stone. Thats what his racism is. He has a view of the world that he is right, the way the world is built is for him. Even as the Japanese are walking into Singapore, hes trying to do deals to make sure he is all right.

Shooting the series on location in Malaysia was the usual mess of bad weather and worse weather. Schedules were tight, sets were washed away. The cast were all beautifully costumed, but, God, youre hot, Morrissey admits. But I wouldnt have been anywhere else. I loved it.

With four decades of experience behind him you would presume Morrissey knows what hes doing when he steps onto a new set these days. Well, no. The minute you think you know what youre doing something will come along and knock you over.

I like to research and sometimes that can trip me up. I will get to a job, Ive done all the research and Ill say to the director or the writer, That didnt happen. And theyll say, Yeah, but thats not the story were telling.

And Ill be so fixated on the fact that Ive found out this bit of research. Im grabbing hold of something because thats my only bit of control in the job, whereas what I need to do to be truly creative is let go of it all and show my arse.

What I really love I think is when Im slightly flailing and Im going, Ooh, I dont have the tools to deal with this and Im just going to have to jump in here. Those type of things really excite me.

The question Morrissey sometimes asks himself is what would have happened to him if he hadnt found his way to acting. Ive often thought this and been very angry about it. My educational life was determined for me when I was 11 because I failed my 11 plus. I havent got lots of O Levels but Ive got a curiosity and a desire to learn and I still have that.

But that wasnt really tapped into in my secondary education. I went to a secondary modern school, and the word secondary is an interesting one. It was tough because I got to believe things about myself that werent necessarily true. And then I found myself in an environment which was drama, a youth theatre in Liverpool.

Suddenly, I had a voice. I had an ability to do something. I was with a group of people where there was no such thing as failure. You could be in an improvisation and it could just die a death, but nobody condemned you for that. It was an encouraging place. It was a place where I was able to find an emotional intelligence in my life and explore that.

I had found my tribe. It really gave me something to focus on and explore selfhood. Who am I? Where am I in the world? What are my values?

Im saying this in a retrospective way, looking back at that boy. At the time I was just on a ride. I was meeting guys who I fell in love with, who were culturally different from me, sexually different from me as well. It was a whole world of difference that was opening up. I think at that time I thought, Im just going to take this ride. These are my people. I know it instinctively This is going to save my life. And it did. It made my life.

How close does he still feel to that teenager who found himself at the Everyman in Liverpool? The teenager who made his TV debut in One Summer a few years later.

He feels very close. Sometimes its very distant. Sometimes its like somebody else. But at the moment hes quite close. He comes and goes. And not just him, but the five-year-old me. They come at different times. I welcome that. I used to push that away because its tinged with a nostalgic sadness. But now I see them as me. Its all me.

Obviously, we all have a battle with time and what time means. But today I can look at One Summer and think, God, thats the start of that journey.

We talk about some of his stops along the way. State of Play is the one that got him known in LA, he says. Blackpool is the one where I sort of got a chance to be funny. And I remember reading it and thinking, I cant do this. But the minute I think its too embarrassing then you go, That means Ive got to do it. Singing and dancing. He was a monstrous part. But he was just outrageously funny and then every so often he bursts into Ooh La La La by the Faces.

Talking about embarrassment, umm, David, about Basic Instinct 2. Heres the thing. Can we really hate a film that saw Sharon Stone and Stan Collymore in the same scene?

Stan, he says, laughing. I remember seeing Stan on the first day and he was very, very nervous and he said, Do you have any advice? I said, No, just get on with it.

He was such a magnificent specimen of a man. He had a watch on that Elton John would have been embarrassed to wear, it was so blingy.

Actually, I used to be, Basic Instinct 2, oh my God. But I learnt so much on that job how to duck and dive, how to protect yourself, how to have fun in the middle of madness.

The Walking Dead, of course, is the part David Morrissey says hes most recognised for. It was a huge show. It was the number one show in the world for a bit. Game of Thrones and then us. The amount of people who saw that show is mega and when I go around the world people see me for that.

And sometimes people come up to me and say they think I was brilliant in Our Friends in the North and I wasnt in it, but I say thanks very much. Ill take any praise. If they think Im Gina McKee, thats fine.

The Singapore Grip begins on ITV on Sunday, September 13 at 9pm

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David Morrissey on The Walking Dead, Basic Instinct 2 and his new ITV drama The Singapore Grip - HeraldScotland

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero