‘I’ll probably get killed for saying all this’: meet Lorne MacFadyen, Vigil’s scheming baddie
For most of us, Vigil has been a gripping, albeit divisive primetime drama, keeping us entertained as autumn truly sets in and we wait impatiently for Succession. For Lorne MacFadyen, who was revealed last night as the dastardly British traitor who’s been trying to scupper subs for the Russians, it has been something of a return to his childhood. “I grew up in Skye and I remember there was a stretch of sea, just between the island and the mainland, where they would do their nuclear tests. They’d be doing wargames in the water. And I remember always hearing that and knowing that there was this dark, mysterious force underneath.”
In Vigil, however, the darkest and most mysterious force has been Petty Officer Matthew Doward, the seemingly gaffe-prone sonar operator who, it turned out, was the man behind the murder and mayhem that nearly caused nuclear disaster and had Suranne Jones stuck in a missile tube. Doward, maddeningly, kept his cards close to his chest in the finale (surely the most frustrating “no comment” in recent TV history), refusing to reveal his motives.
MacFadyen can keep a secret too. “I got the role at the end of 2019, so it was a long time to hold onto it,” he tells me. He’s currently in Dublin visiting his girlfriend, the Irish actress Niamh Algar, who is working on the film The Wonder, alongside Florence Pugh and Ciaran Hinds. “I’ve really enjoyed watching Vigil, week by week – my family, my friends, they’ve all been trying to work out what’s going on, coming up with all sorts of theories. And, I’ve got to say, there’s a few budding writers out there!”
MacFadyen had to keep it from his fellow cast members too, who didn’t know the identity of the traitor until they filmed the pivotal scenes. Did they not notice him filming all those shifty glances and sweaty, suspicious close-ups? Did Suranne Jones not clock him looking deeply dodgy in the helicopter back in episode one? (Doward was brought onto the boat as the replacement for Martin Compston’s Petty Officer Burke, who was killed to get Doward onboard.) It turns out MacFadyen fooled them all. And he did it by acting guilty. Those suspicious looks, that haunted expression? All planned to make Doward seem too obvious a villain. MacFadyen had done his homework.
“It's a really interesting thing. I read a book during lockdown, called Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell, which is all about how people actually give away a lot more than you would think when they're lying. But it takes quite a lot for the person viewing them to come to the conclusion that they’re guilty. They have to be overwhelmed with evidence.”
“However, that doesn’t work for crime drama, because modern audiences are actually looking for the most innocent looking person. And they blame them instantly. In Vigil, it was the cook. I had to tread the fine line between suspicious and not being good at my job. It was really interesting to play those moments, particularly with the director, where we had this secret that we were keeping from the rest of the cast. They’d come over and ask me to dial it up a little bit, dial it down a little bit. It was really fun to play. But it’s very, very difficult these days to fool everyone.”
Those certainly not fooled were people with a knowledge of the Navy and submarines, many of whom were less than impressed with Vigil’s accuracy. MacFadyen explains that the cast were trained by a former Navy weapons engineer, but some aspects of realism were simply not allowed. The Navy, for instance, did not give the show permission to use the real uniforms and, for obvious reasons of national security, the set could not accurately resemble a real Navy Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. MacFadyen reminds me: “It’s a drama, not a documentary – but I understand the emotion, it’s a very sensitive topic.”
In fact, watching Vigil in 2021 is to be reminded that, for so many of us, Britain’s nuclear deterrent has ceased to be a sensitive topic. Outside of Scotland, it’s rarely mentioned, only rearing its head whenever the funds are needed to renew Trident. Vigil reminds us that it is something we all have a stake in. “It’s really interesting debate,” says MacFadyen, “are they a deterrent or are they a threat to our own safety? Vigil doesn’t shy away from that discussion. But it also takes into consideration the peace camp protestors, the Royal Navy, the politicians… ultimately, all of them want the same thing. Which is to protect people. But Vigil is a thriller and it’s not pushing any particular agenda.”
So, we got a “no comment” from Doward about his motivations, but does MacFadyen know them? In fact, the script originally had Doward revealing an awful lot more, before they decided to scale it back. MacFadyen created Doward’s back story and understands his “ideology”, but his lips are sealed. “Doward feels special, entitled, even above his crewmates,” MacFadyen explains. “I spent time studying betrayals against countries. Operatives tends to target people are have a weakness, whether that’s emotional or political or financial – they target them, manipulate them. I read a fascinating case of an American student working in China who was ‘soft-approached’. He was basically taken out on dates until, slowly, they got him to infiltrate the FBI. You think it’s the kind of thing that happens in spy movies, but it’s reality. I’ll probably get killed for saying all this!”
Whether MI6 takes a dim view of his comments or not, MacFadyen will be sure a raucous welcome when he next returns home to Skye, where his mother, a nurse, and his father, a mechanic, still live. Are they surprised they’re son has ended up in London, starring in primetime BBC dramas? “There were as bemused as the rest of community when I started acting,” he admits. “Opportunities on Skye were hard to come by, they didn’t teach drama at school, which is a shame. There was a local drama group, which I joined, but I don’t really know where my passion for acting came from. It’s certainly a bizarre thing for someone from Skye to be doing, but everyone back home is really positive and really excited for me.”
Were they excited when MacFadyen, a proud Scot, got his breakthrough TV role in 2017? Playing none other than the archetypal English hero Bobby Moore, in the ITV drama Tina & Bobby. MacFadyen laughs: “I certainly got some, you know, friendly banter from back home. And I was a little bit nervous as a Scotsman stepping into those boots. But, actually, the family of Bobby Moore took me under their wing. But I did feel the pressure, yeah.”
One of MacFadyen’s most exciting upcoming roles is as another famous Englishman, the film-maker Julien Temple, who he portrays in Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols drama series, Pistol. MacFadyen impressed Boyle in the audition by explaining that, as a teenager, he had bleached blond hair and the first song he learnt on the guitar was Anarchy in the UK (“I think he liked that”).
Boyle, however, cast MacFadyen as someone slightly less snot-nosed than Rotten or Vicious. Did MacFadyen get to meet Temple? “I did, he agreed to do a Zoom with me. I think he was a bit disconcerted hearing my Scottish accent… But he was great, he told me really great stories. Luckily I didn’t have to do my Julien Temple accent in front of him.”
Was MacFadyen aware of the furore surrounding John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) during filming? The former Pistol has claimed he is in “financial ruin” after losing a legal battle against his former bandmates – Lydon had refused to licence the Sex Pistols’ music to Boyle’s series, and Steve Jones and Paul Cook took him to court. “They never even had a conversation with me about it,” Lydon said. MacFadyen is understandably cautious on the topic, but maintains that all the surviving band members had the chance to be involved, but Lydon turned it down, and that the portrayal of Rotten in the series is sympathetic – “he’s seen in a really good light, actually”.
Next up, we’ll see MacFadyen in the thrilling war film Operation Mincemeat, based on the real story of the eponymous mission that helped to turn the tide of the Second World War, which involved planting a corpse, with a fake identity, in Spanish waters, to fool the Nazis. Famously, it was a plan cooked up by Ian Fleming. MacFadyen plays the corpse (a Welshman named Glyndwr Michael), and, happily for actor of his talents, the more substantial role of Sgt Roger Dearborn, who, in the film, is the man whose Michael’s false identity is based on.
MacFadyen may be a dab hand at playing people who are dead in the water, but his career seems about to fully surface.
