Tom Riley discusses Dark Heart, Will Wagstaffe, and the worst parts of filming

Dark Heart is the second original to come to the BritBox service. Tom Riley plays Will Wagstaffe and shares what you can expect from Will and Tom’s least enjoyable part of filming.

If you haven’t started watching Dark Heart yet, you need to right now. Throw out all the detective drama tropes you think you know. This London-based series is BritBox’s second original series, airing at the same time as the UK’s ITV. Tom Riley plays DI Will Wagstaffe and he’s certainly nothing like you think you’ve seen before.

This is one of the more darker shows on air right now, immediately offering a real-world view of the dark horrors people will do. Why did Tom want to play this role? How does Will’s past affect his current relationships? What was the worst part of filming? He shares all in this exclusive interview.

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Hidden Remote: I really enjoy this dark Sherlock Holmes style to this character. He’s always picking up on things in his work. Will we see this in his personal life too?

Tom Riley: That’s a great question. I think he’s got a blindspot in his personal life. Because of what happened as a teenager, he’s in this Arrested Development stage. He’s a teenage boy still. There’s angst and tantrums. He’s not evolved as the way adults should, so there’s a blind spot where his family’s concerned.

He thinks he’s doing the right thing to step into his sister’s relationships and take care of his nephew in a very black and white way. Elsewhere, he has the ability to stand off and has that morality.

When it comes to his personal life, I think that baggage of what happened when he was younger leads to him going with his emotions when at home. He’s perhaps not able to pick up on the things he should be able to.

HR: His parent’s murder has fueled a lot of his personality. Did it affect his career choice? Does it affect more of who he is in general?

Riley: I think that’s implied that this case was never solved. What happened to his parents is never truly understood by him. It certainly fueled his choice for a career. He wanted to chase down criminals and serve justice.

As far as his personality, yeah, he’s still trying to put in the ideas of right and wrong and black and white. His home and personal life — he’s not able to connect with the women in his life. He struggles to get close to people and pushes people away.

When it comes victims of a crime, he gets squirmish and pushes them to other people in the force. He’s not comfortable, so I think it’s impacted everything.

HR: He learns that people who mentored him, who he looked up to, aren’t the people he thought they were. How does that affect him moving forward?

Riley: It’s less something that effects him and more something that reinforces this bleak, real-world view. That’s not something he’d hoped for, but it feels familiar that everything was as he believed about the world. He’s now doubled down on that real-world view.

HR: This is a dark tale, a very dark tale. What exactly drew you to this role?

Riley: It is a dark tale. Those first three minutes are pretty gruesome. When the script came through from Chris Lang, I thought it was a very nuanced and smart thing. It was typical for the genre but, at the same time, Chris had a lot of things he wanted to say about the world. He used this familiar detective drama to sneak it all in.

People think they know the dramas and the tropes, but Chris gave a new twist. And the character of Will is a step away from the familiar tropes. After the first couple of episodes, it does look like a typical detective who doesn’t play by the rules. When I brought that to Chris, he said that wasn’t the case. What’s different here, the breaking the law and pushing the boundaries, are the things that stop him being a good detective.

He’ll have to evolve as a human being otherwise he will not be the great police officer he thinks he is or wants to be.

HR: That’s interesting because the first episode you think you have seen it before. It’s clearer in the second episode.

Riley: And you see it more in the third episode and you see it through the eyes of his colleagues. IN the case of Josie, with the doe eyes and has a crush on him. At first, she may fancy him then she thinks she just looks up to him. Eventually, she sees through him.

It’s a ballsy move to set it up in a familiar way and hope that people stick with it. People have a knee-jerk reaction to turn off.

HR: It might help that it’s on a streaming service.

Riley: True.

HR: There is a lot to explore, what are you most looking forward for fans to see?

Riley: The bit that I enjoyed shooting the most (and not least because it had the smallest amount of police dialogue) is the family stuff with Charlotte Riley, who plays my sister. It’s the most relatable thing to play because everyone has a difficult relationship with a sibling but it also goes into some unexpected places.

If you think in the first episode the women are there to prop up Will, then you’ll realize as the show progresses that you’re making the same mistakes he does. He talks over them and assumes they’re there for him, he’s this masculine heir and it leads to him missing important things that the women pick up on.

HR: What did you find the most challenging to film?

Riley: Shooting in London! Just being in Soho on a Friday night at 11 p.m. when everyone else is getting wasted and we’re just getting started. In London, they’re so jaded. They don’t give a s**t that you’re filming. They’re just like “why are you getting in the way? I just want to go through this street with a traffic cone on my head and my trousers around my ankles.” And you’re filming! That stuff was fun.

There are a lot of takes that are unusable from filming at that time of night.

HR: At least it would be realistic for the location.

Riley: It is realistic until they look directly down the lens and take their top off and say “what do you think of my nipples?” Yeah, that’s not going to make it in.

HR: Thank you for taking the time!

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Dark Heart is now streaming on BritBox in North America.