CAN YOU TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER, LUCY?
THE best description I would use for Lucy is "completely frazzled". She's just got so much on her plate. She has a huge responsibility – she has an eight-year-old son, Isaac, who has perplexed everyone from the moment he was born. He doesn't laugh and he doesn't cry. It's really tragic and no one can get to the bottom of why.
In addition, of course, there's the devil's hour itself. She wakes up – she has done all her life – at 3.33am from a nightmare she can't remember. And it's horrific.
Plus she works for children's services as well. So she's got an incredibly tough job. She's basically in the full blast zone of motherhood. I could really relate to that.
WHAT MAKES THE DEVIL'S HOUR EXCITING?
It's like a three-stranded genre TV series, which is really exciting. So you've got a kind of domestic aspect to it, which is her home life. There's a detective thriller aspect in that there are a series of quite dark murders that are happening around my character that she's unaware of, but she is somehow the link to them all. And then there's this slightly supernatural element to it as well.
That all together makes for a really compelling, page-turning script.
WHAT'S LUCY'S RELATIONSHIP TO MURDERER GIDEON, PLAYED BY PETER CAPALDI?
Lucy is completely unaware of him throughout. But, as an audience member, he's a constant presence. In Episode Six you will get a lot of your answers – he's kind of tampering with fate in a way that no-one's aware of.
IT'S GOING TO BE QUITE A DARK, GRITTY WATCH, THEN?
It's a really high-concept series, which I always love. I loved The Leftovers, so that was kind of a reference point for all of us. It's quite dark. There are unexplained happenings and you definitely need to be aware of that to tread the tonal ground.
But a lot of that is in the cinematography. So we've got Stuart Biddlecombe, who has shot a lot of The Handmaid's Tale, and he's sprinkled this magic dust on it. Every time I look at the monitor I think it looks phenomenal. It's got a bluey toned, odd, spectral kind of feel to it.
But at the same time, with Tom's writing, it's very grounded. I am a big fan of there being humour in all walks of life so it's not a humourless, super serious piece, even though there's quite a lot of dark material in there.
The way that Tom writes the character of Lucy Chambers is key – she loves a joke. She loves food. And if life was great, she'd be really fun to hang out with, but she's just going through the mill a little bit. But there are chinks of light.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE FUNNY SCENE?
One of my favourite scenes I filmed was being in the car on a low loader, and in the script it said "singing badly", which was lucky. It was Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse Of The Heart. And it was one of my favourite moments because it was just so freeing.
The kid who plays Isaac is called Benji and he was just sat next to me, looking at me. His character has to be completely straight-faced, kind of soulless. He was looking at me saying, "Er, are you being bad on purpose?" That hurt.
Luckily, I gave him a lot of slack because he's eight.
:: The Devil's Hour streams on Prime Video from Friday October 28.
