He’s been brought back to life several times as Beric Dondarrion in Game Of Thrones and played the sheriff of a plagued Arctic town in Fortitude, so Richard Dormer is no stranger to dark goings-on.
But to become DCI Gabriel Markham in BBC1’s new six-part drama Rellik, Richard was faced with an unprecedented task – being covered in facial prosthetics to illustrate the scars left behind from an acid attack.
“I had to come in three hours before everybody else – it took two hours to put the make-up on,” he reveals.
“At first, I would go to sleep and when I woke up it was done, then as the show became more intense, there were so many lines to learn that I was too wired to sleep.
“I had to get it done every single day of filming; it was horrendous. Whenever we were doing action sequences, the prosthetics would fill up with sweat – it was just grotesque!
“In-between takes I would pop down to the shop, just to see how people would react.
“They were actually quite sweet about it, nobody stared. I think it was only very small kids who would look up at me as if to say: ‘What is going on with your face?!’
“I talked to dermatologists about what it would be like to have that kind of scarring.
“They told me this guy would be in a huge amount of constant pain. I couldn’t turn my head to look over my shoulder as the scarring would stretch and that would be agony. And when I smiled, it was lopsided as the nerve endings wouldn’t work on the left side of the face.”
London Metropolitan Police detective Markham is the victim of an acid attack by a serial killer he’s now chasing.
BBC
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Written by the brothers behind time-jump drama The Missing, Harry and Jack Williams, Rellik – which is ‘killer’ spelt backwards – tells its story in reverse, starting with Markham accosting a suspect for the murders and working backwards, scene by scene, to the start of his obsessive hunt for the man who scarred him, aided by sidekick – and love interest – DI Elaine Shepard (Jodi Balfour).
“I was constantly asking the continuity woman: ‘Where am I? Where have I just come from?!’” says Richard, 47, who confesses that filming in Britain wasn’t much better than the extreme conditions he’s used to working in. “I was pretty wet and cold during filming – I seem to be wet and cold in everything I do.
“I need to guest-star in Death In Paradise!”
However, the troubled detective felt a lot closer to home for Richard than previous parts.
“Gabriel is the character that’s most like me,” he says.
“I felt very vulnerable because I was showing a lot of myself; there’s a lot of me in this character.
“Everything about him is like me – the voice, the walk. Usually, I act with an accent, but to be more realistic I thought: ‘No, let’s just have me.’ It’s kind of me in an alternate universe.
“If, 20 years ago, I had gone to London, not to be an actor but to become a cop, maybe this is who I might have turned out to be.”
Starring in Game Of Thrones, you’d think Northern Irishman Richard may have got a lot of attention while staying in London, but he insists that wasn’t the case.
“In five months, nobody recognised me because I didn’t have [Beric’s] beard,” he explains. “Once I lose my beard, I’m anonymous – which I love!”
NEW! Rellik Monday 9pm BBC1
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