Sean Bean talks about Red Riding

After my recent interview with screenwriter Tony Grisoni about Red Riding, I came across this interview in The Times. The talk to Sean Bean about his work on the project.

Sean Bean is in a faux library in a Central London hotel talking intently into his mobile phone. He's in good shape but doesn't look particularly special: inexpensive-looking jeans worn away at the back, Chelsea boots, a dark blue sweat shirt, strong reading glasses on a tight rubber strap resting on his chest. The phone call done, he offers a firm handshake and sits on the edge of a floral sofa, legs wide apart. He orders builders' tea and drinks it from a china cup.

In his latest part he is cast as the destructive, Machiavellian businessman John Dawson in Red Riding, an excellent three-part Channel 4 drama that is as disturbing and compelling as the David Peace novels on which it is based. In The Red Riding Quartet, Peace recreates in great detail the Yorkshire of his childhood, turning it into a brutal, backstabbing place haunted by the Yorkshire Ripper and run by corrupt police.

He still left school at 16 and joined his ex-Army father's foundry, putting on boots and overalls to work metal. His father was a successful businessman - he used to drive to work in a Rolls-Royce, though the family never moved to a bigger house - and a great socialist. “My grandfather was left-wing too. I have long discussions with my dad about politics, although we don't always agree. I suppose I'm a socialist too, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. I certainly admire politicians like Tony Benn who are unapologetic about what they believe in and whose honesty is never in doubt.”

After a few years at the foundry, Sean decided he wanted to act. He had flirted with the idea of being a footballer then, strangely, a mime artist before winning a scholarship to RADA. By the time he left RADA, he was on to marriage number two, having left his childhood sweetheart for a fellow student (he has since married and divorced Abigail Cruttenden, who played his wife in Sharpe; a year ago he married another actress, Georgina Sutcliffe, two decades his junior. He says he's had only four long-term relationships with women and simply likes being married).

Anyway, back when he was with wife number two, Melanie Hill, he toured in rep and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. He had been taught Received Pronunciation at RADA but felt that he lost something of himself if a role required the Queen's English.

For Red Riding, Bean didn't read Peace's Quartet but found Tony Grisoni's adaptation hard going. “The scripts were dark and perverse. I've never read anything like it. It's oppressive from the very start.” He frowns. “It's one of the most horrible stories I've ever been involved with. But very rewarding. We didn't get paid much because the money went on the screen, but nobody was bothered.”

The budget was so tight that none of the actors had trailers; instead they sat around in cars chatting between scenes. “It was a very sociable set. Normally I keep to myself the night before a big scene, but it was hard to stay off the booze on Red Riding because of all the northern actors. Peter Mullan, Warren Clarke and I - we all like to drink. And sometimes it's good to have had a few because it takes the edge away if there's a difficult scene the next day.”

As a father of three girls, Bean was naturally disturbed by the central storyline, in which young girls are abducted and murdered, but he didn't mind playing the villain again. “I don't think I'd be very good in a Richard Curtis film. I've always been drawn to characters that are a bit strange and weird.” And, more often than not, violent. How much of himself does he draw on? “A lot of it is imagined. We've all seen people who can change on a sixpence and launch into a tirade of abuse. I can do that myself in private...”

Be sure to check out the full interview. Thanks to the good people over on The Mighty Bean Forum for pointing this out.

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