This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
“The BBC were paying for face treatments to make me look four years younger,” chuckles Northern Irish actor Richard Dormer. “But I look absolutely wrecked, I look 90 years old. I was sleeping three hours a night for three weeks, drinking too much coffee and chain-smoking,” he adds in his gravelly voice, while smoking a cigarette on our Zoom call.
“I love the fact they thought a chemical peel would de-age you,” laughs his co-star, Andi Osho. “They’re good, but they’re not that good.”
It’s the first time the actors have seen each other since the gruelling schedule required to film their moving scenes together for the fourth series of Blue Lights. This week’s flashback episode shows how their characters Sandra and Gerry met while he was teaching public order training in England.
Sandra was originally meant to be from Brixton, but Osho, who’s from West Ham, asked if that could be changed to Dagenham. “There’s a vibe to south London and east London, and I think Sandra is from east London. She needed to work in an environment like that to have the thick skin required for Belfast.”
After they got married, Sandra relocated to Gerry’s hometown. They both served in the Police Service of Northern Ireland at the fictional Blackthorn station, but Gerry was shot and killed in episode five of the first series. When Dormer and Osho were reunited, she cried.
“It makes me feel emotional even now, thinking back to it. As soon as I saw him, I was overwhelmed, because I’d been relating his face to somebody in the past who I’d lost, and it had been so painful,” she explains. “The memorial they have for Gerry in the station is a constant reminder – and Sandra has worn her wedding ring throughout.”
It feels particularly poignant as we don’t get to watch many relationships on screen that blossom later in life. “No, we don’t,” says Osho, who’s 53. “As an actress in your 50s, you don’t get to do stuff like this very often. Male actors tend to have those opportunities more. I’m usually a mum, or I’m there because of the job that I’m doing, but I’ve never been in love on screen.”
Dormer, who’s 56, agrees. “I think it’s great that we see two people in their 50s being romantic together, going, ‘Oh my God, I found them finally!’ I had a cry when I watched the episode. I’m very proud of it.
It’s beautiful to watch.” He is often asked by Blue Lights viewers why Gerry died. “I’m going to get ‘Nothing to do with me’ printed on a T-shirt,” he jokes. The show’s co-creators and writers Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn are also constantly asked by fans why they killed off the charming cop who always did the right thing, regardless of the consequences.
“Gerry is integral to the growth of the characters,” says Lawn. “His death causes them to grieve in series two. In series three, everyone remembers him, and in series four, we lean even more into Gerry and his legacy. I think we’re one of the first shows to have a major storyline about a character who’s not there.
“I loved him on the page, but when Richard Dormer came to play him, I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ He just jumped off the screen,” Lawn adds. “Gerry is an amalgam of all the funny, mischievous, older men I’ve ever met at work or in life. He was always there with a wisecrack – and somehow not cynical, even though terrible things happened to him.”
Dormer was asked about a year ago whether he would return to the character and immediately said yes. His only request being that he was able to show off Gerry’s love of country music and records (with a little guitar playing thrown in), a character trait established in series one.
Dormer explains, “Gerry said, ‘I won’t have a relationship with anybody, but I have a relationship with music, and I can file everything away and compartmentalise it.’
Music was the one thing he had control of. It was his safe zone. He could play something, feel the emotion, and then put it away again. We see him on his own, living a lonely little life, surrounded by his albums.”
“I didn’t know that the music thing came from you, Richard,” Osho responds, “but it said so much about who Gerry was.” “Oh, I’m gonna get emotional,” says Dormer. “Gerry meets somebody, and you see this spark light up in him – and it’s called hope.”
Blue Lights is on Tuesday at 9pm on BBC One
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