Aidan Turner tells Chris Evans about new thriller The Suspect: 'It’s something I haven’t seen on television'
Irish actor Aidan Turner joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about his new ITV drama, The Suspect, and what makes it different from other thrillers.
Turner plays the main character, Doctor Joe O’Loughlin, who appears to have the perfect life with his wife, loving daughter and successful practice as a clinical psychologist. He’s also an author and has created quite the reputation for his expert opinion.
Explaining the premise of the series, Aidan told Chris: “It’s a five-part psychological thriller and I play Joe, who is a psychologist, and he has to work with the Police to find out who killed a young woman found in a London cemetery.
“But as we watch the show, you can kind of figure it out as an audience that Joe knows a little bit too much about this victim.”
He joked: “It’s really hard to tease this show.”
According to Aidan, his character isn’t as clean-cut as his cushy life might suggest, and viewers shouldn’t necessarily trust him.
The actor said: “That’s something I always find very interesting- you don’t know what the deal is with the protagonist or whether the protagonist is an antagonist. You’re trying to figure out where they lie in the story.
“So, I think Joe is a pretty shady guy.”
Joe’s weird behaviour could be explained by his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s, which he receives just two weeks before the murder takes place.
For Aidan, it was interesting to explore a character dealing with a debilitating illness that isn’t portrayed onscreen often.
He said: “It just adds another layer to the story of it. There’s some reckless behaviour from Joe at the beginning and in the first couple of episodes I think, as an audience, we’re trying to figure out if that is to do with the illness or is it not?
“It was interesting, you know, it’s something I haven’t seen on television. I haven’t seen many characters with Parkinson’s, so it was a really interesting thing to tackle.”
Aidan has also recently got married to his partner Caitlin Fitzgerald during an intimate wedding in Italy, and he told Chris how special it was to him.
He explained: “It was very private, there was almost nobody there. There were six people but no family and a couple of friends that were in Italy already because it was right in the middle of lockdown.
“A couple of people from the show (Leonardo), because I was shooting over there, had to translate and do all those kinds of things at the actual ceremony itself, for legality reasons. But yeah, it was tiny and beautiful.
“It was quite a special thing.”
The Suspect continues Mondays at 9pm on ITV and episodes 1 and 2 are now available on the ITV Hub.
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