Robert Carlyle as Prime Minister Robert Sutherland in COBRA: Rebellion
Robert Carlyle has played a string of iconic on-screen characters in his career – but never dreamed he’d be called up to play a Conservative prime minister.
Best known for immortalising Trainspotting’s psychopath Begbie, he didn’t really see himself in Downing Street.
But that’s where his career has taken him – for the third instalment of the Sky TV COBRA series.
He couldn’t get any further from the moustachioed madman.
“It was never on the agenda, was it?” he said. “Getting to play Robert Sutherland – a Conservative prime minister – who’d have thought it?”
“The casting director, to send this part to me was brave – because I am not probably what you would imagine to do that but I take it as a compliment and a fantastic challenge for me to play the man.”
‘A Labour man’
Carlyle, 62, told BBC Scotland’s The Edit that he originally agreed to one season – just six episodes – of the political drama. But he has enjoyed it so much he keeps going back.
For an actor who has played some well-loved working class characters – Begbie and rookie stripper Gaz in The Full Monty – Prime Minister Sutherland needed a different kind of inspiration.
Inspiration: Carlyle turned to late Labour politician John Smith to find his voice
“I had to go a bit further back,” he said. “It was difficult to find anyone in the Conservative world.
“John Smith was the one I thought about. Even though he was a Labour man – there was something about him and he was Scottish as well. Something about the way he spoke – I listened to his tone.
“No way I could go in there play Sutherland with my Glasgow accent. So I had to pull that back a bit.”
Carlyle said he also had Scottish rugby players in mind.
He said: “In the nicest possible way, sometimes you hear them and they are just vaguely Scottish, maybe Oxbridge educated and when I found that for Sutherland I thought I was on to something.”
The “rebellion” in the new season of COBRA takes many forms and sees PM Sutherland up against attacks from all sides.
Carlyle says it takes the form of “shady arms deals, a climate change protest group and a rebellion from inside his cabinet – in the form of actress Jane Horrocks”.
The character faces a rebellion of his daughter and his marriage is also on the rocks.
And like previous seasons, storylines end up eerily close to reality.
Carlyle said: “This stuff is written along time before you see it but we think the writers are like sayers.
“Although this time around I hope not because there is a couple of really bad things happen in this and I hope it doesn’t come to pass.”
Image source, BBC/Sarah Louise Bennett
Robert Carlyle is more used to being a working-class hero than a Conservative politician
Carlyle has said previously that his Begbie character has “followed him his whole life”, but that hasn’t stopped him signing up to reprise the role in a new spin-off from Trainspotting.
It has been announced that he will return in a TV series based on Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s 2016 book The Blade Artist.
Carlyle revealed some new details about the project.
Trainspotting ‘trilogy’
He told The Edit: “One episode has been written so far. They always take longer than you imagine.
“For me it will be the third part of a trilogy – Trainspotting was the younger man, T2 was his middle age, but he is older this time around.”
He explained what had become of Begbie.
Image source, Alamy
An older Begbie will return in The Blade Artist
“Begbie has discovered art in prison – and he married his art therapist in the jail.
“He discovered sculpture and Begbie’s sculpture of course is to slash pieces of clay together with a knife.
“He creates images of celebs of the day and he has become a minor cause célèbre.”
Begbie lives in L.A. and everything is going great until he gets a call from home telling him his son has been murdered.
He said: “So he goes back and things spiral into catastrophe.”
The six-part series will shoot in the next two years.
The actor is currently working on a new series for Netflix in Manchester. Toxic Town is based on the real-life story of the Corby poisonings, co-starring former Doctor Who Jodie Whittaker.
But despite movie-making stints in the US and Canada, home is still Glasgow.
“There’s no way I’ll ever leave it,” he said. “My life is here.”
See the full Robert Carlyle interview on The Edit, BBC Scotland channel, at 19:15 on Saturday
