‘Peaky Blinders’ Star Joe Cole on How ‘Nightsleeper’ Differs From His Past Roles: ‘I Am Usually Killing People or Stabbing Them’
28.02.2024 - 10:59
/ variety.com
Marta Balaga “Peaky Blinders” breakout Joe Cole enjoyed “little moments of levity” in his upcoming show “Nightsleeper.” “I play a lot of serious, moody characters. But I read this role and went: ‘This is close to me as a person.’ I could be free and use my life experience, everything I have been through. I try to have fun in life and bring it to the parts I play.
I haven’t always been able to do it, because I am usually killing people or stabbing them,” he tells Variety. These days, Cole wants to be “stimulated and challenged” as an actor. “I am working on a film now, these are Russian filmmakers and they tell dark stories, but they do it with levity.
They don’t relentlessly bang you on the head. The story itself is grim enough, so find the humor!,” he notes, also mentioning a recent turn in “A Small Light” about Miep Gies, Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis. “There were many uplifting moments there too.
One minute you are laughing, the next you are crying. It’s not all doom and gloom, just because the times they were living in were particularly tough. That’s clever and interesting to me.” In “Nightsleeper,” produced by Fremantle’s Euston Films for BBC One and mainly set on a train from Glasgow to London, off-duty cop Joe (Cole) needs to team up with a National Cyber Security Centre worker Abby (Alexandra Roach) – and the rest of the passengers – to prevent tragedy.
Fremantle, handling global sales, will present the show as one of its most hotly anticipated dramas for 2024 on March 1 during the London TV Screenings. “There is a lot underneath the surface. At first, he is trying to help out and save the day, I guess.
That’s in his blood and his DNA. But there is more to him. He has this guilt
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