Amos was one of those antagonists who had no redeeming qualities, but he stole the show every scene he was in. Fehinti Balogun breaks down the character and those final moments on Down Cemetery Road in this exclusive interview.
I will always saw that the villains end up being the most intriguing characters, especially when it comes to villains in today’s shows. They’re layered and they’re masters of manipulation, and that was certainly the case with Amos throughout Down Cemetery Road.
We chatted with Balogun about the role, including what it was like taking on different personas throughout the series — did it feel like playing different characters? — and what it was like taking on the role of an absolute psychopath.
Precinct TV: Antagonists are the best for storytelling, because there are always so many layers and questions. What was it about Amos that drew you into the role?
Fehinti Balogun: He’s so complicated. I love playing complex characters. I find them really fascinating, and I have learned through the university of watching TV that when an audience doesn’t know what you’re going to do, they’re more invested in the mystery of you.
And there are so many things I loved about the possibility of playing Amos that were really specific, like not being able to empathize with people or being a really good killer and being efficient at moving from personality to personality in order to get the task done. You don’t get many parts like this, so it was fun.
There’s the psychology to it, like what makes him tick? What prep work did you do to get into this role?
There are a couple of performance I really studied. I worked on A Gentleman in Moscow a couple of years before this, and I worked with an actor named Johnny Harris, and I learned what it means to be a psychopath. There was something about the way he was able to ground himself and observe a situation, and I guess, every time I do a job, I just go, ‘Oh, I’ll take that. I’ll mix that in.’
With Amos, it was always about focus. I’ll move at the pace I want to move in to get things done. I think with this show, everybody is influenced by everybody else’s energy, but with the script, it felt really clear. It was all about moving with that energy, so I did lots of research on different performances. I loved he was this ambiguous psychopathy, a really driven person.
Then I figured out the walk, and I went to the gym loads.
How much about his backstory did you know going into the audition, and at what point was it explained to you?
I didn’t know anything, because everything had a code name. I just thought it was a cool script, and when I went to the audition, I followed an instinct. Once we found out what it was and that there was a whole book, I started reading the book and grabbing bits. I think the book version and the show version inevitably have to be different.
Then after we directed the first and second blocks, we have conversations about what makes Amos tick. Why is it he’s so protective of his brother, and why was he so affected by his brother but so unaffected by everything else? One of the things that got cut from the show was that with every single death, Amos looks at the body to see if he’s affected by it. I would just spend a second just staring to see if it did anything to my body, and then it didn’t, and I just moved on. It became a thing because in Amos’ childhood with his brother and where they were from, it would mean he would shut off parts of himself.
I don’t think the fight scene in the church in the Down Cemetery Road finale was in the book. What was that like for you, especially with Emma Thompson?
It was amazing. We trained for it, and we had a wonderful stunt coordinator, Dani Biernat, who choreographed it all. She would make sure we were comfortable with it. And Emma is a force, but she’s also this person I can’t exactly just throw around. You can’t do that to a National Treasure, so we would work out the practicalities of it.
Then at the end, one of the things I remember is that Emma said, ‘You like at peace. Your character is finally experience some sort of peace,’ which was quite poetic.
You mentioned that Amos could become what he needed to be to get the job done. What was that like for you? Did it feel like playing different characters, or just one person playing different characters?
The thing with Amos is that he had to believe he was that person, sort of like Villanelle [from Killing Eve]. I took a lot of inspiration from that, as well. So, he inhabits it the same way as he looks at a body to see if he can feel any emotion or feeling. He’s mimicking others, pretending to engage.
On the train, which I loved, we talked about — and it was in the script — how by the time they leave, he’s exhausted by the length of time he’s had to play a character. It’s been three hours, and I haven’t laughed that much in my life.
So, yeah, I think it never felt like I was playing different characters, and I always felt like I was playing a character playing a character, because then the fun of that is you get to slip in and out.
I loved watching that as well, because every now and then, you can see a switch. The mask drops, but then it immediately goes back up. Or you just switch with a moment’s notice to play what you need to at the time.
Yeah, it was so fun to plot in.
As my last question, what was the most challenging part of filming Down Cemetery Road?
Oh, [in the penultimate episode] when we were at the top of an isolated, old Army base on the coast at the top of a hill. There was so much wind and rain, and the scene with Nathan [Stewart-Jarrett] was the last scene of the day, so the temperatures were low and it was raining and grey, and we had maybe two or three chances to get it done.
We had to move location. We were meant to be on top of the plinth, but there was so much wind that you couldn’t hear anything we were saying, so we had to move it down. We’d rehearsed it that morning, and I just remember it was one of those ‘just breathe’ days.
It paid off. I was mad about losing Downey, but it paid off.
He had to go!
Down Cemetery Road is now available to stream on Apple TV in full.
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