Vicky McClure talks Trigger Point Season 2 and picking characters [Exclusive]

Vicky McClure stars as Lana Washington in Trigger Point. She’s a veteran-turned-bomb-disposal agent, who certainly went through a lot in the first season. What does that mean for Lana in Season 2?

We will soon get to find out. Before that, though, we got to talk to McClure about playing this role and how she chooses which roles she wants to play. As she’s an EP on the series as well, we talked about what that was like being on the set in most of the scenes each day.

Precinct TV: For the longest time, I didn’t realize it was you in Alex Rider! It added another crime genre role to my list of those you’ve done. What is it about this genre that you love so much?

Vicky McClure: I don’t pick by genre. I pick by character and scripts and all the things that I imagine most actors pick other jobs.

Crime thrillers do have a sort of different impact on people, though. I get it, because we all love that suspense. We all want to have that excitement and be sat on the edge of our seat. We want to binge, and we want to stand by the watercooler at work and talk through all our theories and try to work things out as an audience.

PTV: Let’s talk Lana, because she went through it in that first season. From what I understand, the second season picks up a few months later. Where do we see her, because she had some doubts in Season 1. I love that she’s flawed and we can relate to her.

VM: Yeah, she is flawed. She’s human, and she’s seen and been through hell. When making the show, I’m always checking things with the real expos, and they’ve been brilliant with me in terms of being hoest about their own experiences and how they’ve coped with certain things.

Lana is brave. She’s strong and she’s resilient to a degree, because she doesn’t share anything. She doesn’t want to talk to anybody; she not willing to get the help and that’s what is really painful. I think we can all relate to that at some point in our lives where you’re going through so much. The last thing you want to do is bring it all back to the surface.

It’s only six months really since Season 1 and losing her brother and being conned by Warren Brown’s character. She’s come back from Estonia in the hope that she can start afresh. She’s in the building all of five minutes and there’s a massive explosions, and she knows it’s back to it.

PTV: Usually, you expect big stars to stick around, but Trigger Point just likes to kill everyone off. I love that we’re kept on our toes.

VM: I know! I saw Adrian Lester was in Season 1 and I thought we would have the best of time. Within the first three weeks, Adrian was gone! We just started creating a beautiful family; it was so weird.

PTV: But great for the audience to feel that threat.

VM: Oh yeah!

PTV: You’re also an EP on the series. It’s rare for an EP to be in so many scenes, so what was it like for you to be involved in all the day-to-day stuff with the cast and crew?

VM: I’m a busy fool. If there isn’t a job, I will create one. That’s just in my nature. It’s in my to be nosy, and as an actor, you don’t really get to know an awful lot other than your script—all they need to know to focus on the job at hand.

My partner an dI have a production company now to give working class writers and creatives a real go at the industry, because it’s hard to get into. Jed Mercurio has been brilliant and supportive. It’s an amazing experience, and I love it.

It’s not distracting me from my acting job. No one’s running up in the middle of scenes and passing me papers to sign. There’s a brilliant team around Trigger Point, and we make sure it works for everybody in the capacity that it needs to. It’s a lot of work, but I’m willing to put it in because, hopefully, it just enhances the show.

PTV: There is a lot of trauma and PTSD touched on in the series, and this is an important topic to get right for the viewers. You mentioned you have expos who give their point of view, but do you have others to come in and touch on showing PTSD on screen?

VM: It’s in the experience of the expos we have on set all the time. They talk about their own experiences, and other people’s experiences. I also do research myself.

Unfortunately, I play a lot of tragic characters, but I’m a pretty happy person day to day. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all for that kind of thing, so for me, it was important to try and find what felt right for Lana, which is basically to shut down.

We did this therapy scene in Season 1. In that specific scene, I asked if we could sort of improvise it from the core of what was already scripted, and have a therapy session. Thankfully the actor who played the therapist was really up for doing that as well. I said ‘let’s just chat. Just ask me questions and I’ll say answers that might come out.’ They might not have been completely factual, like Lana’s birthday, but the other things that come out could be really helpful for not just the people watching, but for me as a character to try and figure out how she is feeling, because she doesn’t want to talk.

I’ve not suffered with PTSD. I’ve done everything I can to make sure that it feels like we’re in a realistic space where she can't leave. She doesn't have any other purpose. She's desperate to continue because she's she's strong, she's resilient, she's proud, you know she's all those things. And so, she's very much “The Show Must Go On.” It doesn't matter what the circumstances are.

It's a team effort; I've got a great director there, I've got a great writer, I've got brilliant research material, I've got the guys that are expos. Sometimes it just comes down to one scene where you just feel like it will really ignite the audience in terms of where she's at in her head. So much of it is so fast-paced that sometimes we just have to come back to where she's at and that sort of living alone as well, and not having a very sort of strong family network.

Trigger Point Season 2 premieres on Thursday, Sept. 5 on BritBox.