Over the course of the first two seasons, we’ve watched as these baby cops have learned the ropes and figured out their roles. However, there’s still a lot to learn, as the Blue Lights season 3 premiere made clear. There’s also still plenty for us to learn about the characters.
The third season promises to deliver a powerful backstory for Grace Ellis. We knew that she came from a compassionate background, and now we get to learn that her driving force has been about protecting the kids. She comes from a social work background, and the reveals in the first episode of Blue Lights season 3 gives us a hint of the heart that she has for this line of work.
We’re sure to see her push to protect children, as we see in the sneak peek for the second hour of the season. However, we got to chat with Siân Brooke about the timing of bringing Grace’s backstory out and what it means to her as an actress.
Precinct TV: Grace has already gone through the ringer a little with her past coming up. What’s it like for you to explore Grace’s past in this way?
Siân Brooke: I’ve really loved the development of this character as an actor. The stuff she reveals about herself in season 3 is something that we’ve known about and sort of carried before we even started filming season 1. It’s informed everything she does and her responses. All the times Stevie said kids in care, she’s always, in her response, been like ‘you can’t say that.’ It’s really nice to tell her story in this way, and to give the reason why she is trying to make things better for people.
PTV: Yes, I was going to say, there have always been these teases of something.
SB: Yeah, and you do go full in, and then she goes in that car and then you go further in.
PTV: I feel like we just got the kiss between Grace and Stevie, and now they’re all in together. Will we get to see moments between them in between the seasons?
SB: They’re very much a fully fledged couple now. In this season, we talkeda bout how they’ve danced around each other enough, and I think the audience needs to have the satisfaction that they are actually together. It doesn’t stay content for very long because of their jobs and the extraordinary situations they find themselves in have major impacts upon them personally. But if they weren’t doing these jobs, I don’t think they’d have to navitage all the setbacks they have to in season 3. They’re in for a bit of a ride.
PTV: And with Grace’s past coming out, it’s sort of a make-or-break type of thing.
SB: Totally. They both have lived a life, and they’ve both become quite hardened by the knockbacks that they’ve had in relationships, so they’ve put up barriers. This season, the situations they find themselves in mean that they have no choice but to be vulnerable with each other and raw.
PTV: What’s it like for you as an actress to be able to pull all these emotions on screen?
SB: It’s quite cathartic at times. Sometimes, it’s quite nice to just let it all out there, and then you just go home. It’s nice to be able to play characters that are really messy and fluid and a bit tricky sometimes. It’s nice to spend some time curating this human being.
PTV: The Blue Lights season 3 premiere brought us Stevie’s promotion, which he doesn’t really want. What sort of spanner will that throw into the relationship?
SB: It’s not a good dynamic in that he’s a reluctant boss and she’s a reluctant student. She doesn’t always comply. She’s very much a person who wants to get stuff done now, and he’s very much, ‘You can’t do that. We have to do it this way.’ They are opposites a lot this season.
PTV: It’s what I love about Grace. She can see a route and she wants to take it.
SB: I love that ballsy policy of her. Let’s just do it rather than talking about it and ticking the boxes.
PTV: There’s no way just a few years ago that we’d get a female character that wasn’t all prim and proper. You and Katherine [Devlin] get to play some amazing badass women, so what’s that like for you?
SB: It’s so nice. They’re brilliantly written. I like playing cheeky, sassy women that don’t just say yes all the time. They trust themselves, and they trust their voice, and they’re going to put itout there regardless of whether people like them or not. I really love playing her, and it’s nice to put somebody out into the world who is essentially just trying to make things a bit better, and not because she wants people to think she’s great. She just genuinely does it because she’s trying to sort of serve her little bit of the world. She cares, and I think we need a bit more of that in the world at large.
In some cop dramas, you have women who are strong and cold. It’s nice to be able to play somebody who’s confident, but actually a bit messy and desperately wants to look after people, especially the people who need it the most.
PTV: Like the kids in care, because they have no one.
SB: Yeah. It’s a great storyline. We were able to spend time with this charity called Max, which is a youth homelessness charity in Belfast. We went and chatted with the social workers and spent time with some of the young adults, who were like 19, 17, who had been in care, lived on the streets, had these unbelievably harsh lives. They were so honest and brave to come and speak to a stranger about all the brutal stuff that had happened. You can’t help but be massively moved by that and feel like you want to respectfully tell that story.
PTV: Just to finish off, can you tease what we’ll see of Grace this season?
SB: Yeah, this is a make-or-break season in all the things that she does. She really puts herself on the line. I think this season almost breaks all of them. It tests them in a very personal way. And then underneath all of that, you’ve got this criminal underworld and the struggle for power in Belfast.
Blue Lights season 3 airs on Thursdays on BritBox.
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