MARTIN Compston has said he had to "step out of his comfort zone" to tackle a new genre for his latest role.
The Line of Duty star joins fellow Scottish actors Douglas Henshall and Sharon Rooney in six-part dark comedy The Revenge Club, which is set to be released next week.
The Revenge Club, adapted from JD Pennington’s debut novel The Othello Club, follows six strangers who are brought together by a divorce support group, each reeling from betrayal and heartbreak, they form an unlikely bond and hatch a plan to get back at the people who broke their hearts.
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As the group’s schemes grow bolder, the line between justice and madness begins to blur and someone might just take things too far.
Produced by Gaumont and Fremantle, and written by Gabbie Asher, the series stars Compston as Calum, a devoted father navigating a divorce, and Aimee-Ffion Edwards as a PR executive whose husband had an affair with her best friend.
The series also features The Kumars at No 42 star Meera Syal and Sex Education actor Chaneil Kular.
Compston said: “It’s a bit out of my comfort zone. I’ve never really done much comedy, because I wouldn’t really say I have comedy chops, I can play the straight guy, but that was really the comfort thing, when you see people like Meera and Sharon cast who have just got funny bones, it just felt like something that was really exciting.
“I’ve not done a lot of theatre, so I’ve been in jobs where you’re really close you know, those two or three main actors and you become a team, but I’ve not been part of like an actors gang, so when there was the six of us sitting round that pub table, you went ‘so this must be what it’s like to be in theatre’, so I’m chuffed to bits to be involved in it.”
Speaking about his character, Compston said: “Calum, like everybody in the show, is going through a divorce, so he’s going through a rough spot in his life, and basically his whole life revolves around his daughter who’s slowly slipping away from him into this other life. So he’s really, like a lot of people in the show, just a bit broken.
“He finds these people in a similar situation and they find a bit of comfort in each other, they’re all a bit desperate and it leads them to do a lot of silly, and hopefully funny, things.”
Compston added that audiences are drawn to revenge stories as everyone has been wronged in their lives.
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“I think they’re drawn to this because everybody feels like they’ve been wronged at some point in their life, or everybody’s had a bully or something at some point, whether it be at school or in professional life, and you kind of live out in your head,” he said.
Peaky Blinders star Edwards said she found it fun to play a "morally complex character".
"We go on this really dark journey with her, where we see her unravel, but also grow in strength in ways that she didn’t expect and I think other people wouldn’t expect,” the 38-year-old Welsh actress said.
The Revenge Club will premiere on Paramount+ on Friday, December 12.
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