Michelle Keegan reveals police inspector dad helped her prepare for new ITV role
Actress Michelle Keegan has revealed she had her very own police expert on speed dial while filming her gripping new ITV drama The Blame, her dad.
The former Coronation Street star takes on her first-ever role as a police officer in the twisty new thriller, playing DI Emma Crane, a determined detective who isn't afraid to stand up to the men around her.
And Michelle, 39, didn't have to look far for advice on how to make her performance convincing, as her father spent years in the police force and rose to the rank of inspector.
“My dad was in the police force,” Michelle revealed at a press conference attended by OK!. “He was an inspector.
“So I used to go to him and go, ‘Dad, what do you think about this?’”
Michelle even quizzed him on everything from how senior officers would behave in meetings to the way they would carry themselves around colleagues.
“When I was doing the meeting scenes, because he was obviously quite high up in rank, I was like, ‘How would you talk to people in the police force, and how was your body language?’
“I used to go to him quite a lot, actually.”
Michelle became hooked on police shows
The actress, who stars alongside Douglas Booth and newcomer Nathan Mensah, threw herself into researching the role and found herself becoming slightly addicted to one particular police programme in the process.
“We watched a lot of 24 Hours in Police Custody,” she admitted. “It’s quite addictive, actually. It’s very good.” The cast also had a female police adviser called Lisa on set, who Michelle said wasn't afraid to tell them when something simply wouldn't happen in real life.
“She was absolutely fantastic,” Michelle said, adding that Lisa was particularly helpful during the show's police interview scenes. “She was very black and white. She was like, ‘I’d never do that.’”
But it was Emma herself who really persuaded Michelle to sign up for the drama.
After reading the script, she couldn't put it down. “It just got me hooked,” she said. “I just wanted to carry on reading it. I was like, ‘This is a project that I definitely want to be on board with.’”
And she particularly loved playing a woman prepared to hold her own in a workplace dominated by men.
“Emma, as a character, she’s a very strong female in a male-dominated environment, and I feel she holds her own,” Michelle explained. “She’s one of those girls that will take no nonsense, and I just found it exciting. “We love to see it. We love to see it on screen, and there’s not enough of it on screen.”
‘Be more Emma’
While The Blame is a gripping crime thriller packed with twists, the series also tackles much darker issues surrounding misogyny and toxic behaviour within the police.
And Michelle hopes Emma might inspire viewers to have the confidence to challenge behaviour that makes them uncomfortable.
The actress admitted she felt a “responsibility” to make her portrayal as accurate and fair as possible, particularly because some of the show's themes are rooted in real-life experiences.
“We want to start a conversation at the end of it,” she said, “so that people can speak up as well if they don’t feel comfortable in a certain way.”
She hopes viewers might also begin to recognise behaviour that shouldn't be accepted or ignored.
And Michelle has already taken one lesson from her alter ego.
“Be more Emma,” she laughed. “That’s what I’m thinking. Be more Emma. What would Emma do?”
Michelle and Douglas's chemistry
Michelle is joined by The Riot Club star Douglas Booth, who plays her colleague Tom Radley.
The pair's complicated professional relationship sits at the heart of the drama, but thankfully there was considerably less tension between the actors when the cameras stopped rolling.
In fact, Michelle and Douglas say they hit it off almost immediately helped by some competitive quizzing in the make-up chair. “We bonded quite quickly, didn’t we?” Michelle said.
“We started playing quizzes quite early on in the make-up chair.”
Douglas added that the cast would head into the police briefing room and do quizzes together between filming.
And he couldn't resist pointing out: “I won.” Michelle immediately teased him: “You know what? I have to say, I love that for you. Coming in and instantly just humble-bragging, ‘I won.’” Douglas joked that filming can sometimes feel a little like being away with your co-stars, although that's apparently one description best avoided at home. “You’re basically on holiday, not a holiday,” he said. “We never say that to our partners. Never describe it as a holiday.”
But their friendship became particularly important during the tougher days of filming, with Michelle admitting Douglas helped stop her from getting stressed when she stumbled over the show's complicated police jargon.
“I felt really comfortable being with Doug on set, even if I fluffed a few lines,” she said.
“He would make me feel very, very calm about it, and I wouldn’t spiral like Emma would spiral.
“I never spiralled, and that’s because of Doug.”
Douglas: ‘We’ve all been cowards sometimes’
Their characters, however, face a much more difficult relationship.Douglas, 34, describes Tom as fundamentally a “good guy” and a good detective, but one who finds himself caught between doing what he knows is right and protecting his own career.
“He’s trying to do the right thing, then he gets trapped,” the actor explained.
Tom convinces himself that if he can keep his head down and reach a more powerful position, he will eventually be able to change the system from within.
Douglas believes viewers may recognise something of themselves in that dilemma.
“We’ve all probably been in situations where we could have stood up more quickly for something, but our own self-interest…” he said. “It’s just a human thing.” At one point Tom even admits: “I am a coward.” Douglas added: “I think we can all probably, if we were honest with ourselves, own up to that sometimes.”
Newcomer Nathan was nervous to meet Michelle
While Michelle and Douglas are familiar faces to viewers, The Blame marks a huge milestone for their co-star Nathan Mensah, it's his first television acting role. Nathan, 28, joins the drama in episode two as Lewis, a young officer who enters the force through its graduate fast-track scheme and still believes wholeheartedly in the system.
For Nathan, landing a major ITV drama for his first TV job was understandably daunting.
“I feel so grateful, and I feel so blessed to have been given the opportunity to take on this role,” he said.“Of course there were nerves.” But his biggest concern was rather more personal — whether his famous co-star would like him. “I think I was probably more nervous about my first day meeting Michelle and hoping Michelle would like me,” he admitted. Michelle was quick to give her verdict.
“Honestly, he’s so chill, so cool, so talented,” she said. “You didn’t even feel the nerves. He was brilliant. “And I’m really not just saying it because he’s sat there. I promise you, he was absolutely brilliant.”
‘The truth was worse than fiction’
Behind the cast's off-screen laughter is a drama dealing with some incredibly serious real-life issues.
Executive producer Nicola Shindler revealed the team researched genuine cases involving misogyny and misconduct within policing and some of what they discovered was so shocking that they decided there was no need to embellish it for television.
“We had access to those text messages which real police officers have sent to real police officers,” Nicola explained. “If we’d made it up, you wouldn’t believe what was in those messages. So we chose not to make it up.”
The production also spoke to a real Metropolitan Police detective while researching the drama.
Nicola admitted she initially found herself wondering whether the reality could genuinely be as disturbing as the material they had uncovered suggested. “Then, when we spoke to a real Met Police detective, it really was,” she said. “And actually, some things were even worse.”
Despite that, Nicola was determined the men in the drama shouldn't simply be portrayed as one-dimensional villains.
She wanted viewers to recognise the characters and perhaps even recognise some of the smaller behaviours in themselves and the workplaces around them. “They’re good policemen in lots of ways,” she said. “That was really important to show. “They’re really good at their jobs, and this happens.” And while The Blame may be set inside the police force, its stars believe its message about toxic workplace behaviour stretches much further.
For Michelle, perhaps that's exactly why Emma feels like such a timely character. She's the woman prepared to ask the awkward question, challenge what's happening around her and put her head above the parapet when others would rather stay silent. Or, as Michelle herself now puts it: “Be more Emma.”
The Blame launches on ITV1 and ITVX on September 20.
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