Strike: The Cuckoo’s Calling actress Holliday Grainger reveals her first meeting with JK Rowling
The novelists latest TV drama is full of intrigue and suspense but don't expect any wizards
It’s rare that TV Magazine has witnessed the actors in a telly drama visibly excited as they recall their first meeting with the show’s writer.
But then, not every actor gets the chance to work on three adaptations of JK Rowling’s novels.
“I met her in the toilet,” laughs Holliday Grainger, 29.
“The person who flushed the chain at me was JK Rowling!”
“I was a massive Harry Potter fan, so it was very exciting to meet her,” adds The Musketeers star Tom Burke, 36.
Tom plays private eye Cormoran Strike while Holliday is his assistant, Robin Ellacott, in the dramatisation of Rowling’s three Strike novels, which were written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
“They’re all based in different worlds,” explains Tom.
“The first story is about the fashion industry, the middle one is set in the literary world, and the third is about ex-soldiers and is a bit darker.”
Having read the books first, Tom and Holliday felt they knew the characters – but Tom had his work cut out to bulk up to fit JK’s description of his character, a former military cop.
“I did start lifting heavy things, I needed to,” he reveals. “I wanted to look like someone who drinks pints regularly.
I was watching people bigger than me as they walked down the street and you do notice there’s a sway from left to right. I probably do it in real life now.
“And his coat is incredibly important. I would ask myself: ‘Should I take the coat off?’ and I would always answer: ‘No.’ It’s like he’s always on the move so he needs it. I felt lost without my coat in The Musketeers – if it was off, I’d wonder where it was. But it helps in terms of Strike needing shielding. I’d done my best to fill out.”
“I had heard someone say there’s a lot of Jo [JK Rowling] in Robin,” adds Holliday.
“When I read it, I thought: ‘She’s just like me.’ Every woman that I’ve spoken to thinks Robin is just like her. She has all the likeable qualities you want to have. She’s compassionate and practical, and brave and intelligent.
“She’s just so lovely – you recognise the best aspects of yourself in Robin.
She feels like your mate, or someone you’d want to be your mate.”
There’s also a definite frisson between Robin and Strike.
“A lot of series have an ‘are they/aren’t they?’ thing going on, and I just think these two are,” Tom smiles. “It’s not like [The X Files’] Scully and Mulder, where you’re not sure. It’s always there.”
Fans of the books will know that former soldier Cormoran – the estranged son of a rock-star father – has a prosthetic limb after losing half a leg in a bomb attack in Afghanistan.
This is represented with clever special effects on screen, and Tom was determined to make his movements believable in every scene.
“I wanted to get it right,” he says.
“I had a day with a movement director and a guy with the same condition. I spent the day going up the stairs, down the stairs, sitting down, standing up, trying to work out what one notices.
"Because if the amputation is below the knee, you’re far less likely to notice it when someone’s wearing full-length trousers.”
With the first three books now adapted, Tom and Holliday are keen to read more – when JK has written them, of course.
“I can’t wait to read book four,” says Holliday, excitedly.
“Jo said to me early on: ‘I am planning on writing a lot’, so, great!” adds Tom. “This role could go on and on.”
NEW! Strike: The Cuckoo’s Calling 9.05pm Sunday & Bank Holiday Monday 9pm BBC1
