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Vicky McClure (Line of Duty) and Johnny Harris (Medici) are firm friends off screen but fierce adversaries on it. They have history. Their scene together in Shane Meadows’ This is England 86, where McClure’s Lol is assaulted by her father (Mick, played by Harris) and then kills him was a chilling, brutal encounter that no one who saw it will forget. So the prospect of a renewed confrontation, even as other characters, in the upcoming thriller Without Sin is compelling.
Vicky McClure (centre) in Without Sin. Credit: Seven
It’s been a decade in the making, though. “I was having a coffee with the producer of this show, Sian McWilliams, who I’d worked with years ago [on Troy: Fall of the City],” says Harris, “And she said, ‘What would you like to do next?’ It just happened to be the 10-year anniversary of This is England ’86 [which came out in 2010], so I said to Sian, ‘Well look, Vicky and I have been talking and if we can find the right project, you know, it could be really cool to go back to work together again.’ But it had to be the right thing.”
Without Sin is that right thing, and once again it places McClure and Harris at loggerheads, steps back and lets the sparks fly. McClure plays Stella, whose 14-year-old daughter Maisy is found dead at their family home with the bloodied, hooded figure of Charles Stone (Harris) standing over her.
“When we meet Charles he’s in prison,” says Harris. “He’s serving a long sentence for the murder of Stella’s child. And he is either a very, very dangerous, manipulative, psychopathic man. Or he is a very, very desperate, really quite simple man who’s trapped. The drama of the show is working out which one it is.”
It falls to McClure’s Stella to unpick the past and find out. We meet her three years on from the murder, during which time she’s become something of a recluse. A cab driver in Nottingham, her life is maundering and directionless until she finds herself embarking on a restorative justice program that puts her in contact with Charles, her daughter’s (assumed) killer.
“Solving what happened to her daughter gives Stella some purpose again to try and fight for what’s right and get some answers,” says McClure.
Did Harris know whether he was the who in the whodunit? “I did with this. Not to get too contentious about it but I don’t like it when things are developed as you make them — you can go in to a project and you don’t know the outcome. I came through the theatre, and for me part of the joy of it is putting all the pieces together, working out the archetypes and the through line, and knowing why your character does things. So I like to know, and on this I knew quite early on whether he was guilty or innocent.”
Without Sin is not, you’ll have gathered, a barrel of laughs but then you wouldn’t expect high jinks and pratfalls when performers who can marshal the intensity of McClure and Harris are involved.
“Listen, me and Johnny have very similar tastes in performance,” says McClure. “If you meet me and Johnny when we’re having a coffee [and Harris says they talk on the phone every day], we’re just very happy people, quite glass-half-full, all that kind of stuff. It’s just when we go to work that that changes – we love to find the truth. We love to dig deep and portray characters that come with a certain challenge.”
“He is either a very, very dangerous, manipulative, psychopathic man. Or he is a very, very desperate, really quite simple man who’s trapped,” says Johnny Harris of his role in Without Sin.Credit: Mark Bourdillon/Left Bank/Sony Pictures Television
The problem, perhaps, is that their first performance together has proved indelible.
“The one thing that both of us knew,” says Harris, “was that the first question we had to ask was, was it feasible that we could get back on screen together and not have people go, ‘Look, it’s Mick and Lol!’ Once we knew that, we were away.”
If they’re incendiary on screen, then in real life together McClure and Harris are like naughty kids on report – finishing each other’s sentences, cracking the other one up, stoically refusing to take anything seriously. I ask them how they work up such passion on set … and that draws the biggest laugh of the day.
“We’re laughing,” McClure says, “because we’ve both got different processes. Sometimes the director says cut and Johnny will be pumping his energy and I’ll be quietly listening to music and we’ll both be very respectful of the fact that that’s what the other’s choosing to do right now. Other times I’ll stick a Snapchat filter on his face …”
“And it’ll be, ‘Aw mate, have you seen this?’” takes up Harris, “and it’s me looking like a goofy tit in a Santa outfit.”
Whatever the mood, though, there’s always time for some reflection.
“I will say this,” says McClure, “when we were on set together for this it was always just such a joy to go to the other one, ‘Look! We’re doing it.’” When we did This Is England ’86, I’d literally just left my office job and Johnny wasn’t exactly stacked with work. We both stood there after doing a few scenes and went, ‘I wonder if we’ll ever get another job again?’ And now we’re here with our own show. We don’t take anything for granted but being able to work with your best mate is just … the best.”
Without Sin is on Seven, Wednesday, 9.10pm.
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