by Ashleigh Stevenson
The element of surprise is key for a detective type story. It can hold the story together or it can completely tear it apart, and surprise is what Lee Ingleby felt whilst he was reading the script for his new British crime show, Innocent. Speaking with FilmInk, Lee said that he “kept trying to guess the outcome as I was reading the script, and I kept getting it wrong.”
Lee Ingleby plays a man sentenced to life for the murder of his wife. Released on a technicality, he goes to live with his brother and tries to reconnect with his kids, who are living with his wife’s sister. Meanwhile, a detective has reopened the case to determine if he’s actually innocent.
Apart from the whodunit aspect, what attracted the actor to the project was what his character goes through in the show. “I was really interested in what it must feel like to play someone who has been released years early from a life sentence and put back into a society who doesn’t want you there; that struggle to ‘get back to normal’ and to reconnect with his children who simply don’t know him.”
Lee did research to get into the character’s mindset, reading a book about a man that was involved in a similar situation to his character. “He’d accepted that he was to spend the rest of his life ‘inside’ and then was suddenly thrust back into freedom from new evidence coming to light. It’s a tale of how he struggled with it all. He described it as grief,” Lee explained.
In a completely contrasting universe, Lee Ingelby’s pop culture cred was cemented with his role as Stanley Shunpike, conductor on the Knight Bus in Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. It was an amazing experience for the actor, who had read the books before getting the part. “…the effects and details were astonishing. And the bus itself was a piece of art. If only all London busses were like that.”
Innocent is available on Digital HD and DVD now.
