Outlander star Lauren Lyle is taking centre stage in ITV's on-screen adaptation of Val McDermid's first novel.
The new gritty police drama follows detective Karen Pirie as she reopens a cold case murder that’s been the subject of a provocative true crime podcast. Karen is looking into the murder of teenage barmaid Rosie Duff after she was stabbed to death in 1995, and suspicion fell on the three male students who discovered her body.
Speaking to Marie Claire ahead of the show's premiere, Lauren said: "It felt so meaningful for the show to be seen through the lens of a woman.
"A woman who knows what it means to walk home at night and not know if you’re going to get home safe. To fight for this woman that the unimaginable happened to."
Scottish actress Lauren is best known for portraying Marsali MacKimmie Fraser in the Starz series Outlander, but is taking on the titular role in the new drama based on McDermid's novel The Distant Echo. The show has been adapted by actress and screenwriter Emer Kenny, and Lauren praised the 'witty' and 'self-aware' drama.
She said to the publication: "The scripts were just so witty. It was such a self-aware adaptation of what it is to live in the world we’re in and what it means to be a woman within it.
"Something that a lot of men have asked me is, ‘is Karen firey?’ and you would never ask a guy that. ‘Is he firey?’ I asked my boyfriend what he associated with ‘firey’ and he said, aggressive. Karen’s really not. She’s smart and hopeful.
"We’re so used to seeing middle-aged male detectives who are going through a divorce or a drinking problem and they’re dealing with that and then the case comes along and they struggle through it. Whereas Karen is at the beginning of her career. She’s passionate, excited and slightly out of her depth but that’s her advantage."
She added: "It’s funny I actually never wanted to be a police officer but I always thought the uniform was cool. In the first week of filming when Chris Jenks and I got given our police badges we would go off between camera setups to would practice flipping them at each other. We got really slick at it as you have to look cool doing this stuff.
"It’s tricky because the police are quite controversial, but I think Karen’s a realistic portrayal of what it’s like to be in the force. Learning the police jargon was fun.
"With all the interrogations I had to learn everything backwards. There’s a really big monologue, like 14/15 pages that I actually spent my birthday learning. We filmed that scene all in one take, I felt like I really trained a muscle after that."
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