Richard Armitage: Spooks scene inspired Nicola Walker audiobook casting
Armitage's new audiobook Geneva is available now.
The Hobbit and The Stranger star Richard Armitage is no stranger to voice work, but his most recent audiobook is a project which is an entirely new venture for the actor - he is not only starring in the audio drama, but he has also written it.
Armitage's audiobook is Geneva, an Audible exclusive thriller which follows Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sarah Schaffer and her husband Daniel, who become entangled in a high stakes game after travelling to Switzerland for a vital conference
Sarah is voiced by Nicola Walker, with the project making for a Spooks reunion with Armitage, after the pair starred in that BBC show as Ruth Evershed and Lucas North.
Armitage spoke about his new audiobook exclusively with RadioTimes.com, and it turns out that the pair's Spooks played an even bigger role in Walker's casting than it might have originally seemed.
Armitage said: "It's interesting, because there were quite a few names being thrown around. And Audible were so brilliant to me, they said 'you can choose your reader'. But I also felt like, and I feel this about anything that I'm developing, I have to slightly step back from it because otherwise you just end up hiring your friends. And I wanted the best person for the role.
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"But when her name came up, it was literally in the same week that I had written a scene which in retrospect was a subliminal recall of a scene I've actually played with Nicola in Spooks where she's tied up and drugged at the end of Lucas North’s story.
"And when I saw Nicola’s name on the page, I was like 'that's serendipity', because I'd literally just had her face in my head, accidentally. So I thought she was going to be perfect. And so I said 'I'd be happy with this selection', and then it just so happened that it was Nicola so I was really thrilled.
"She's such an actor of gravity, I thought she'll be perfect for this role and she will make it her own. So I felt very honoured that she said yes."
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Armitage is also set to star in an upcoming Netflix series Damage, which also features Charlie Murphy and Indira Varma and is based on the 1991 novella of the same name from Josephine Hart.
Geneva will be available exclusively on Audible in November 2022. www.audible.co.uk. Looking for something to watch? Check out our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
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