Coldwater star Andrew Lincoln reveals one moment in life when he "lost it" - and talks filming shower scenes

In a London playground with his children, John (Lincoln) sees a man punch a boy in the face. Shocked, he says nothing. A woman also witnesses the assault. Appalled, she calls the man out. The man then attacks her. This time John does something — he runs from the park with his children, leaving the woman to a brutal beating.

This incident propels John, his wife Fiona (Indira Varma) and children to move to Coldwater, a remote and apparently idyllic Scottish village, which John imagines will be free of monstrous characters like the playground thug. Encountering his neighbour Tommy (an unrestrained Ewan Bremner in full weirdy-beardy odd Scot mode) and his wife Rebecca (a seemingly less unhinged Eve Myles), John soon realises that he couldn’t be more wrong.

As Coldwater reveals its slimy underbelly, tension gives way to violence, mayhem leads to murder, and John finds out that you can’t avoid the fight for ever. Monarch of the Glen, this is not.

What’s Coldwater about?

DAVID IRELAND I’m still not really sure. I’m never really sure what anything’s about. I wrote the first episode in 2020, during the lockdown. I was obsessively running and obsessively reading the Bible and obsessively reading true crime books, and my wife and I were talking about moving to the countryside. All that fed its way in, so every time I watch it, I see something different. I think it’s about faith. I think it’s about community.

I think it’s about a man running away from himself and running away from God. When he runs away from London, John thinks he’s running into safety, but actually… Andrew described it as about somebody who runs into the woods and meets a monster. I think that’s probably the best description of the show, in a nutshell.

What was it that appealed to you about the part?

ANDREW LINCOLN I said no to it twice. I was suitably frightened by the part, because it’s a man being dismantled. His masculinity being dismantled, he’s lost and there’s a real sense of a man in freefall, trying to get a sense of who he is in middle age. But I couldn’t get away and kept returning because I admire David’s writing so much. His superpower is that he writes such brilliant, funny dialogue. He tickles you as he pushes you off a cliff and I’d describe it as an unromantic comedy thriller.

There are so many familiar things to me – I recognise myself in the part and I recognise the marriage. I worked on it for six months in the development stage, but still I kept asking, “What is this? What are we doing?” One minute, it’s hopefully very funny and then one minute, it’s horrific. It’s really knotty as a result of that.

The opening scene of a man viciously attacking a woman is quite disturbing, not least because the protagonist — our “hero” — does nothing.

DI I was really surprised when everybody started talking about it being controversial. I’ve written some really violently shocking plays and compared to them, it’s not controversial. Writing it was fine, hearing it in the reading was fine, but it was only when I saw it on screen, I thought, “This is maybe a bit much…”

AL The opening sequence was the reason I said no to it. So, when we shot it, I said: “This is going to be a tightrope”. Because he’s not an archetype – he’s an everyman not behaving in a way that everybody would want to behave under duress. For that to be in the eyes of the audience is challenging.

For your return to British television after a decade of playing The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes, Coldwater is quite a departure.

AL It was a very conscious decision: after an archetypal sort of hero, this is the palate cleanser. And it was the best possible way of coming back to the UK. Not that I had left – my kids go to school here – and I hadn’t turned my back on anybody. It just so happens that my head’s been over there and my career’s been over there and I was under contract over there. I’m just trying to find work, whoever will have me.

Coldwater is about masculinity, among other things. Who taught you to be a man?

AL My mother, because she was much more present in my life than my father – and my peers. It’s interesting having children because there are certain tipping points – puberty, obviously – where they know all your best lines, your politics and your opinions and they turn away from you towards their peers. Your job is done until they get through that and you meet them again at 24, shake hands and say, “Nice to see you again”.

DI My father died when I was four, and I’m not sure he’d have been a good role model. My mother remarried when I was nine and my stepfather was a decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth man – and he was a good role model. I find myself pretty clueless as a father but I think a lot of people feel that way. I try to make my children laugh, I try to be as patient as I can and never lose my temper and that’s the best I can do.

From that first scene, Coldwater contains moments of explosive violence. Have you ever been confronted by violence like that?

DI I’ve been in situations where things threatened to get violent a few times but never with my children around. In those few instances, I remember having a moment of freezing and hesitation – and then intervening. But it was never an intervention to the extent that it got too frightening. A lot of writers are naturally passive and observe things, and I think sometimes in any dramatic incident, there’s something in me that will watch and take it all in.

AL I don’t remember much of the 90s but I do remember being with my old school rugby team, everybody a bit worse for wear, in a Hells Angels bar. A fight started, a glass got smashed, one of our guys had hit this other guy, and then he hit another of my friends and flattened his nose. Someone had a glass in my face and I was like, “Whoa whoa whoa! Look at his nose!” That gave us about 30 seconds to get the hell out of Dodge. I don’t think that was particularly heroic. I think it was just adrenaline.

Have you ever felt that violence within yourself?

AL I’m pretty mild-mannered and it takes a lot to get me riled. Although I did lose it with my daughter when she was two, because she wouldn’t put a sock on. I had to walk away and count to 20. And I remember another instance: I was in Australia, doing my PADI [Professional Association of Diving Instructors] course, with two friends, Shaun and Andy. Shaun is black and Andy is Asian. And there was this guy called Jeff. It was hot, I was three days into having given up smoking and we were quite nervous because there were great white sharks in Sydney Harbour. Jeff just kept being racist and I lost it. Both Andy and Shaun stepped in on my behalf and said – and this was really interesting – “Calm down. It’s not like we’re not used to it”. To this day, they say that I went “full Nosferatu”.

DI Growing up in Belfast, in a working class environment, I saw a lot of violence. Initially as a child, you’re shocked by it, but then as you grow up, it becomes normal. I grew up with the fear that inside me, there was a potential for violence. I think that’s where a lot of the violence in my work has come from. It’s like the characters of John and Tommy. Tommy is very comfortable with violence and John has violence within him but he’s very uncomfortable with it. Tommy and John are both me.

There’s an intense bathroom scene in which you bare your bum — do you feel nervous filming nude scenes?

AL There’s nothing like getting into a shower with a camera – and cameraman – that close to you. It builds a camaraderie that no other scene can. Actors and crew are people trying to make something out of nothing so they’re genuinely very supportive, collaborative and generous – because they know how exposing and strange it is. So, everyone is very respectful. It’s so different to the way it was on This Life. That was like the Wild West. There were no intimacy coordinators then, it was bonkers.

You mention faith as a theme of Coldwater. Do you have faith yourselves?

DI Around the time I was writing the first episode, I started praying and all I can say is that something happened. I had some kind of experience that changed me and made me want to read the Bible and go to church. I used to read it before but not for any Christian purposes. I read it because it’s one of the cornerstones of our civilisation and it’s got great stories in it that might inspire me – some of which are extremely violent. Now though, every morning before work, I read four or five chapters of the Bible for Christian purposes.

AL I’m deeply moved by being inside a church. I understand and I respect people’s devotion, but the only time I’ve ever felt compelled to go to church was in the 90s to hear a gospel choir. I love a gospel choir. I have friends who are Muslim, I have friends who are Jewish, and Christian friends as well. I’m jealous about their practice and how family and community is absolutely epicentre of a lot of worship in the world.

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