Martin Clunes talks transforming into Huw Edwards for new drama tackling "awful" crimes – and reveals why Edwards's family do not feature

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

At Westminster Magistrates Court on 31 July 2024, Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children. So ended, in public disgrace, the career of a BBC newsreader who only two years before had told the nation that Queen Elizabeth II was dead.

Falls from grace are seldom so spectacular and now, invariably, there is a television drama to recount it. Power: the Downfall of Huw Edwards stars Martin Clunes as Edwards and he gives a remarkable performance that is revealing in every detail. The short back and sides with exact side-parting, the arm extended over the desk to project authority, the portentous Welsh tone: Clunes nails it all.

“Edwards delivering the news of the Queen’s death is so well known, that it needed mimicry from me, in a way,” says Clunes. “Those rhythms and sounds had to be spot on. I was happy to get it sounding right.”

Apparently happily married with five adult children, when not reading the news Edwards was paying a series of young men for sexually explicit images. The script is based on text messages between Edwards and a 17-year-old in south Wales, Ryan (not his real name), played with aching vulnerability by Osian Morgan. After sending texts demanding pictures, Edwards would calmly address the nation.

“What’s so fascinating about this,” says Clunes, “is that we saw Edwards in our homes every night and because he was in the public eye, it just seemed to amplify everything.”

Edwards’s treatment of Ryan was part of a pattern of online and text encounters that, the drama argues, led to his downfall. One 26-year-old man in Wales was sending the child porn that Edwards accessed – a crime, says Clunes, “which is awful, there’s no way back from that.”

Did Clunes, an actor still bathed in the warm light of his 18 years as Doc Martin, consider the risks of such a dark role? “I’ve never thought like that,” he says. “Don’t ponder yourself too much, that way madness lies. The idea of, ‘Well, I won’t do that. It’ll burn me’. I’m still hanging in there by saying yes to all sorts of things.”

As well as this new drama for 5, those different things presently include a cameo appearance on Best Medicine, the US version of Doc Martin in which he appeared as the father of the character he made famous (“my wife’s one of the producers on it and it seemed fun. They’ve just got their second series commissioned so, fingers crossed it’s a success”), as well as new British comedy film Mother’s Pride and his attention-grabbing turn as Mr Earnshaw in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

I suggest that it feels like a late career blossoming for the 64-year-old. “I was always good. I’ve been saying it for years, until I was blue in the face.” Really? “I just got a really good part in Wuthering Heights,” he laughs.

To play Edwards, Clunes’s ears were “pinned back” and he went on the 5:2 diet. And the voice? “My wife and I listened to archive stuff. It was really weird, because you thought that he would be off duty and fun, but he was being quite creepy. I had it on my phone and would listen just to keep his interesting rhythms.”

After Ryan’s mother and stepfather, played here by Sian Reese-Williams and Jason Hughes, approached The Sun, the paper published the story of a top BBC star paying a “teenager for sexual pictures” in July 2023. Power, directed by Michael Samuels and written by Mark Burt, gives the newspaper some credit for bringing down Edwards.

Has the drama given Clunes a more positive opinion of tabloid newspapers? “No. I’m in the public eye like Huw Edwards, so all the papers want is for us to be shamed or caught as hypocrites or doing something awful.” But no one thinks ill of you, I say. You’re a figure who enjoys immense public goodwill. “Who better?!”

Apart from referencing the public statement by Edwards’s wife Vicky Flind in July 2023, which named him as the presenter alleged to have paid for sexual images of a teenager, the drama pays little heed to Edwards’s family. “Huw Edwards is the bad guy,” says Clunes. “So, we don’t need [to see] the bad guy’s family.” But does he have sympathy for them? “I do. There’s no denying the fact that the families of people who commit these crimes are secondary victims. But this is Ryan’s story.”

Clunes isn’t fantastically clued-up about modern communication technology – “I don’t look at social media” – and seems genuinely nonplussed by Edwards’s use of mobile phones to bully Ryan into sending pictures.

“Edwards’s secret life was enabled by telephones and PayPal accounts and that sort of stuff,” he says. “I just didn’t know about it. Before phones, were people up to these things? Am I very blessed or naive?”

What about his time in TV, did he ever notice… “Everyone’s at it?” he interjects. “Well, they used to be. But with consent. I mean, traditionally, actors have been painted as rogues.” He means sex, which is of course different to abuse. And as he points out, other institutions fare no better. “The church has got up to speed now, and the government. Remember tractor porn? That guy watching porn in the Palace of Westminster!” Would he play the MP? “Well, I’ve got a tractor!”

We’re joking, though the evidence of his performance as Edwards and many other quietly brilliant parts, from Manhunt to Out There, suggests Clunes would do it very well. “I’m that sort of actor, I like to kind of get lost in someone. To lose me and just try to be them, rather than turning up and being charming. I have never quite pulled that off.” But we both know, he just has.

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Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards will air on Tuesday 24 March at 9pm on 5.

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