Red Eye star Jing Lusi reveals the pressures to deliver with season 2 and the importance of being the series lead

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

When someone tells you that they had “a moment” at London’s Euston station, you assume, not unreasonably, that it was a moment of despair, or rage, or a combination of the two, in response to some train-related tribulation. Not for Jing Lusi, who plays DI Hana Li in Red Eye, ITV’s high-octane, thoroughly daft, edge-of-your-seat-compelling thriller. Her moment at Euston was a joyful one.

“When Trigger Point [the bomb disposal drama starring Vicky McClure] came out, I remember it was all over the big billboards in Waterloo station. I took a video of it and sent it as a joke to my producer asking: ‘Can this be us?’. Fast-forward a year, and it was us, at Euston. Seeing it was quite a moment. Pretty amazing, actually.”

The amazing part wasn’t that her giant face was plastered all over billboards – although, “That is surreal,” the 40-year-old says, “especially when you don’t expect it”. What thrilled Lusi was what the billboards meant. “That ITV were doing all this marketing was a real vote of confidence. I had such a good time making it that, for me personally, I was already winning regardless of the reception it was going to get. Anything else is a bonus.”

The broadcaster’s confidence was, it seems, well-placed. Despite attracting what we might diplomatically call mixed reviews, and launching in the shadow of Hijack on Apple TV, which was a similarly-themed thriller at 35,000 feet, albeit with double the budget and Idris Elba as the lead, Red Eye was a hit.

“I’ve never worried about ratings before,” Lusi explains. “But I’ve never led a show before – I was like ‘It’s on the lead. It’s their funeral…’ With this, I cared. It probably wasn’t the healthiest habit but I was looking at ratings as soon as they were announced every week. I was so surprised and overwhelmed that the audience grew every week.”

Red Eye’s popularity meant that chief among the “anything else” of bonuses coming Lusi’s way was, inevitably, a second series. “My exec said to me, ‘This is your sophomore year. You’ve made a hit album, you’ve set the bar high and now you’ve got to deliver’. And she was right. We do have to deliver.”

Lusi obviously believes that the second series delivers, in spades, and she makes no bones about fulfilling a lifelong ambition with the show. “My whole career, I’ve wanted to lead and I’d posit that most actors want to lead. I’ve worked with some amazing leads – Constance Wu [on Crazy Rich Asians], Gal Gadot [on Heart of Stone], Rowan Atkinson [on Man vs Bee] – and I’ve learnt so much from them. Not just about performance but about how you are setting the tone on set every day. Watching and learning for most of my career has been pivotal to then being able to have such a good time on Red Eye and to be the lead that I wanted to be.”

The lead that she is – the person that she is – is east Asian. Born in China, Lusi and her parents moved to the UK when she was five, settling in Southampton. Up until recently, it was rare to have a lead in a returning primetime drama that wasn’t white – unless that drama was explicitly concerned with exploring race or the realities of multicultural Britain.

Among the notable exceptions: Luther, starring Idris Elba, Killing Eve with Sandra Oh, and, back in 2004, Hustle, BBC One’s con artist caper, which was led by Adrian Lester. The first Line of Duty starred Lennie James but while the series returned, he did not.

But lately that picture seems to be changing with the arrival of DI Ray, starring Parminder Nagra, Ellis with Sharon D Clarke, and, of course, Red Eye. Lusi has previously talked about the importance of representation, so does she feel a responsibility to be a spokesperson? “I spoke about it a lot promoting season one and I’m so glad I did, but I have let that go,” says Lusi, who is soon due to start filming Stephen Moffat’s new political comedy drama Number 10.

“The actor Benedict Wong, who has been very kind to me during this whole process, said to me, ‘You just need to do you’ and that if I take that [responsibility] on, it will ruin the experience. As an actor, I realised that it’s way beyond what I should be doing.”

The pro that she is, Lusi brings it back to the show. “In series one, you got to see all this amazing representation, it was a drama about British-Chinese relations and Hana’s ethnicity mattered to the story. Series two has moved on, it’s a different conspiracy, and Hana just happens to be an east Asian cop. So, she’s just being her – and I’m just gonna do me.’’

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