Run Away's James Nesbitt and Minnie Driver on de-ageing technology in Netflix series: "It was quite shocking"

**Warning: Contains spoilers for Netflix's Run Away episodes 1 and 2**

Run Away is the latest binge watch based on one of Harlan Coben’s novels to hit Netflix, making it his 12th for the streamer, with all episodes released on New Year’s Day.

Simon Greene (James Nesbitt) is a distraught dad who’s searching for his missing daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange). He finds her busking in a park and addicted to drugs, but she refuses to go back home with him. Her boyfriend Aaron shows up, who Simon blames for getting her hooked on drugs, and it leads to a violent confrontation.

When Aaron winds up dead in his flat, the last place Paige was living, Simon and his wife Ingrid (Minnie Driver) decide to take matters into their own hands and visit the location.

Things spiral out of control, and after meeting with Paige and Aaron's drug dealer, who operates in the basement of the building next door, and who they think might help locate Paige, Ingrid is shot by one of his associates. All of this action takes place in episode 1, with Ingrid in hospital and her fate uncertain in episode 2.

While Simon’s at her side, there’s a flashback scene to their first date in a restaurant, and de-ageing technology has been used to make Nesbitt and Driver appear younger, using advanced visual effects provided in post-production by Space VFX.

“I didn’t realise they were doing that,” Nesbitt tells Radio Times exclusively. “I was watching it thinking, ‘God, I look quite good there,’ and then I realised they’d done something.”

He remembers wearing prosthetics for a previous project where he was made to look older, which “looked really incredible and was a bit frightening”, but this is the first time he’s been de-aged. “I think it looks quite good. I mean, it's odd. People know it’s obviously de-ageing, so that's sort of in your mind, but it’s an extraordinary technique.”

It's also Driver’s first experience with the technology, confirming she and Nesbitt didn’t know that’s what they were going to do in the series. “I think they were going to try to get away with lots of lighting and good make-up, but obviously it's very difficult for a 55-year-old to look like they did when they were 25,” she explains.

“It’s really weird, but it was only weird because I don't watch anything that I do. I'm not really interested in seeing the final product, because I'm more interested in what the making of it was.

“When I was younger, it was so much about the fascination of how you look, because I was young and pretty and figuring it all out. I wanted to see how I was working as an actor. I wanted to see if I look good, like it was all the vanity of youth, and it was interesting, and it taught me things, but as I get older, I don't want to judge myself, because I do know what I used to look like, particularly on film and television. I don't want to ever be made to feel uncomfortable about getting older.”

She continues: “I watched [the de-ageing scene] because I wanted to see what the AI would look like. It was quite shocking, but it really just looked like I did when I was younger, and that made me happy. It reminded me of when I started out, and I was like, ‘I feel so grateful to her.’ It really threw me back to some of my early films, and I was like, ‘She does a great job.’ I hope she'd be proud of where I wound up.”

Read more:

• Best-selling author Harlan Coben is Guest Editor of the Radio Times: What to Watch app
• Harlan Coben reveals new Netflix thriller Run Away stands out from previous shows – and which episode to watch out for

Run Away is streaming now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media.

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