Colin Farrell opens up on “life-changing” experience filming The North Water
The actor described the project as "about as hard as film work can be".
Colin Farrell has opened up about his "life-changing" experience shooting BBC Two drama The North Water, which is thought to have been filmed further north than any television drama before it.
Based on the novel by Ian McGuire, the new miniseries set in 1859 follows disgraced ex-army surgeon Patrick Sumner (Jack O'Connell) as he embarks on a treacherous whaling expedition in the Arctic.
Farrell co-stars as harpooner and violent thug Henry Drax, who proves to be a dangerous presence aboard the Volunteer, while the ship's captain is distracted by other matters.
Wishing to capture the "grounded" nature of the book, writer-director Andrew Haigh settled on the ambitious task of filming in real-world locations, including the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
At a press event for The North Water, Farrell said of the shoot: "It was life changing, to be honest. Obviously, you come back from it and your life looks exactly the same, but I felt that it was a really profound experience."
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"It was one of those experiences that sometimes you're lucky enough to have in film. Where you go through the fire enough with people that you know that if you see them in 20 years, you'll share the mutual acknowledgement that you went through an experience that was really significant and really profound and really changed you in ways that may reveal themselves through the years."
Farrell went on to describe exactly why the environment of the show touched him on such an emotional level, revealing that he even felt compelled to keep a video diary for his children to watch.
"Just the space, just the vastness of it, the beauty of it and the silence that was up there," he continued. "There was just this emptiness and this loneliness to the place that was very beautiful and very honest.
"It wasn't the kind of loneliness that we can experience in the cities as people, when we're around people and we feel lonely. This was the loneliness of when you hear people talk about human insignificance in the face of nature and the brutality of nature, the beauty of nature, the vastness of the scope of it – it was very much that every single day."
Farrell added: "It was so beautiful and felt like such an honour to be up there in that part of the world that very few people have seen."
The actor, also known for his roles in True Detective, Fantastic Beasts and hotly anticipated blockbuster The Batman, also underwent a physical transformation for the role of Henry Drax, adding to the visceral nature of the project.
The North Water is coming soon to BBC Two. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
