Robert Carlyle says his role in ITV's The Hack has prompted him to revisit his own experiences with the tabloids, including a belief that newspapers listened to his phone messages in the 1990s when he was at the height of Trainspotting and The Full Monty. He told The Saturday Show on BBC Radio Scotland that he cannot know for certain, because at the time no one knew that private investigators were hacking phones and selling the contents to newspapers such as the News of the World. The Hack is a seven-part drama about the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World and reforms in print journalism. The series interweaves two real-life stories: the hacking scandal and the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, with David Tennant as Guardian journalist Nick Davies and Carlyle portraying former Metropolitan Police detective Dave Cook who investigates Morgan's death. "These two events seemingly have no real kind of correlation," Carlyle says. "But as the series goes on, you begin to see that the links between these things are quite wild."
Mr Morgan, a 37-year-old father of two, was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, in 1987. His brother Alastair claimed the News Of The World had followed and spied on Cook during his inquiries into the death. A string of inquiries over the decades have unearthed allegations of corruption and led to accusations that the Met police force put its reputation above finding the killer. ITV David Tennant plays Nick Davies, who uncovered evidence of phone hacking, while Carlyle's Dave Cook navigates the investigation with the aim of delivering justice for Morgan's family.
Carlyle says he takes his role in the drama very seriously, especially as many of the people involved are still alive. "Dave Cook, the guy I play, is still around so you've got to try your best to make it accurate and to give a good portrayal of them," he says. "He did wrong things, there's no doubt about it. What he wanted was to find justice for Daniel Morgan's family. That was his drive and that was his thing all the way through. But because of the problems that he faced and trying to get these convictions to set, he broke little rules here and there."
"You'd think it's obvious that David and I would have done something together but we never worked together and never met," Carlyle says. "But it was an absolute pleasure working with David." Tennant, who has a long-running reputation for professional rigor, "was on it every second, every moment, every scene," Carlyle adds. "I got a bit mesmerised sometimes."
Carlyle, who grew up in the Maryhill area of Glasgow, has lived mostly in Canada for the past 15 years. He moved to Vancouver when he took on a starring role in the long-running US fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time, which ended in 2018. Since then, he has worked largely in UK productions such as The Full Monty and Toxic Town, written by Jack Thorne. "I still have the family home, it's still very much in Glasgow. That will always be the case. My links to Glasgow will never, never diminish." Those links include his devotion to Partick Thistle. "I still go there," he says. "I'm always back in Glasgow around Christmas time and New Year. Me and my two boys go. I always take them to a couple of Thistle games at that time. Absolutely love it."
The start of next year will mark 30 years since the release of Trainspotting and Carlyle's iconic performance as the sociopathic Francis Begbie. He says he never tires of talking about the role and the film. "I'm blessed that there was a couple of things that I did back then in the 90s - one of them was Trainspotting and the other one's the Full Monty," he says. "These pieces and these characters meant so much to people - so to have been involved in something like that is an absolute blessing." He is also developing a new outing focusing on the further adventures of Begbie, based on Irvine Welsh's book The Blade Artist, with one script of six chapters that may become a six-hour TV piece in the next couple of years.
The full interview can be heard on the first edition of The Saturday Show from 10:15. The Saturday Show is on BBC Radio Scotland from 09:00 to 12:00 every weekend. It is also available on BBC Sounds.
