Meet the Cast of Annika
short | 04:46 | CC
Nicola Walker, her cast mates and crew describes the small team of characters making up Glasgow’s Marine Homicide Unit in the new series Annika.
(somber music) - We wanted to introduce the audience to this character through the creation of a brand new police unit.
So we invented the Marine Homicide Unit with a small team that specialized in investigating crimes in water.
And that was our starting point.
- I think one of the things that's gonna be really appealing to the audience is that there are three strong women in this team.
You know, we obviously have Michael and Tyrone, but we've got Diane, we've got Annika, and we've got Blair.
And it's gonna be great for a female audience, you know, being able to see really good role models.
- I just called you Diane.
That's fine.
That's, that's funny.
- You know, I never expected Nick to go down the route of the cliche of the hard-bitten female boss.
Diane is more complicated than that.
Annika's so direct 'cause she's got that Scandinavian heritage that makes her quite bold in her statements.
And interestingly, Diane is, she's very similar.
And that's what we've been talking about when we're doing scenes.
- Don't want them to think I'm a dick for having a big private office, you know.
Wanna be a team player.
This is your office, isn't it?
- Yeah.
- She's a real champion of women, actually, and a little champion of Annika.
And the way she sort of investigates; she thinks she's brilliant.
- Annika is the leader of the team.
- Excellent.
- She's just rocked up to take the post of boss in this new unit that's been put together.
- I think she's one of the best kinds of leaders -- that she realizes that it's a team effort.
You know, they all rely on each other.
But equally when things go wrong, she'll be the first one to put her hand up and take responsibility.
- Always really liked small ensembles in these kinds of shows.
So we've given her a team of three other detectives, and we thought really carefully about what that sort of blend of detectives were, and we decided that each one would have, you know, a particular kind of specialism.
- Michael is the team search diver on one level.
That's, you know, that's his job and he's brilliant at it.
- Call that an instinct.
- Of course there's another level that they know each other quite well.
- Michael's had a little bit of history with Annika.
They were in police college together.
They haven't seen each other for, for a while but my character's had designs on the top job, and Annika's come in to fill that post.
So, my nose is being put out a wee bit because of that.
- I don't think Annika thinks it was ever his job.
It was always hers.
- DS Tyrone Clark, who's new to the unit, he's come straight out of Border Command, which we've invented as a kind of drugs patrolling thing, and he wanted to look for something a bit more different.
And he's really keen to prove himself.
- Tyrone's fascinating.
She thinks he's brilliant and she knows that he needs to relax into the fact that he's part of a team; that no one expects him to solve cases on his own.
- Don't - Seriously?
- What are you gonna do, jump on the wing?
- Tyrone is the goal-focused action man with the team.
He's used to maybe a different pace of things and a different way of attacking problems.
You know, joining this new family, kind of presents him with a new mentor in a sense with Annika and a new way of approaching how to think 'round a problem as opposed to attack the problem.
- So I modeled the tides and I'm 84% certain that the Valkyrie left Bute on Friday night.
- And then we have DS Blair Ferguson.
She's the one who has access to all the particular sorts of specialist information that the team might need in order to support the investigation.
- Blair is the senior analyst in the team and she deals with all the kind of data and technology of the investigations.
So she's the kind of, the really brainy one, I guess.
- Keep an eye on Blair, because without her there's a lot of times we would be completely lost during cases, and she does it so effortlessly.
Maybe would be considered a misfit in another unit, as would Annika, as would Michael, and probably Tyrone.
I think what I'm realizing is that we are the perfect mix of misfits.
We work together very well, but we would probably be considered quite unusual independently if we worked in other units.
(music ends)
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