++ IN PRINT :: INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES - TORN++
This interview originally appeared on Teletext website September 25th 2007
Walker tears up two families
Nicola Walker is best known for her long-running role in Spooks, where she played MI-5 agent Ruth Evershed, writes Charlie Ghagan.
Yet those who saw the thirtysomething Londoner in her latest role, as a nervy woman who abducts a young child from a beach in ITV1 thriller Torn, will have witnessed an entirely different side to Nicola's acting range.
"You can't compare the two characters in any sense at all," she insists.
Co-starring Holly Aird and Bradley Walsh, Torn sees Nicola play Joanna Walker, a part she says is "totally different" to previous roles.
"Joanna is a very ordinary woman who has got away with this terrible thing she has done for 11 years," says the actress, whose TV break came alongside Robson Green in drama Touching Evil.
"But she was never going to get away with it forever. When viewers meet her, she's at the point of being found out."
In a gripping opener, the girl's real mum (Aird) tracks down her daughter, now called Lori, reducing Joanna to a broken woman when police come knocking.
"I think she's probably lived every day terrified of someone tapping her on the shoulder, but I do think that is only on a subconscious level," says Nicola.
"As far as she is concerned, Lori is her daughter. In her mind she has twisted events so the lie is now the truth. Much of her is still in denial."
The instinctive decision to take the child 11 years previously came about after a distraught Joanna failed to conceive a baby of her own.
"I find her incredibly interesting, in that Joanna has done this terrible thing and is yet to be able to justify it," says Nicola, who starred in Brit flick Four Weddings And A Funeral.
"Lori is like a gift. She comes at Joanna's lowest point where she feels her future isn't worth continuing."
With such insecurities, it's hard to position Joanna in the traditional "evil" role of a child snatcher.
"Joanna has done a terrible thing but isn't a bad person," maintains Nicola.
"If you separate people from society by saying they are evil or insane, that makes us feel better about ourselves. Whereas with Joanna, you have to look at her as a product of our society; she slipped through the cracks; she needed help but was left on her own."
Parts two and three sees Lori - now renamed Alice - adapt to life with her real family. For Joanna's man Stephen (Walsh), who was ignorant of the abduction, this is hard to stomach.
"He and Lori are the innocents in this. Neither had any idea of their history; neither saw it coming," says Nicola.
"Through her actions she completely destroys one of the two people she loves the most in the world."
Torn, ITV, ITV1, Sept 26, 9pm
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