TV

How a real ex-copper helped Martin Freeman play a stressed-out policeman in The Responder

"You are joining my character when he is really unraveling," the Sherlock alum teases.

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Published on May 24, 2022 05:15PM EDT

After reading the script for Britbox's new cop show The Responder back in 2019, Martin Freeman planned to spend a chunk of the following year hanging out with police officers in preparation for his role. We all know what happened next.

"If the pandemic hadn't been on, I would have been spending time with coppers and ex-coppers, going on drive-alongs, going for drinks with them, finding out what the reality of the job entails and the toll that it can take on you," Freeman tells EW. "We weren't allowed to do any of that."

Fortunately, the Sherlock and Hobbit star was able to pick the brain of The Responder creator and writer Tony Schumacher, who spent a decade working as a policeman in the English city of Liverpool, where the show is set.

"Tony was a real gold mine for me," Freeman says. "He was a treasure trove. 'So how do you feel when this happens? What about when you go to a sudden death? What do you do then?' All this stuff that I have no firsthand knowledge about. He was a useful tool for that."

The six-part series stars Freeman as an exhausted policeman named Chris Carson, who attempts to help people seeking help via 999, the British equivalent of 911.

"He deals with everything from domestic violence to sudden death to rape to robbery," Freeman says. "He's been doing it for a long long long time. He's trying to hold together a failing marriage, he's trying to hold together a relationship with his young daughter, and in the first episode he is professionally and morally compromised when an old friend makes a request of him that is not fully kosher, shall we say."

Freeman's costars include Adelayo Adedayo as his partner, MyAnna Buring as his wife, and Game of Thrones alum David Bradley as a local unhoused man. With regard to Braldey, The Responder marked an opportunity for Freeman to work more closely with someone he's known since his early days as a stage actor.

"My first ever job out of drama school in the '90s was Volpone with Michael Gambon, and then my second job was Mother Courage with Diana Rigg and David Bradley," he says. "So I've worked with David a few times over the years in minor ways. When David was cast I just thought, there's no one better for this. I think David's probably a bit of an old hippie, and I mean that as a compliment, and the part that he plays in this is someone who is not entirely attached to reality, let's say."

Freeman also confirms that Schumacher is currently at work writing a second season of the show. "That is correct, yes," he says. "Tony Schumacher has outlined roughly where he wants it to go, but he's ensconced in that process now. We're a long way from it looking like a neat and tidy plan."