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Wakeling talks about his role in major new ITV scifi series
Primeval.
MARK PLAYS CAPTAIN TOM RYAN
“I think that he and Cutter develop a nice working dynamic but you can see there are few moments when Nick’s gone off on another crazy mission and Ryan has to go after him again thinking “oh, God, what have you done now? Give me back my soldiers!!”
Mark Wakeling is describing his role as the heroic but rather stoic, Captain Tom Ryan:
“Ryan is just a soldier, but he’s a very good one; he’s ex-special forces and has been identified by some rather shadowy characters in the Government as someone who can get the job done in some pretty crazy situations. He’s someone who does what he’s told, when he’s told and doesn’t ask questions.
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He doesn’t care much for the fact that his immediate boss Claudia is a civvy and he doesn’t care much for Lester either. He’s a man of few words; is efficient and quick in everything that he does, and that translates in the way he deals and talks to people.
You can see that in the way he deals with Connor, who to him is just this really annoying kid. I don’t think Ryan understands why Connor is there at all and spends most of the time ignoring him!
That’s not to say he’s an unpleasant guy in anyway, not at all. He’s extremely honourable and I get the feeling that he’s immensely pleased to be involved. In dealing with Cutter and the team, he finds himself protecting a group of people who actually have some morals, who want to do the right thing and that’s admirable to him.
Being a soldier Ryan has spent years doing things that he didn’t actually want to do, but now he realises that he has a purpose in this. And even though he finds certain members more than a little irritating, he becomes the group’s unofficial bodyguard and he relishes that. He’d never admit it though!
I think that he and Cutter develop a nice working dynamic, but you can see there are few moments when Nick’s gone off on another crazy mission and Ryan has to go after him again thinking “oh, God, what have you done now? Give me back my soldiers!!”
That said, he does have his team of guys around him, backing him up, so it’s a very normal military set-up in that sense.”
And Wakeling would know, coming from a military background himself:
“I trained at Sandhurst and then became an officer in the Coldstream Guards for three years. I did tours of Northern Ireland and Bosnia where I served my initial commission, then left to go to Drama school.”
It’s not an obvious transition to make:
“I always wanted to be an actor and I always wanted to be a soldier. I loved all those wonderful old films like A Bridge Too Far and so on and all those actors were in the Army for National Service or the War. I’m kind of following in their footsteps and am really fortunate that I’ve got to enjoy both careers which are of course now crossing over in a strange, art imitating life kind of a way; which is great and far less dangerous!”
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