Landscapers | Interview with Kate O’Flynn (DC Emma Lancing)

Introduce us to your character…

I play DC Emma Lancing, who is the rookie detective with the sniffer dog instinct, ready to get to the truth. What I really loved about playing Emma was the fact that she has no need to be liked whatsoever. As an actor, when you feel that need to be liked strongly sometimes and are dependent on people saying yes to you, it’s just so liberating to play someone who doesn’t need anyone’s approval – she’s just going to do what she wants and she’s going to follow her instinct. She just wants to be good at her job.

The other thing about Emma is she has a completely opposite worldview to Susan Edwards, particularly. Emma is someone who would say you might be dealt rough cards in life, but you face them head on; you don’t run away from your issues and expect someone else to fix it. I think she has a total intolerance of that because of stuff that’s happened in her life. So being opposite Susan – and Christopher – she finds quite confronting.

Is she based on anyone in real life?

She’s an amalgamation of all the police but no, she’s not anyone specific. She’s been created for this piece to be as different to Christopher and Susan as you can get.

What did you know or create for her backstory?

It was from conversations with Will [Sharpe, director] which really helped with the playing of her, and the function of her in the series. We talked about vulnerability, and that for Emma being vulnerable is a scary place. There’s a little bit in, I think, episode three or four, where she mentions that her dad was an alcoholic. And then you find out that he was kind of rubbish, and knocked her Mum about a bit. What I got from that was Emma’s someone that’s never been allowed the space to be vulnerable. She’s had to take on that role of protector (or thought she’s had to) very young as a child. So it makes complete sense that she has then gone into the police. I think that means that she maybe doesn’t allow herself any kind of fantasy world. She’s very much in the real world. In Susan, she sees her dad, I think.

So what does she make of the Edwards and the case?

Will [Sharpe] kept saying, ‘Keep her guard up at all times.’ She’s got no time for it, she’s no-nonsense; she just wants to get to the nub of it. There’s no thrills with her. And yet she’s a bit cocky as well. She’s like that mix of cocky and awkward at the same time. Socially awkward but she’s got this bravado as well.

How would you characterise her relationship with her two fellow detectives?

With Collier [Daniel Rigby] she’s got a good relationship. She feels confident with him, she’s got big balls and I think Collier likes that. Then with Wilkie [Samuel Anderson] – I love that relationship. There’s a sort of sniff of romance there. It’s good yin and yang – she has got that really quick tempo. And then Wilkie is someone that, you know, maybe seems a bit more laid back, but is actually on it as well. There’s a kindness to him. And there’s a little frisson there. But where you meet Emma in the series she’s just not capable of a relationship I don’t think.

You’ve featured in several police or detective shows. How is this one different?

What I love about it is the stepping off point is true crime but then actually it’s an epic love story. The story could have been told in a way that had that closed question of did they or didn’t they do it. What’s brilliant about Ed [Sinclair] and Will [Sharpe] is that they’ve opened that up entirely to be this much broader question about fantasy… what role do you play in your life? What roles do you play in the relationship? Who’s the gardener? Who’s the garden? That gives it much more depth. It’s a richer series on account of that, I think, because the themes are larger and broader. So yeah, I would describe it as an epic, curveball-laden love story.

What did you know of the Edwards’s story before being involved in this, and how has making the show changed your preconceptions?

I didn’t know anything until I found out about an audition and then Googled it. You know, there really was no chat among the actors about whether they did it, who they were, what happened. Will, from the outset, said, ‘Look, I think we just go with the fact that we don’t know what this is. We don’t know whether they did it.’ And it’s kind of not about that, in a way. And there’s something kind of disrespectful hypothesising about it because there are two people that are dead and two people who are in prison. But it was interesting meeting the real Douglas [Susan Edwards’ solicitor Darrell Ennis-Gayle] who popped in to set one day, because he does still see Susan and has a soft spot for them both. I guess I was so concentrating on the way Emma would think, which is ‘get them, by hook or by crook,’ that meeting Darrell humanised them for me again, and it just reminded me of the complexity of it. You know, there’s a lot of nuance in the piece – reading the bullet points of that case, it could have gone a different way. And I’m glad it hasn’t.