'Broadchurch' Postmortem: Exec Producer Talks Ellie and Hardy's (Lack of) Sexual Tension

Thu, March 19, 2015 at 3:00 AM UTC

Spoiler alert! The third episode of Broadchurch's second season saw Ellie (Olivia Colman) take the stand in Joe’s murder trial. The prosecution suggested that she and DI Hardy (David Tennant) were having an affair, and that that's the real reason she went to Hardy's hotel room after Joe’s arrest — they'd colluded to frame Joe for Danny Latimer's murder to get him out of the way.

On the Sandbrook side, Claire (Eve Myles) — who can feel herself again being drawn to her husband, suspected killer Lee (James D’Arcy) — told Ellie that Lee had drugged her the night the girls went missing and that he was cleaning the house when she awoke. Ellie and Hardy agreed that the inconsistencies in Claire’s story make her a suspect as well.

Below, we continue our weekly debriefings with Broadchurch executive producer Jane Featherstone.

So when you were shooting the Season 1 finale, you and creator Chris Chibnall knew that Ellie spending time alone in Hardy’s hotel room the night Joe was arrested would be used against them?
Yes. It’s a seed that was planted. We probably didn’t know exactly how [Chris] would use it, but you know, there was no question that leaving those two in a hotel room together — which is also one of my favorite scenes, actually — might be a useful thing to do.

The accusation is a particularly poetic twist given that some fans do ship Hardy and Miller. On The Graham Norton Show in January, when David and Olivia were shown fan art, they said they don’t see the sexual tension between the characters. Do you?
[Laughs.] Well, I don’t think there’s any tension between them at all, and that’s good and just as it should be, from mine and Chris’s point of view. I think that maybe there is charisma tension between them — there’s character tension, I think — but I don’t think there’s any sexual tension. And actually, there was an awful lot before Season 2 went out here [in the U.K.] about, “Oh, God, will they get Hardy and Ellie together?” And I think you can’t help watching dramas with a male and female lead like that, who have this connection somehow, and anticipating or thinking will that happen? But actually, I think we will never go there with that, and it’s better not to I think. But, it’s fine if you think that and think, “In another life, could these two have ever…” Who knows, you know? But actually, I think it was never our intention to try and make the audience really think there was any genuine sexual tension between them.

After her night out befriending Claire, we see Ellie have detached sex with a stranger and ask him to say he loves her.
It’s a tragic scene, isn’t it?

It’s so difficult to watch. Was there a lot of discussion about that moment?
Chris and I talked about it a lot actually, about whether or not we would be able to achieve that and get the right feeling from it, which was sadness rather than anything else, I think, and pain for what’s happened to her. But of course, what you need to do that is a great actor, and that’s what you have: Olivia played that scene so beautifully that it feels uncomfortable and painful, but it doesn’t feel unnecessary or odd. It feels truthful somehow, and that’s because of the way she plays it. I think it’s an extraordinary moment actually, and the scene afterwards where Claire gets into bed with her is just so sad. You feel for her.

This episode also revealed more about the barristers. We learned that Sharon Bishop (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) has a son who’s in jail and that Jocelyn Knight (Charlotte Rampling) has her mother in a home. Is the idea that those who have people’s lives in their hands also have their own lives to deal with something you wanted to explore?
Definitely. And I think the other thing that was very important was that if you’re introducing big new characters like Jocelyn and Sharon, they need to not just be functions of the courtroom story. They need to exist in a way that all characters in Broadchurch exist — in as truthful a way as we have time to make them — so that they really have their own stories and their own journeys. Then when we meet them in court, not only are you getting the sense of what they are going to say in court, but also you’re feeling their own pain, experience, struggle at that moment. It’s also present, and that can influence [things], as it does with all of us. You know, you have a bad experience at home and you go into work the next day, and maybe you’re not quite the same as you were the day before, and that’s actually, again, very truthful. So it’s about looking at how all of our human experiences and the vagaries of our lives impact on each other through things like the trial.

So, yeah, that was very, very important, and that’s also how you attract great actors. You don’t attract great actors by saying, “Here are some great speeches to say in court.” If you’re going to have actors to stand alongside Jodie [Whittaker], Andy [Buchan], David, and Olivia, and the rest of them, they need to have some acting chops, and so that’s what we managed to get with Charlotte and Marianne. They’re just gifted and amazing.

This is also the episode where Hardy admits that he hasn’t been keeping Claire safe as much as he’s been keeping her close so she doesn’t run — she’s a suspect, too. How difficult is it to pace out little reveals like that?
I think a lot of it is parceling out, and then sometimes, some of it’s a bit of luck, and you think, “Oh, that worked rather well. We better do it here.” So you try and plan ahead, and Chris does know where the story is going, but he doesn’t write it in minute detail until he writes the episode, and that’s just how he likes to work. They’re kind of thought through in storyline, but they’re not absolutely nailed down, because that allows him the freedom then to create within that as he’s writing.

But also, you know that by episode three in the series, you need some turning point. You need a big secret. You need something to change. So it’s also, as much as anything, about the dynamic of an eight-episode series and how you make sure that you keep the audience on their toes and you keep surprising them… You need to make sure that each episode has one or two of those moments that make you go, “Oh, no, I didn’t think about that!” So by episode three we thought, “You’ve had a lot of the trial. You’ve been introduced to them now. Now she’s not who you think she was.” There’s doubt.

It seems like it must be an art form, getting just the right amount of ambiguity in certain lines or shots so that the audience isn’t sure what they mean. Is that a source of a lot of discussion?
Yes. Oh, God, there’s so much of that, and in the edit, we have a lot of that. As you can imagine, often you shoot it full coverage, and then in the edit, you’re more subtle about what that means. Eve did so much of that for us. She just managed to make you love her and then really question her the next minute. One minute, you’re thinking, “She’s really normal and straightforward, and poor girl, she’s a victim,” and the next minute, you think, “Oh my God, she must be involved.”

If we’re ever unsure as to what we should be doing, as long as we’re playing it through Hardy and Ellie and they are asking the questions for us, then we’re on solid ground, I think. As long as we’re feeling the same as them — or at least as Ellie probably more than Hardy. Hardy’s a bit more subjective this series, where we had him be ill, and damaged, and slightly crazy at times. You can’t always trust his judgment, whereas with Ellie, generally you pretty much trust her judgment whatever she’s going through.

Broadchurch airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on BBC America.

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'Broadchurch' Postmortem: Exec Producer Talks Ellie and Hardy's (Lack of) Sexual Tension

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