The National (The Rig)
Posted: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Martin Compston and Iain Glen talk season two of Prime’s The Rig
“I THINK they realised f*****g hell we’ve got Compston and they evolved the character from there.”
So says Scottish actor Iain Glen when asked about Fulmer Hamilton – the role played by Martin Compston in season one of Amazon Prime’s The Rig.
Laughing at his co-star’s remark, the Line of Duty star says he was delighted to return for a second series of the show, which was filmed at FirstStage studios in Leith, not least because there’s plenty left to discover about his character.
Set on an oil rig in the North Sea, the show’s first instalment saw its characters left isolated as they faced supernatural forces.
“On a personal level, it was great to be back,” Compston told The National.
“We had such a wonderful time on the first job and it was a lovely big team. Getting that phone call to say we were going again was amazing.”
The second season picks up immediately after the crew escape their rig as a mysterious force beneath the sea awakens a tsunami which devastates the coasts of the UK and northern Europe.
Along with Glen and Compston (both above), series creator David Macpherson talks going bigger in series two, putting Scotland at the heart of production and what the future might hold.
From ‘Alien to Aliens’
Macpherson said he knew he always wanted a second season and so, much like his cast, was thrilled to see the series renewed.
Audiences were left with a cliffhanger when season one finished, but we now know they’ve been evacuated to the Arctic Circle for a fresh set of challenges.
“In the first season, there’s that sense of claustrophobia with being in the middle of the ocean and so in series two one of my main aims was to build out the world and make this feel like a global show telling a global story,” the writer explains.
Specifically, he cites David Attenborough nature documentaries as inspiration, particularly those which explored the deep sea and polar regions.
Having tackled the former in season one, his attention now moves to the latter in series two.
“They were massive inspirations. I was a huge nature-doc fan, particularly those David Attenborough classics,” he says.
“When I was a kid I used to want to be a marine biologist because I watched those.
“I think the great thing we tried to bring into our show is the strangeness of life on earth is almost more weird than anything you can convey in sci-fi, particularly in the deep ocean.
“All these strange, undiscovered organisms. We’ve been looking for aliens in the stars but they’re with us all along.
“A big parallel for our show is like the jump from Alien to Aliens. If you’re doing a sequel, you’ve got to do something different and you can’t just redo the same thing.
Staying in Scotland
For both Glen and Compston, having the show based in Scotland is a bonus on a number of levels.
The latter points out that the second season was filmed in Edinburgh in the summer, giving him a chance to soak up the Fringe.
Glen (below) meanwhile said he hadn’t done much filming in Scotland in a number of years.
“I did Glasgow Kiss many, many moons ago and Macbeth at the Tron a long time ago as well,” the Game of Thrones star told The National.
“There’s this thing as a Scottish actor about can you get out of Scotland, is that something you want to do.
“At the end of the day, you’re after good writing and you can find that down south, in America, in Scotland, it’s just about opening up possibilities.
“For about 30 years, I’ve felt I could do more in Scotland. I did a lot in Ireland and that kind of increased the feeling.
“This was honestly perfect for the reasons that Martin said. For my mum and dad as well. My dad died last year but being as close to them on a daily basis as I have been for 40 years was really special.”
A Scottish story
It’s noteworthy Glen points to Ireland, which has received plenty of praise in recent years for its output.
We previously told how Peter Mullan was critical of the BBC for its lack of content on the Scottish experience.
However, Glen (below) is keen to point out that what The Rig does is not only set the story in Scotland, but tell a distinctly Scottish story as well.
It’s one that resonates with Compston in particular, who explains that his dad used to work off-shore and that he has a few friends who remain in the industry.
“The word we always used was ambition. It’s a show filmed entirely in Scotland, entirely in Edinburgh apart from the odd wide-shot or whatever that goes out to 270 countries in one day,” he says.
Glen added: “Certainly that first season was a distinctly Scottish story and setting.
“I’m appreciative of Prime for generating this series and hopefully it’ll give confidence to Scottish funders.”
Likewise, series creator Macpherson felt it was important to showcase Scotland rather than just see it used as sets for big Hollywood blockbusters.
Plenty of movies have filmed in the country, including The Running Man, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Flash.
“A lot of productions come to Scotland and that’s great. But what I wanted to do is prove our homegrown talent can do just as much.
“A lot of members of our crew started off as trainees and they’ve come back having advanced their careers and reached more senior positions.”
Looking to the future, MacPherson understandably has to remain tight-lipped given the show’s second season has not yet aired.
He does however add that he’s “very keen” to keep the show going.
“I’ve got plans for where we would go and I’m very excited for those. It would be to take it to a bigger level.
“It’s about increasing the scale while keeping it relevant to our world. I want to push it as far as I can go and, if they let us do series three, it’ll be even bigger again.”
Bigger? Definitely. Better? We’ll soon find out.
The Rig series two will be available on Prime Video from January 2 with season one available to view now.
– Interview by Adam Robertson.
