An Interview with Adrian Scarborough from ‘The Chelsea Detective’

Adrian Scarborough is a talented and accomplished actor that boasts an impressive resume. For he’s starred in a great many movies, been a part of a bevy of television shows and has taken part in just about every genre out there and his latest challenge as an actor, is portraying Detective Inspector Max Arnold in the new Acorn TV show, The Chelsea Detective, and we here at Nerds That Geek had the chance to sit down with Adrian recently to discuss his new show.
 
John Betancourt: What was it that attracted you to the character of Max?
 
Adrian Scarborough: Well, look, it was just such a treat to read the script and just kind of, you know, have all of these wonderful things come together in the most delicious sort of meal. Really, it's a recipe for character actors to die for, I think, with the, you know, riding around on a bicycle, living on a houseboat, being a dyslexic and taking lots of photographs on your phone, and just piecing all of that together and, and finding out about his private life and his dad's bookshop and his wife and how his relationship with her has gone down the pan. And I just think that, you know, all of those things combined really just kind of made me go: “Yeah, it's a ready-made character.” Essentially. You don't have to do very much. Do you know what I mean? It fits like a glove, really, and sits very comfortably. So yeah, I was very lucky.
 
John Betancourt: Now if the character was that comfortable for you, was there a lot of extra work that went into creating him? Because he is genuinely realistic and relatable.
 
Adrian Scarborough: Well, I think all credit goes to our wonderful writers really, and to Peter Fincham for creating something so three dimensional. But Liz Lake and Glen Laker who also wrote on the series, Glen particularly, wrote the first two episodes, and he was just wonderfully helpful to have around because obviously, he'd been on the project a long time before I came along. I don't think I was in their minds at the start. And it was really great to be able to actually ask him, you know, where a lot of these ideas and thoughts come from and what he was at, sometimes he wasn't always terribly helpful, because he couldn't remember, it was so long ago, that they'd sort of had these conversations and made these decisions about the characters that he couldn't necessarily remember what had come from where. But I just think it's a classic example of good writers using their imaginations. You know, it's great, what you pay him for.
 
John Betancourt: Now digging a little deeper into this character, I noticed as I was watching this season, that there was a lot of yearning for Max. That there’s a lot he wants out of life, what would you say he’s searching for in season one?
 
Adrian Scarborough: Oh, I think Max is searching ultimately for some sort of happiness. Both in his personal and professional life… but he's his own worst enemy. And, you know, he floats it at every turn. Really, when he's working, he doesn't give enough time to his private life. And when he's giving to his private life, he feels like he's taking his eye off the ball at work. And I think that targeting that is definitely what makes him tick, really. And he's just, he's like me, in the sense that he's sort of only happy when he's working. And it’s sort of… it's his motor, I think, and it's what makes him tick. Maybe, maybe I've imposed that upon him.
 
John Betancourt: Oh, you see that for sure, where a clue just lights him up and that that definitely makes him so relatable, as do all the themes and deeper moments and speaking of that relatability and realism factor, what does it meant to you to be a part of a show that is so incredibly realistic and deep?
 
Adrian Scarborough: Well, I, what I love about it is the fact that it, it shoots in London, and there are very, very few cop shows that he can afford to do it, or have the time to do it, let alone in the middle of a pandemic. But I think that is incredibly unique to be able to actually shoot right on the streets that you're talking about, generally speaking, a lot of those cop shows will shoot out of London, because it's incredibly complicated to shoot anywhere in London. But with this, you just can't get away with not being there. There's just so much of Chelsea and so much of London that you see it. And I just think that that bit of London becomes a character in its own right. In the series, really, especially if you're going to call it The Chelsea Detective. It's kind of important that it's there, and that you see it pretty regularly.

But also, if you're going to set a show on a houseboat, you've got to have a houseboat. I mean, there's no getting around it. We did have an interior houseboat that we built, simply because what we discovered was that on the Thames, because it's so Tidal, a lot of the time you're sort of, you'd never quite know where you're going to be. And you could be sort of... just about to start floating, you could be floating on quite choppy seas. But also, when the tide’s out, the banks are so steep, that the houseboat actually just sort of sits at an angle. Obviously getting a camera to sit, yeah, became quite a pain. And it was just decided very early on that it would probably be a good idea to have the main room of the houseboat actually in a studio, so it makes a lot of sense.
 
We did shoot all of our interiors there, but we spent a lot of time on the house. But I have to say and hopefully that comes across, I mean, you know, there's one… I mean, there's several… but one of the curses of shooting in a wet April is that all the wind can whistle up the Thames sometimes. There were days where me and Anamaria Marinca, who plays my wife, my ex-wife, were having sort of, you know, intimate conversations on the deck of this boat with a howling wind around us and freezing temperatures and occasional snow and blizzards. But yeah, it was hugely entertaining to do. And getting an entire crew down onto something like that boat is pretty impressive.
 
John Betancourt: Well that adds a whole new level of depth to the boat scenes now. And it’s funny, I was re-watching a few scenes earlier for my notes and I noticed there are a couple of shots that capture the whipping hair. That aside though, my last question for you today, revolves around teaching. Because regardless of his struggles in this show, Max is something of a teacher. What are you hoping he teaches the audience this season?
 
Adrian Scarborough: Oh, well, I think he learns as much about himself throughout the course of this as he gives to other people really. I think take your time, the principal thought is just go steady and be meticulous and work it out along the way. But I think he learns an awful lot from Priya and from the other people in his office and particularly his Aunt as well. She is a very interesting development in his life. You kind of need to know. In episode three, the aunt character comes back. And they have quite a long scene on the houseboat where they sort of talk about the intimacies about his relationship and his marriage and his ex-wife and I think that she's sort of gives him quite a few hard truths along the way and Priya does for sure. It's quite nice having a sidekick who really does kick it every now and again.
 
So yeah, it was really lovely having Sonita around for that. She was terrific. She's brilliant. And in actual fact, she does that. She does give… give me a bit of a kick every now and again. She’s very good, very, very good at helping me learn my lines. Because she's so young, and I'm so old (laughter) and it just takes so much longer these days for them to go in. And she just looks at a page and it's there, you know, so annoying. Anyway, very helpful, very useful, blessed to have around. And she made me laugh a lot, and made me take myself a lot less seriously, which was pretty useful at times.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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