Zoe Wedded to Her Job
Keeley Hawes was engaged on a very special mission while filming the new MI5 drama Spooks. “I had four days off, so I got married,” laughs the actress, who plays secret agent Zoe Reynolds. “We went on honeymoon to Amsterdam for a few days and then I went back to work.”
London cabbie’s daughter Keeley had scheduled the break to get hitched to partner Spencer. The couple have one son, Myles, who is almost two. “I mean, how long do you need?” she laughs. “It only takes half an hour to get married.”
Rising MI5 officer Zoe is at the centre of the action in Monday’s episode. Working undercover, she becomes trapped when armed Kurdish rebels lay siege to the Turkish embassy (BBC1, 9pm). Keeley — last seen co-starring with Salford’s Chris Eccleston in ITV1’s Othello — admits she’d be a hopeless spy in real life.
“It’s that thing of not being able to tell anybody what you do,” she says. “One glass of wine in the pub and I’d have to tell someone. How could you not?
“A spy has to be brilliant at improvising and picking up on other people’s behaviour. But unlike acting, your life depends on it. I’m sure some MI5 officers become compulsive liars.
Spooks has been a big hit and a second series is certain, even if more than 100 viewers called in to complain about last week’s episode where young office clerk Helen (Lisa Faulkner) was murdered.
They saw her hand being plunged into a deep-fat fryer, before her head was forced into a vat of boiling oil. The BBC insisted the violence was implied, rather than shown, and a warning was broadcast before the post-watershed drama.
David Oyelowo, who plays MI5 surveillance expert Danny Hunter, has fond memories of a less controversial scene.
“I actually got to run around Trafalgar Square with a gun,” he says. “It’s classic playground stuff — muttering into your imaginary lapel microphone or wearing a headset pretending you’re on surveillance.
“It was fantastic. I had to bite my lip and pretend I wasn’t having the best time of my life. We had guys, who had been in the SAS following us with huge machine guns.
“Then you go home and there’s a pay cheque waiting for you. I can’t believe it!”
Born in Oxford to Nigerian parents, David, 25, points out that Spooks isn’t a documentary.
“I met a real-life surveillance guy and he said that 23-and-a-half hours out of every 24 is really boring, sitting around. And then, all of a sudden, it just goes off — and it’s those moments that you see in the series.
“Once someone’s suspected of a security breach, MI5 officers have carte blanche to check you out. They can tap your phone, send someone to bug the place, look at your emails, whatever.
“There were things that we wanted to put in the series, but no-one would have believed them.”
Keeley, 26, didn’t get many “toys”, but had fun with some very powerful binoculars. “You could look into offices opposite where we were filming and see what was written on paper on people’s desks,” she says.
She’s now gone on to film a role in a new “provocative and shocking” BBC2 drama called Tipping the Velvet, playing Kitty, a lesbian who works as a music hall male impersonator.
Has she filmed her first same-sex on screen kiss? “Yes,” smiles Keeley. “It’s all the same in the dark.”
(Source: keeley-hawes Yahoo Group)