Don’t have this! September 2010 issue of DVD Review magazine.
NEWS INTERVIEW: ON THE COUCH
Ashes To Ashes and Identity star Keeley Hawes invites us into her DVD den to watch some old Mike Leigh flicks and Flight Of The Conchords episodes.
With Spooks and Ashes to Ashes under her belt, Keeley Hawes is fast becoming the doyenne of the British small screen. Yet the well-connected actor prefers her viewing from across the pond… “I would rather watch American drama because inevitably you are going to know someone in a British programme and think, ‘Oh, that’s so and so,’” Hawes laughs. “It’s much easier to get lost in an American drama than in a British one with all your mates in it. The last film I saw was Robin Hood and, even then, my husband [Matthew Macfadyen] was in it!”
Having just finished up on ’80s sci-fi cop show Ashes to Ashes, Hawes sticks with the old bill for identity-theft drama Identity. And before you start thinking it’s all credit card fraud, think again… “That would be the most boring programme ever made,“ Hawes tells us. “When people think about identity theft they probably think about their card being copied, but this is identity theft on a much more dramatic scale. These are people who change their actual identity, like Saddam Hussein’s double who had plastic surgery to look like him.”
Hawes plays the detective who heads up the unit, Martha Lawson. This isn’t your average cop show; it has more in common with the world of espionage and spies. “It has a sexier and edgy, more-American feel,” Hawes says. And despite the prevalence of identity theft today, the unit Hawes works for is fictional. “Incredibly, it doesn’t exist,” she reveals. “Which is good because it means you’re talking about things and dealing with issues about which people can’t say, ‘That’s wrong’!”
Identity was released this week on DVD boxset by ITV DVD.