Young Gun
He’s not a natural killer, but Andrew Buchan was born to act. Meet one of TV’s brightest new stars, as he gets under the skin of a cold-eyed hitman.
By Benji Wilson, Radio Times
Andrew Buchan is polite and self-effacing, a man you’d happily introduce to your mum. Ask him the “Look! You’re a star!” question about how it feels to front a primetime drama from the makers of Spooks and Life on Mars, and he instantly defers to the quality of the cast around him.
Press him on the point and, unlike practically any actor I’ve ever met, he’s happy to tell you he wasn’t first choice: “I think they had some older, more famous-y people in mind!”
Before long, Bolton-born Buchan, could be one of those “famous-y people”. In The Fixer, he’s John Mercer, an ex-soldier with enough emotional baggage to require a porter. Given a life sentence for the murder of his aunt and uncle (don’t judge – all will be explained), Mercer is suddenly released. But freedom comes at a price, as he’s forced into a Faustian pact with the shadowy Lenny Jameson (Peter Mullan). The pay-off for his liberty is a role as the hitman in Jameson’s operation, an above-the-law governmental shock troop who take out the uber-criminals conventional police can’t touch.
Lenny’s team also includes a honey trap expert (Tamzin Outhwaite) and a gobby footpad (Jody Latham). But Mercer provides the cutting edge, delivering the coup de grâce with a handgun and a stony face.
John Mercer could have ended up as a clichéd faux-Bond bonehead. But Buchan’s performance, a marriage of psychological trauma and clinical calm, is a revelation. Add it to his roles since graduating from Rada in 2005 – a Labour lobbyist in Party Animals, as Jem Hearne in Cranford, and St John Rivers in Jane Eyre before that – and you start to see the versatility of an actor who will endure. And did I mention that the ladies seem to like him too?
Those ladies are in for a treat in The Fixer where, to stoop to the vernacular, Buchan gets buff. He’s predictably frank about the exercise regime that took him from breeches in Cranford to singlets in The Fixer. “Well, I’ve eaten a lot of beef. I got a personal trainer in and the goal was one-arm press-ups – which I reached. I’m the Bolton Van Damme! You go to the gym and you see these people looking like bungalows, staring at themselves in mirrors and making these weird growling noises. I hate it. Go and have a pint! Life’s happening out there at the minute.”
So how did the guy who likes a pint get into the mindset of a killer? “I’ve tried to bring him as close to me as I can. It makes him more real. I’m ever so slightly method: when I went into Party Animals auditions I was looking at girls on the street and trying to be a bit schmoozy or flirty; in this one I’d be looking at people thinking, could I kill someone? The answer’s obviously . . . no.”
