Colin Firth Felt ‘Out of Depth’ in ‘Emotional’ New Drama

Colin Firth has revealed how “out of depth” he felt starring in a new episodic drama, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which is based on a deeply upsetting true story.

The Oscar-winning actor portrays Jim Swire, the doctor who spent decades pursuing truth and justice over Pan AM Flight 103. On December 21, 1988, 259 passengers and crew were killed—including Jim’s 23-year-old daughter Flora—when the flight exploded over Lockerbie. Adding to the death toll, 11 residents of the Scottish town died when the plane came crashing down on top of them.

In the first episode of the series, viewers are shown the catastrophic impact this had, with dead bodies hurtling down from the sky. In the aftermath of the disaster, Jim was nominated as the spokesperson for the U.K. victims’ families, who banded together to demand the truth. Over time, Jim’s research overturned his trust in the justice system.

Newsweek attended a panel for the series in London on Tuesday, which included Firth, Catherine McCormack (who played Jane Swire), director Otto Bathurst, writer David Harrower and executive producers Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant. Firth explained how it felt to play a man who risked everything in memory of his daughter and his unflinching pursuit of truth and justice.

“When I was sent this script, it had an impact. It had an emotional impact. It was less the legal investigation-thriller element of it, and far more how it just made me feel. How it made me feel seeing this representation of Jim and Jane and their family,” he told the captivated audience.

“And this journey, having carried this for so long and still carrying it, and how many steps, and how many twists and turns, and how many times that thinking of Jim going in one direction looking for something and then realizing that actually, he’s been diverted; it’s not that, it’s this; maybe it’s even flipped on its head. Having committed himself so completely to the pursuit of a solution and also having the courage and the integrity to allow that diversion to take place.”

He added: “It’s very tempting when you feel passionate about something to want to stay the course, to have this cherished belief maintained and then everything must surely conform to that. He didn’t do that, he let evidence and facts speak to him, even if that meant profoundly changing course. That really, really struck me.”

Before filming took place, the critically acclaimed actor met up with the real-life Jim and Jane in their home, which he said wasn’t for research, but simply so he could get to know them. His goal was to build trust with the two parents who have shared such a personal story with the world. Firth admired Jim’s “alertness and intellectual agility,” quickly realizing he would have to “catch up and keep up.”

The actor continued: “You can’t meet them without feeling a warmth and respect. And then realizing what a huge thing to live up to this was going to be because you always feel a bit out of your depth when you start a job but this really felt way out of my depth.”

Firth explained that he received a lot of help in bringing his portrayal of Jim to life. If he was trying to determine where he was in the story—the 12-week shoot told the story over 30 years, which was filmed out of chronological order—the script had everything he needed to know. The detail in the set also helped.

“There are times I walked onto a set and saw what they created and had to gather myself because it had so much impact on me,” he said. “It wasn’t really some sort of job of work for me to do this huge leap of the imagination. It hit me—and that’s not necessarily the high-impact things, it could just be the way my office was, the way the technology was.”

As parts of the series are set during a time before the technological boom and the rise of social media, characters are dealing with hard copy, phone calls and and news bulletins that you had to wait for.

Firth also credits the costume department for helping him bring the TV version of Jim to life.

“If I wasn’t sure how old I was this year or this morning, I would count the wrinkles they put on me or taken off me that morning,” he shared. “The collaboration really does [do] sort of about 80 percent of it really.”

The King’s Speech star also spoke of some of the scenes that he found most poignant, and still stick with him to this day. One is in the first episode when Jane, during a meeting with the U.K. transport minister, reveals research about what her daughter’s final moments could have been like.

McCormack told the audience that she was worried she’d “completely messed it up,” but according to the show’s creators, it is “one of the most amazing scenes” in the series—and Firth agreed.

“The scene we were just talking about where Catherine counts, changes the scene on a sixpence because up to that point, my character is getting quite overwhelmed, the frustration with a rather obdurate government minister. You know, trying to get through to him with facts, protests and it just cuts through that,” he explained.

“There was no drama school exercise there, I mean what was going on next [to us] had our jaws slackened. There was no acting required. That happened a number of times. Some of the courtroom testimony when you have the people from Lockerbie giving their account of things, everybody—I mean everybody in the public gallery, background people—were just silenced by it.”

Peacock and Sky’s upcoming limited-series original Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, will premiere on Peacock on January 2, 2024.