Watch video trailer for The Gold Here “If you’ve bought any gold after 1983 there’s a really good chance that somewhere in it is a piece of the stolen Brink’s-Mat bullion,” says Emun Elliott who is back as detective Tony Brightwell in season two of Neil Forsyth’s hit BBC TV drama The Gold. “It’s a story that spans years and changed the world as we know it. I think that’s why people are so intrigued by it,” says the Scottish actor. Elliott is back as detective Tony Brightwell in the second season of the dramatisation of the real life 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery, the biggest ever gold heist in history, when six robbers broke into a warehouse near Heathrow and stole £26 million’s worth of gold bars, sparking the longest and at that time most expensive investigation in the history of the Metropolitan police. Season Two picks up the story after the conviction of some of those involved and the police’s realisation that they’ve only been chasing half of the gold. Brightwell teams up once more with Nicki Jennings [Charlotte Spencer] and their boss, DCI Brian Boyce [Hugh Bonneville] to continue hunting the three tonne haul of gold on its journey through international money laundering and organised crime. “The story goes on,” says Elliott. “It becomes international and we learn how that gold and the money from it found its way into so many criminal enterprises across the globe. We see how it changed people, how that level of wealth and power changed the criminals involved and the pursuit of it changed the authorities and security systems.” Based on a true story, the crime has always captured the public imagination for its audacity. “Neil [Forsyth] has obviously taken creative licence but it’s based on fact and it’s a truly fascinating story that bleeds into every element of society. “Older people remember but the younger generation don’t, and on the surface the robbery itself is staggeringly impressive and shocking. These six South Londoners in a van pretty much managed to get away with it - until they got caught.” “A classic tale of cops and robbers just works, but it’s very much not black and white. There are points where you want the bad guys to get away with it and others where you want the authorities to catch up with them. Also, the way it was shot has an almost documentary feel that brings reality to an over the top story. It’s fascinating. Historically the Brink’s-Mat robbery changed the world: criminality changed, security systems, legislation, the criminal underworld had to adapt and find new ways of operating and new technology became available for the police on their trail.” Although Tony Brightwell was a real person who was part of the Flying Squad working on the investigation, Neil Forsyth decided to make him Scottish, meaning that Edinburgh based Elliott could use his own accent. “He passed away years ago and there’s one little talking head clip of him. He’s very much English, but Neil wanted a Scottish voice as part of the story so we decided to go our own way and that allowed me to bring a lot of myself to the character. I also had to make sure that he was different to Kenny from Guilt,” says Elliott, who was delighted to be working with Forsyth again. Read More - Mark Bonnar, Guilt interview Because the ramifications of the heist are international Elliott gets to follow the trails from rainy London to sunnier shores. “I remember furiously flicking through the script, hoping Tony gets a little piece of the sunshine these criminals seem to be enjoying. Later in season two Jennings and Brightwell are sent to the Caribbean, which we filmed in Tenerife, and that was joyful to play some scenes in the sun and not have to wear that hideous anorak that Brightwell cuts about in for the first four episodes.” It’s true Brightwell doesn’t have the sartorial confidence and panache of Kenny in the BAFTA winning Guilt, also written by Neil Forsyth. “Brightwell is written as this everyman, a guy who’s never had a huge amount of ambition, happy to plod along doing his job, good at what he does, has a wife and kids and a mortgage. I’d never played a character like that, so it became a study of what is an everyman and how do you make that interesting? How did he go about it? “I thought what is it about me that makes me not an everyman, and tried to lose those characteristics. How do you make someone who doesn’t have really strong characteristics interesting, make someone safe and relaxed and trustworthy and comfortable? It’s the exploration of someone on the back foot, and for me the best thing was just to relax. A lot of time on set I’m focusing on what am I trying to do in this scene or putting onto this character but with Tony it was more about how horizontally can I play this guy and how do I make that interesting? It was a different process that became really enjoyable. The more I relaxed and allowed things to happen, the freer the process became.” Elliott was also pleased to revisit Brightwell’s easy working relationship with his side-kick detective Nicki Jennings, played by Charlotte Spencer, as the returning cast which includes Tom Cullen, Stefanie Martini and Sam Spruell is supplemented by a host of new characters. “Our relationship is very like that in real life,” he says. “We found this immediate platonic chemistry that leads into that relationship on screen. I think it’s important for the show because a lot of the story is quite heavy, high stakes and serious and it’s nice to have a dynamic that roots the show in realism and allows for humour and banter.” The most agitated the dogged and determined Brightwell gets is over his breakfast at the B&B he and Jennings stay in on the Isle of Man as they followed the trail of laundered money, when it doesn’t follow his tattie scone and black pudding expectations. A creature of habit, like everyone in the early 1990s, a time of faxes, phone booths and fags, he smokes at every possible opportunity. Was that onerous for Elliott? “Well I’m from a long line of smokers… But unfortunately you’re not allowed to smoke real cigarettes on set any more so those cigarettes are herbal and if you think the smell of a real cigarette is bad, these herbal things… Shooting a scene in a tiny office for eight hours and every time that camera rolls I light one of those, I don’t think the cast and crew appreciate that. I don’t know how many I got through. I should look at the consequences health-wise because they’ve surely taken a couple of months off my already shortened life.” Read More - Stefanie Martini interview Another thing the fictional Brightwell has is a moustache, a familiar facial addition for Elliott. “What happens is I have a moustache for a job then shave it off then go for a hair and makeup check for the next one and they say ‘let’s try something different, let’s try a moustache’. He laughs. “I think people just like seeing me with a moustache. I don’t always have one. It seems to mysteriously make its way onto my upper lip so deep down there’s clearly a deep affinity I have with it. But it’s started to go white and grey and that’s really concerning because it’s losing its definition and becoming something else entirely. As regards my career, the minute it goes completely grey, I’m either going to be doing all sorts of different work or none at all - I really think all my magic lies somewhere within that moustache.” Read More - Sara Vickers, Guilt interview Now 41, Elliott was raised in Edinburgh by his social worker mother and Iranian/Persian university lecturer father. Has Elliott ever visited Iran? “I’ve been there twice. Once when I was eight and once when I was 19. So it’s been a long time. But all of my extended family is there. My mum’s side in the UK is small whereas in Iran my dad has five brothers who all have wives and huge families so it was amazing to go and meet people and recognise similarities and explore this culture. In the media the story we’re told of Iran is often very political and focuses on the regime which is brutal, so to go and see another side, see what families are like behind closed doors, how warm and welcoming and rich that culture is, was a real eye-opener and made me for the first time in my life, when I was 19, to be really proud to be Persian. It was important for me to explore that for myself, because the narrative we’re told over here focuses on the bad really.” After school Elliott went to study English and French at Aberdeen University but left in first year to study drama at the RSAMD, where he was awarded a gold medal then embarked on a career that has seen him work with some of the biggest names in the industry. After landing the role as Private Fraser in The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch (2006-8) he appeared alongside Sean Bean and Eddie Redmayne in the 2010 horror film Black Death which led to Ridley Scott casting him as a space pilot in the 2012 sci-fi epic Prometheus and a role in the 2015 Star Wars blockbuster The Force Awakens, with TV credits including Game of Thrones, and more recently TV hit such as Neil Forsyth’s Guilt, The Rig, Sexy Beast and now The Gold. Read More - Sexy Beast interview with Emun Elliott and James McArdle Was it a hard decision to leave university and try acting? “It was a difficult decision. I realised I wanted to be an actor years before that but never thought of it as a serious option for me.” Elliott’s love of acting began back in primary school where he played the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. “The caterpillar, my first ever acting job. That still sets the bar,” he jokes. ”I think I was five, but I still remember the song and the dance. I had even invented this little walk.” In Lewis Carroll’s book the caterpillar offers Alice advice on changing size and poses the existential question “Who are you?", as befits an insect that will one day transform into a butterfly and fly away. Did Elliott’s caterpillar have a moustache? “Not quite. I hadn’t quite developed,” he says. Playing the caterpillar was transformative and planted the idea that acting was something Elliott enjoyed. “It came easily, it was where I thrived. It wasn’t on the curriculum so I got to grips with it after school, national youth theatres and whatnot, but I really developed a love for being on stage and part of an ensemble. And I was told I was good at it, but when I left school I thought I better get a degree, something academic, but after a few months I thought this isn’t making me happy. It just wasn’t thrilling me. “My parents had always encouraged me to do something that makes me happy so it took me a couple of months to pluck up courage to say I don’t want to do this, I want to have a shot at pursuing my dream. Thank god I did and got to drama school and that so far it’s working out. “But I think no good thing has ever happened to me without a massive risk preceding it. Dropping out of university and applying for drama school was a huge risk. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t got in, but it’s led to some of the best things I’ve ever done.” What would he say is the best thing he’s ever done? “The best thing is just having a career. I know how difficult it is, even for successful actors, the long periods of unemployment initially, the financial strain, that constant rejection, it’s a lot for anyone, but especially a young person to take, and many people fall by the wayside. A lot of brilliant actors don’t get the opportunities they deserve and a lot of terrible actors do, so the fact there’s no real meritocracy can be really difficult. “My greatest achievement is no particular job but managing to have a semblance of a career. That’s enough for me.” Read More - Jamie Sives interview As for the future, are there any roles Elliott hasn’t played but would like to? “I don’t really have a plan or my mind set on particular roles. I want to play characters at the centre of the story. I’ve had the opportunity in the past but a lot of my work has been supportive, which I love but moving into the third decade of my career, I’m drawn towards characters who have enough screen time to allow them to breathe. It really gives the actor the opportunity to show what they can do. “I want to keep playing characters that have more and more depth. I want them to be constantly surprising. “But I like all of it. More recently playing characters that are closer to myself allows you to explore every element of your own character. I also like jobs like Sexy Beast, playing someone as far away from me as possible.” In the crime drama TV series released last year, a prequel of the 2000 film Sexy Beast starring Ray Winston and Ben Kingsley, Elliott took over Kingsley’s role of Don Logan, and owned the terrifyingly hair-trigger tempered, violent sidekick of James McArdle’s Gal Dove. “To continue to mix it up and surprise audiences and see how much I can get away with in terms of making people believe I’m someone else. That’s the thrill,” he says. Aside from being in front of the camera, Elliott admits he has a hankering to write, and a story he’d like to tell. “If I were to write, I would write the story of how my dad met my mother, because it was in 1979 just after the Iranian revolution. My dad had just landed on the shores of Edinburgh and they met on Princes Street. My mum was 16 and my dad was 21 so they were kids. My dad was working in shipping - import and export - for the Iranian shipping service, and as a 16 year old she jumped on his ship and they travelled the world together for months. That’s the story I’d love to tell someday.” So what did his dad say to his mum on Princes Street? “Well there are two different…” says Elliott, and then, like the caterpillar, disappears. Our Zoom time is up and I’m left like Alice, wondering. But being a story teller and a trooper, he sends an email taking up the tale: “When it comes to writing - someday I’d love to tell the story of how my parents met. My dad was an officer on an Iranian shipping line in the late 70s/early 80s. They had stopped off for a few days in Edinburgh. He met my mum on Princes Street. She was 16, my dad was 20. They fell in love and embarked on this magnificent adventure around the world together, crossing continents and oceans. Both from very different cultures and backgrounds but together on this voyage of love, hardship and discovery. “They both have different versions of the story so I’d want to somehow tell my Mum’s version of the story side by side with my dad’s - mainly for comic effect but also to show how two different people can have two very different versions of the same tale. It will be a story of falling in love cross culturally at a very political time in both British and Iranian history, set all over the earth and seas! First step is to sit down with each of my parents individually and document their version of events. Watch this space!” The Gold, season two airs on BBC One at the start of June with all episodes available to view on BBC iPlayer.