Grey's Anatomy's Kevin McKidd on staying with Grey's and returning to Scotland for thriller series Six Four
If you think Dr Owen Hunt has been having a rough time in Grey's Anatomy of late, it's nothing compared to the trials that Scottish actor Kevin McKidd's latest character, Chris, has to face in the new ITVX drama Six Four.
Set in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the four-part series first introduces us to Detective Constable Chris O'Neill and his wife Michelle (played by Vinette Robinson) as they search for their teenage daughter Olivia, who has disappeared.
Chris is also involved in revisiting a missing person cold case of a girl who disappeared 15 years before, which brings him into contact with her father, Jim Mackie (James Cosmo) and sets Chris on a collision course with his high-ranking police commissioner brother, who was involved in the original case.
On a break from filming the current season of Grey's Anatomy, Kevin McKidd chatted exclusively to Digital Spy about his new Scottish series, carrying on with the medical drama, and whether he would revisit a fan favourite character from a galaxy far, far away…
ITV's Six Four brings you back to Scotland for the first time in a while. What about the series tempted you home?
When I first read the script, I just found the opening scene of episode one, where we meet Chris and Michelle in the waiting room of a morgue in Edinburgh, about to go and try and identify a body of a teenage girl that might be their missing daughter – that scene in itself pulls you in.
I'm a parent, and anybody that is a parent, it's your worst nightmare. It's every parent's worst nightmare come true. It's the worst day that can happen in a parent’s life. And I just thought that was such an amazing and powerful starting point to suck the audience in.
Chris is a different character than you have played before, isn't he?
He's this character who's kind of asleep at the wheel in his life, you know. Him and his wife are disconnected and he's got no ambition left in his job.
Usually, we meet detectives and they might be troubled, but they're always very motivated and inspired. I thought it was very interesting to see a TV detective, where we meet him in this kind of funk in his life, this down point in his life, where he's kind of sleepwalking through his job and his life and his marriage.
And then because of what happens in this cold case from 15 years ago, and then his brother's involvement, and then the political aspect and his own daughter being missing – all of these things come together to wake him up, where we see him sort of reignite and come alive again, and get his passion back.
Because it is his drive to get to the bottom of things and to find the truth that becomes so compelling that it sort of restarts his life in an interesting way.
It's your first time playing a police officer – did you do any research for the role?
I became friends with a Glasgow-based detective and ended up hanging out with him quite a lot just to really get inside his head and, you know, understand the job and the psychology of that job specific to being a detective as opposed to a police officer.
And it was really fascinating. He was a lovely guy, and just a normal family guy with kids and a life. What I realised about detectives, to be a good detective, you have to be quite unassuming.
It's not about being a tough guy or being incredibly clever, like Sherlock Holmes. The job really is about being somebody who's quite low key and non-threatening, and good with people, to actually get information and get to the bottom of things.
Was it nice being back home, filming in Scotland?
It was lovely to be home. It was lovely to work with Scottish crews. I've done many films over the years in Scotland, but it's been a long time. I've been in America for 14 years doing Grey's Anatomy.
It felt like a homecoming for me to come home and work with the crews that I used to work with and work with many of the actors that I've worked with before and some who I haven't but I've been a big fan of for years. So yeah, on so many levels, it was just an absolute joy from beginning to end.
There's a great scene in the first episode where you are chasing Vinette Robinson, who plays Chris's wife, through the centre of Edinburgh – was that fun to do?
It was really fun. It was complicated for the camera crews and the ADs, because there's a lot of crowds, a lot of people recognising us and recognising me from Grey's Anatomy.
So we had to do a lot of crowd wrangling to get the shots that we needed. So that made it more complicated, but we still got it. It was a tiring few days. Those are really steep steps and we're going up and down them over and over again. My legs definitely felt tired at the end of all that.
What was the biggest challenge for you filming Six Four?
It's quite a dark theme. You're dealing with the theme of a family who's dealing with a missing daughter. I think that I found it quite hard to really walk the walk of a man who's dealing with the thought that his daughter's gone, and she might not come back and something bad may have happened to her.
And having the weight of that on you all the time. That was quite hard and my kids were all back in California, so I was missing them because we shot this over about three months in Scotland. I think in a weird way me missing my own kids helped me play the part, get into that headspace of Chris O'Neill, who's yearning to see his daughter one more time.
This was a much shorter shoot compared to Grey's Anatomy, which films over nine months a year. Did it feel very different?
With Grey's, we're doing 22 to 24 episodes at a time. We don't know where that story is going, the writers are writing that show as we go so it's a very different job description than this, because Six Four is a four-episode series.
We know the beginning, the middle and the end. So in a weird way, I think this is easier because you know where the character is headed, you know where the end point is, you know the arc of the character you need to draw and where to place those moments.
On a long-running TV show, it's harder because you're just dealing with the scripts as they come to you, which is its own skill. It's very free in its own way because you just have to be in the moment and just be in that episode because you don't know what's coming. So the two jobs are completely separate and different, if that makes sense.
Grey's Anatomy has a much more full-on production schedule, doesn't it?
Because we're cranking out all those hours of television it's much more of a production line, like the conveyor belt never stops. You don't get a week to sit down and drink cups of tea and eat biscuits and go: 'Okay, so what does this scene mean?'
We have a writers room on our show with 15 writers and they're constantly writing to keep up and keep ahead. When people join Grey's Anatomy, I say to them, this is a moving train, this train is moving, and you just have to catch on to it and hold on tight. Once it starts, it doesn't stop.
Your Grey's character, Owen, has always had a rough time on the show. Do you ever ask the writers to give him a nice storyline?
I do joke about it. I was like: 'Wow, this guy's been through so much'. But every character in the show has been through so much, it's the nature of the beast. Fans ask: 'Can we have Teddy and Owen be happy?' But listen, I know you want these characters to be happy, but trust me, you'll be bored watching the show if everybody's walking around happy all the time.
Since you have lived in LA for years, were you worried your Scottish accent wouldn't be strong enough anymore for the role in Six Four?
I remember getting on the plane coming home and thinking, are people going to believe my Scottish accent because I've been away for a while? I usually come back to Scotland twice a year, see my mom and dad and everybody up in Elgin. But yeah, it was funny.
As soon as I got back to Glasgow and walked down the road, literally within 10 minutes I bumped into about three or four people that I knew, just walking down the street. It was like I'd never been away, you know.
What do you miss most about Scotland when you're in Los Angeles?
One thing I miss is good Indian food. There's no good Indian food here. Britain does Indian food really well. And it's gonna sound weird, but watching British adverts on the telly, I miss them because they're not the same over here, you know? And I really miss the Scottish sense of humour, especially in Glasgow.
As well as being a big star because of Grey's Anatomy, you're also part of the Star Wars universe, having voiced Fenn Rau in Star Wars: Rebels. Would you want to be in one of the live-action Star Wars series, like The Mandalorian?
Are you kidding me – I'm a big, big Star Wars fan and I grew up on it. I keep seeing these rumours, fans saying there are rumours Kevin McKidd is going to play Fenn Rau in the live action series and I'm like: 'Let's make that not a rumour. Let's make that happen!'
I'll call my agent and say: 'Look, can we make this rumour real?' Because I would love that, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would love to play a Mandalorian, to play Fenn Rau, and he's a really good character too. I would be pinching myself if I got the chance to do that, it'd be my dream come true.
You're just about to dash off to visit a location for the two-hour finale episode of Grey's season 19 that you're directing the first part of. Before you go, can you give us any spoilers about the end of this season?
We’re gonna have some revisits of some people that the audience will be very happy to see again.
And will you carry on for season 20 and beyond too?
I love it. It's like a family at this point, we've all seen each other have kids and marriages and we're all like a big extended family. It's been so many years now, we all know each other so well.
Nobody's going anywhere. As long as people want to watch it and the quality of the writing stays where it is, which I think is quite high level, I don't think anybody's going anywhere. I think we all really love going to work and seeing each other. Chandra [Wilson] was pregnant with her son when she started the show and he's now graduated from high school and is going to college. That is mental.
Six Four starts streaming on Thursday, March 30, on ITVX, with all episodes available.
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