Tourist's Jamie Dornan talks the season-two scene that nearly made him vomit
Jamie Dornan has been pretty upfront about the red line he drew between himself and a return Down Under for the second season of The Tourist, admitting he lent his voice "in quite a big way" to the idea of transplanting the hit BBC show to his native isle instead.
Perhaps it was the ability to flex his executive producer chops or the fact it's very own face that's synonymous with the show, but it worked. The latest batch of six episodes flies the drama from the Outback to Ireland. But they managed to fit that unique Tourist flavour of shock-comedy into their check in, thanks to the showrunning and writing sibling duo of Harry and Jack Williams, fresh off the back of their genre-bending Boat Story.
But if Dornan thought he was in for an easy go of it while nestled in the more familiar setting, he told Digital Spy that he had another thing coming.
In the first weeks of shooting, he faced down foe after foe. Production found the steepest hillock in the land for him to run up, then hurtle down. Then they fangled a gory fake pig with enough pungent pretend innards to have him near vomiting off camera. But his most vexing adversary? A jaunty paisley neckerchief that nigh-on asphyxiated him. It was a lot.
But Dornan also said the overhaul in the backdrop has brought a "new energy" to this second season, which dropped all in one go on iPlayer just in time for a New Year's Day scoff, and might have helped it dodge the sophomore slump. He also dug in to what he's made of the Williams brothers' depiction of the Irish and how they've toed the line of authenticity while still adding dashes of humour.
Sometimes when you bring a show that was only intended to be for one season back for a second, it can lose a bit of the charm. Did you have any doubts along those lines before diving back in?
To be honest with you, I think if we'd done another season in Australia, it maybe wouldn't have made that much sense. We wouldn't have done that, because I wasn't open to that. I love Australia. My whole family came and uprooting the family life, putting the kids in school in Australia and all was great, but we're not wanting to do that every year and a half.
I think by proxy of having it somewhere different, it takes on a new energy. A very different energy because I'm not sure you can get two more opposing looking places than the Australian Outback and Ireland.
I think that will help it feel like not just some continuation of the same thing we're offering up in the first series. As I say, it takes on a certain energy, but you still hopefully care about the characters enough to keep going on a journey with them.
That first season was so popular and holds the title as the UK’s most-watched drama of 2022, so what do you think the special magic was there that connected with viewers?
Honestly, I could sit here and go, 'there's nothing else on TV like it'. But it was kind of its own thing. Jack and Harry, I feel, are in a really interesting creative vein at the moment. The same with Boat Story where they're just serving up something that rattles the cage a wee bit, compared to what we're used to seeing.
I love all kinds of TV and I'm really up for watching really straight, linear, expected dramas, but I do think this just whacked people over the head a bit. Like, what is happening? What is going on? What am I meant to feel about this guy and the insane situations he's found himself in? And these cartoon-like characters that are coming in and out of it?
There's a lot to try to digest in the series. I think people were welcoming that it was just a bit mad and not like what they're used to seeing on BBC One. The timings a big thing too. We came out New Year's Day and we are again. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that's not a big coup, because it is. That is the TV slot that everyone wants and we've got it twice. That's a great thing, because most people are in.
Was that decision to move to Ireland directly influenced by the fact that obviously you're Irish or was it just a happy coincidence?
Because my character remained Irish, it was always an option that we could explore. If we were going to go for more, there's still loads of unanswered questions. Where better to have those questions answered than the land where he's from?
It suited me and I may or may not have lent my voice in quite a big way to supporting the idea of coming to Ireland. So I think it was a bit of a win for everything. As I said before, I do think in terms of helping the show feel like we're going to offer more of the same, but it's got to feel like a different kind of thing, then Ireland was about as good as you could get.
Given that Harry and Jack Williams are English, what did you make of their depiction of the Irish and Ireland in general?
They're brilliant. What was interesting about the first series is, it was definitely written for someone English, I think. When they offered it to me, they were like, 'We'd love you to be just your own accent'. I was like, 'Well, fine, but it's not quite written that way'. Because as much as we're all close and neighbours and stuff, there's colloquialisms and there's different ways of expressing things.
They were really open to me saying, 'Look lads people where I'm from wouldn't say that, we just wouldn't say it that way'. But not too many. Then the good thing about the second series is they were very much writing with me in mind and Harry's wife is Irish.
I thought they wrote Australian humour really well. It's really hard to write humour, particularly from another place, another culture, and they do it really well.
I think they've got a really fine line of making it feel authentically Irish and sometimes a little bit over the top without it getting into 'Kiss the Blarney Stone', 'Where's your shillelagh?', 'Let's get to the bottom of that rainbow'. They manage to straddle that.
There are some really comical, slightly over the top, 'Oirish with a capital O' characters but the same with Australia. There's guys nearly wearing the Crocodile Dundee hats in Australia. But that kind of works because of the tone of the show. So, fair play that I think they write Irish humour really well.
In the first couple of episodes of season two, you're really put you through your paces and you're by yourself for a lot of it doing stunts. What was that like to film?
I was exhausted. When I first got the schedule – productions hate giving actors schedules, you're literally the last person to get schedules, it's a nightmare. Even flexing the exec producer muscles and going 'Hey, lads, any chance?' But they just won't, they're not forthcoming with it.
So as soon as they found out that all the sequence of running up and down hills and rolling up and down hills and jumping in a van, running from vans, getting hit by vans was all really early on – I actually genuinely had to prepare in a physical way for that too. I didn't have a huge amount of dialogue over that time. So I was like, I need to be in a decent nick here to get through these days.
I'm pretty nutty and one of those people who needs exercise everyday anyway or I'm an absolute nightmare to be around. So, I trained accordingly but it was tough.
Believe it or not, but there was a heat wave going on in Ireland at the time. It was roasting. Not only was I wearing a t-shirt, sweater, a jacket, I'm wearing a neckerchief, which is honestly the thing that was bothering me the most. This thing tightly tied around my neck. It was absolutely killing me. That was a rough start to the shoot.
Then you had to do the gory pig scene for the first episode as well – was that real?
I liked that, but no, it was just a stinky prop. Jesus, it looked real. They've come on so far with those things, even from when I began 17 years ago or whatever the f**k. It looked very real and everything to touch feels – I haven't prodded too many real pigs. I know I grew up in Ireland, but I wasn't stroking pigs that often. But it definitely felt like what I imagine pigs actually feel like. We've got to stop talking about this, but yes, even the innards of it.
There's a way longer version of that scene. I was retching and sort of legitimately almost throwing up. I was rooting around in there for a long time before I found the key and then in the edit, I find it quite quickly. But they had all sorts of yucky slimy stuff in that sort of intestines area. It was quite good fun that.
At the beginning of this season, we see that Helen and Elliot are in a relationship. What were your thoughts on that decision, since it was left on a cliffhanger at the end of last season.
I really wanted it to happen because I think the audience probably wanted that to happen. I think they're part of the reason the first series worked, was that there was a genuine connection there.
You could see between these two people who were both lost for very differing reasons. One's in this toxic relationship. You can tell she's just the personification of goodness, but she's stuck in this horrible situation. And then you've got Elliot who's lost because he literally and figuratively has no idea where he is or who he is. And then she's just this beacon of hope.
Obviously there is a connection that Helen and Elliot had, that Danny [Macdonald] and I had, that people were drawn to. So I do believe that there were people thinking that if there was more to come, that would be a good place to start.
Personally I was delighted because Danny and I got to spend so much more time together and I just love her. I can't say enough good things about her. She's brilliant and super funny and professional and just a really nice person. So yeah, it was a good time.
The Tourist season 2 is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and continues to air on BBC One.
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