Shackled together
Handcuffed to one another for months, Izuka Hoyle and Tahar Rahim got well acquainted filming their new thriller
Sky Atlantic
- Craig McLean
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In a warehouse in south Wales, a high-value witness and a prison transport officer are about to pay a price for becoming close – too close – as they flee an organised crime gang intent on stopping some damning court testimony. Given that they’re handcuffed together, if Tahar Rahim’s Tibor is to be “slaughtered” by his brutal former employers, then so is Izuka Hoyle’s Amber.
Such are the stakes of new Sky Atlantic drama Prisoner. The six-part thriller – with its echoes of 1958 Sidney Poitier/Tony Curtis “shackled prisoners” classic The Defiant Ones – was created by screenwriter Matt Charman (Oscar-nominated for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies) and directed by Bafta-winner Otto Bathurst (Lockerbie: a Search for Truth, PeakyBlinders).
Hoyle, best known for Boiling Point and BigBoys, describes the scene pictured above as “the precursor to a major action sequence. It’s the moment you learn why Tibor is agreeing to be a witness for the National Crime Unit... and the possibility of moles in the British government.”
Close contact: Killer Tahar Rahim and prison officer Izuka Hoyle are forced to work together to survive. Sky Atlantic
The 30-year-old Scottish actor adds that this is also the moment her character discovers the particular skillset of the ruthlessly efficient contract killer she’s been shackled to, played by 44-year-old Frenchman Rahim (The Serpent, A Prophet). “She sees how his brain works, in the way that he utilises Amber in order to steal things – a spoon, for example, which features in the fight scene!”
Such scenes were preceded by an intense week of combat – and indeed cutlery – training, she says. “That was a time for them to not only teach us the choreography of the fight sequences, but for Tahar and I to get acquainted with each other – and get acquainted with the handcuffs. “Because the handcuffs are a character in themselves in this story,” she explains – a key prop that came in six different stunt varieties: “plastic, alloy steel, locked ones, safe-lock, anti-lock and rubber.”
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“Tahar and I always laugh and say: thank God we got on and loved each other. Because it’s quite a thing to be handcuffed to someone for the best part of four months!”
Authors
Craig McLean
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