YOU may expect a modern TV set to be a much safer destination than an oil rig but it’s not without its dangers, the stars of Scotland’s next big drama series have revealed.
Speaking ahead of the premiere of Amazon’s The Rig in Edinburgh, the cast told journalists of the physical toll filming took on them.
Martin Compston, Mark Bonnar and Iain Glen are among the stars of the supernatural thriller, written by David Macpherson, that follows a group of oil and gas workers trapped on a rig after a mysterious fog cuts off communication with the mainland.
The crew are forced to the edge of their limits as they attempt to discover what mysterious force lies behind their troubles at sea.
The cast said that while the dangers of oil rigs are real, trying to remake them for television didn’t leave the cast unscathed.
A black eye, getting set alight and near-hypothermia were all part of making The Rig.
There was some scares during a sequence in which Glen's character Magnus has to recover Compston's character, whos is operating a massive crane arm.
Glen said he was hesitant of using a harness, worried it would alter his acting - but it's a decision he later regretted after falling off the structure. He said he had survived from hitting the floor by just a foot.
“There was also an incident with Martin,” he continued. “We couldn’t put him out.”
“He was on fire,” Mark Bonnar said. “He was on fire for a while,” Rochena Sandall added.
It’s something Compston is glad he did though, quoting Harrison Ford who encouraged actors to take as many risks as they can to maintain the realism of the film.
He said: "I asked [the producer], ‘are you going to set me on fire?’ And he said ‘if you want’ and I said, ‘okay, let’s go for a it’. It was a fun day, to an extent.
“It was a bit toastie,” he jokes, adding that he wasn’t injured at all. “I got a bit of a tan after it.”
He wasn’t the only cast member facing injury though. Canadian actress Emily Hampshire revealed she got a black eye during filming, having accidentally walked into a crane. Compston described the bruse as a “belter” and a “peach”.
The Schitt’s Creek actor said viewers are unlikely to notice though, praising the makeup artists for their top work on covering it up.
Meanwhile, Mark Bonnar said he had near-hypothermia while filming a scene in water.
“We were shooting on the spider deck. They built it with a weighing machine at the Albert Dock and they filled it with four or five feet of water,” he said.
“We’d been down there for I don’t know how long. It was a huge spectacle.
“In the sequence they had to wet me down. A huge wave comes, which was done by the stunt men, I’m glad to say.
“But the aftermath was me. So they pour water over me which was very cold at the time, 2am or something.
“Thank goodness the medics were really on the ball and taking my temperature and thankfully they did because I was almost hypothermic at one point.
“So they had to remove me and take me up the stairs and wrap me in foil blankets. I was fine. I was back down to the set half an hour later but they had to make sure.
“But I didn’t feel it. I felt fine. But the medic said ‘no, we have to take you off and put you in the warm now because if I don’t it’ll get a lot worse very quickly.’”
Despite the mishaps, the cast said the show's medics were very strict and quick to take care of any issues.
But it's all a price worth paying for the cast, with Glen, who plays the boss of the rig, describing the script as a “wonderful piece of writing about a world I didn’t know much about”. He said The Rig is a “great thriller with an important message”.
Compston agreed, saying it was “great to be on a job in Scotland with such ambition”.
“The size and scale of it was just exciting to be on and in terms of the cast and production value of it,” he said.
“But also having a bit of a personal interest in it. My dad worked offshore, I still have pals who work there but I think first and foremost it’s got to be entertaining and I hope it is.”
Asked by The National if his father had any advice for him walking in his paternal boots, Compston said: “The only thing he said was ‘who the f*** is the offshore installation manager?’, who’s the boss and he’s never really well-liked amongst the crew of workers outside.
“That was the first thing he said and that gave me a taste of where my dad stood. There is a divide on the rig between the people who work inside the run the place and the people out grafting in the elements.
“I’m one of the insides on the show and he’s one of the outsides so I have a feeling he’ll have some words for me when he sees it.”
The first episode of The Rig will be shown at Edinburgh’s Everyman cinema on Tuesday for a private theatrical premiere with the show hitting TV screens on January 6.
