Interview with Paapa Essiedu who plays David

What is special about Jack’s scripts? 
I worked with Jack Thorne on a Channel 4 show called Kiri, and I’ve watched his career go stratospheric in the interim. He has such grace and humility, such breadth and diversity and range to his writing. When Jack gets in contact with you, it's a privilege. He writes such well-rounded, multidimensional characters in very real situations. There's something elevated about the world and ritual of the church, but a lot of the drama comes from domestic moments and real, grounded relationships between, for me, David and members of his family or congregation, as well as between David and Anna (Keeley Hawes). He's got a real skill for eking the sublime out of the everyday. 

How would you describe David? 

He’s been living at his sister’s house in Bristol for three years, moving there from a different church having been a bit of a highflyer and earmarked to perhaps become a bishop one day. He’s very popular and charismatic and took his work very seriously but maybe got an inflated sense of his own ability and tried to take on everything. One particular incident unfortunately ended up with a young man taking his own life on David's watch, and that profoundly affected him. He turned to alcohol and had to go through a rehabilitation process, trying to put his life back together in terms of his relationship with God and with what he feels is his calling as a man of God. 

Then Anna comes along and they fall in love. Is that a bolt from the blue?  

Yeah, and Jack writes this in such a delicate way. It's not fireworks or huge declarations, necessarily, but very small interactions that become bigger in one's mind or heart. I think that’s very true of real life. With the people we end up falling in love with, we very often can trace it back to one specific moment when it changes the chemistry in your brain and body. That's what happens between David and Anna in the first episode. One of the priests I spoke to during my research told me, “I'm married to God, that is my partner.” So, the idea of falling in love with anybody else feels like committing adultery, in some sense. But also, in the eyes of God, loving someone else is a manifestation of loving God. It's a complex, knotty and hopefully dramatic situation. 

What does he see in her specifically?  

Something in her spirit. She has this feeling and acts on it, taking this huge risk to leave the nunnery and re-enter conventional life because she believes it's right. At the heart of this show is the idea of faith and belief and being able to commit to something without necessarily having the logical or scientific pathway towards it – just taking a leap of faith and giving yourself over to it. There's something in Anna’s spirit that really embodies that for David. He really admires and ultimately is drawn to that. 

David isn't initially able to take that same leap of faith. Why is he more reluctant? 

This is very common in love, where it can be terrifying to be confronted by the thing you want and to really come to terms with the sacrifices that often have to be made to get it. The idea that you will sacrifice everything at any time for love doesn't always translate to everyday life. David has responsibilities and has made decisions all through his life that have led him to this point. It's not easy to say, “Okay, now I'm going to renege on those decisions.” He lives in a state of disbelief at what's happening to him and is trying to suppress these feelings to keep the status quo. Eventually, he is put in a position where he has to make the choice to either let her and this idea of a future with her go, or to remain not fully satisfied. 

Anna calls him a “click of the fingers Christian”, an activist priest trying to make a measurable difference to people's lives. At another point, Phil (David Dawson) says he's weak, but a good man. Does David see the truth in those characterisations? 

Yeah, he’s frustrated by his own limitations and how quickly the work he wants to do can be implemented. There’s conflict between him and the bishop (Jason Watkins), in that David wants to put money into the community to make an immediate difference, building a basketball court and establishing a needle exchange, whereas the bishop has more of an eye on the political aspects of his job. It’s about the contradiction between being a representation of God on Earth and being there to carry out God's work, while you're just a human being, fallible and facing the same temptations and struggles and contradictions as any other person. David’s also coming to terms with this huge responsibility that he has misused in the past and is fearful of misusing again, while having these urges and feelings and truths within himself that appear to be at odds with that. 

We see this in his relationship with Phil’s daughter, Tina (Holly Rhys). Could you talk about that? 

Tina's a young attendant of the church who sings in the choir, but there's physical abuse in the home, particularly between her parents. David is trying to figure out where the line is: does he literally intervene and get social services involved? Does he offer advice? Does he talk to the mum or the dad? He ends up trying to remove her from the situation by inviting her to join the nunnery, without really considering whether that is what she wants or whether that's the best thing for her. He’s seen as someone to help or provide support, while having to draw a line – because when you overstep, as he's found in the past, it can go catastrophically wrong. 

How much did you research the priesthood? 

I knew bits and bobs. My mum was a devout Christian, and I grew up going to church until I was 17 or 18, so I had some knowledge of church scenarios and mechanisms, but from the point of view of a congregant rather than someone putting it all together. I spent a lot of time with a couple of priests, one who works in Cardiff and another who works in north London, looking at the ritual and physicality of being a priest, the way you have to swing the incense or hold yourself when you're wearing the robes, the way you cross yourself when you're talking to somebody or when you’re in a confession booth. A lot of ritual is second nature after many years training, so I wanted it to feel bedded in. David’s sister, Susan (Sophie Stone), is deaf and communicates primarily using British Sign Language, so I spent a lot of time learning BSL. That relationship is incredibly intimate and important, and Sophie is one of the most remarkable actresses I've ever worked with, so I wanted to do as much preparation as I could to give those scenes a real sense of history and emotional intimacy.  

How did you find expressing yourself in BSL? 

It's not easy! The thing I found most difficult is that it is its own language with its own syntax and grammar. It's not directly translatable but, even though you've got to completely flip the way you understand things, I sometimes found it clearer than verbal language in terms of communicating a feeling. A lot of the things we're trading in our conversations are about emotion: we're not reeling off a shopping list; we’re talking about feelings. Something about BSL really captures the physicality of emotion, which actually made it easier for me. 

David has two confidants in his life: his sister and Francis (Adrian Scarborough). 

I was lucky enough to work with Adrian on a play at the National Theatre when I was way younger and I've always admired him. He’s a brilliant comic actor who also imbues all his characters with such humanity and honesty and truth. His character here is a great example of that. On the page it read very differently - haughtier and more short-tempered - but Adrian has a beautiful twinkle in his eye that makes you warm to his characters. He provides solace for David.  

David's childhood in care was very hard. In that context, how important is Susan?  

Incredibly important, because she's a witness. When you go through difficult things at any time in your life, particularly when you're younger and your brain is still developing, sometimes you need honest and consistent witnesses for it to even be made real, so you’re able to process it further down the line. Susan was there; she went through it with him. It's obviously a very loving relationship, but not saccharine: there is tough love and teasing and quick tempers – people are quick to anger and quick to forgive. Between him feeling like the odd one out as the black child in a white, repressed family unit and her feeling like the odd one out not being able to hear in the same way, they found a real bond early on: as long as we stick with each other, we'll be okay. He relies upon that even later in life. 

How do you enjoy performing Jack’s two-handers? 

I've done loads of plays, and it's similar to that. Keeley and I, for example, had these 12, 15-page scenes, when telly is so often plot, plot, plot, getting the information over as quickly and simply as possible. Jack is confident enough in his storytelling to say a lot without actually saying it, which is what we do in life. Sometimes it's simpler to just say, “Hey, I love you,” but the way we do it is by telling this long story about something or other. It's really about the arc of a gesture, as opposed to making a dramatic shift as quickly and simply as possible. 

How was Keeley as a playing partner? 

She’s one of the best this country has, and her CV speaks for itself. It was fascinating to watch her work. Our characters share a magnetism but so many obstacles, which can really provide fuel for the scenes. There was a lot for us to chew on and her performance is brilliant. 

Did making Falling cause you to reassess faith? 

There was something profound about re-entering that frame of mind. I've got my own reasons for not going to church anymore and having more of a bespoke feeling about the supernatural or the eternal. But I find it remarkable, the moments where those rituals or invitations to surrender can be really effective in providing a sense of peace or an opportunity to move through something. It isn't a surprise that often you find people returning to religion when people are born, get married, die… These huge moments in life where there aren't really answers within our world to explain what they feel like. We can logically process it, but often it's far more difficult to emotionally process it, so this really made me feel the power of religion and faith to provide peace in those moments. We often put systems and mechanisms in place to control things that feel wild or scary or disruptive, so we can get through the day to day, but there can be a real peace in surrendering to something that feels right and good from within.