In Sweetpea, when North Berkshire Police discover there’s a killer on the loose, eager junior detective Marina sees it as an opportunity. Maybe now, finally, they can be seen.
Overlooked by everyone in the department, Marina is often relegated to the sidelines to sit on a desk and do the paperwork by her boss, D.I. Diana John. Even their police bravado persona does little to win them over.
Basically, Marina and Rhiannon are two sides of the same coin – except Marina serves her justice thanks to her badge and gun, rather than Rhiannon’s methods.
Hungry to prove their worth, Marina is soon picking up clues to catch Rhiannon in the act. It’s just a case of figuring out how far she’s willing to go in order to get the job done, and if she’ll succeed.
Speaking ahead of series launch, Leah Harvey talks about Marina’s mission, their own killer instinct, and why that makes them the perfect foil to Rhiannon.
Tell us who you play in Sweetpea?
I play DC Marina Farrar, a freshly promoted detective constable who is eager to impress a very hard-to-please boss. Marina can be a little bit obsessive with work even though she doesn’t always have the best time with her co-workers.
Also, most importantly, she has a really cool cat.
What was it that drew you to the project?
When I first read Marina’s scenes, I could sense this intense focus on the page. I was eager to get my teeth into a character with a super clear goal and Marina certainly has that.
The scripts have comedy running through them like it’s water but balances a very dark tone at the same time. There’s real genius in that balance and it’s so fun to play with so I was super hopeful I’d get the chance to be part of Sweetpea!
Tell us about Marina and where we find her in the series?
Marina is being essentially bullied by her coworkers, she’s downtrodden and she’s determined to prove that she’s good at her job. She wants – and needs - something to focus on, which she finds in Rhiannon.
There’s a strong connection between my character Marina and Rhiannon in this sense, in terms of feeling overlooked and unseen, trying to make people see them. They kind of mirror each other, but they have very different intentions.
There are a lot of parallels between Marina and Rhiannon and the story has been dubbed a ‘Coming of Rage’ - can you expand on that?
The Coming of Rage theme really speaks to me, as somebody who’s also exploring my anger, as I’m sure a lot of people are. To be able to play a character who kind of vibrates with this anger and sees that in other people, it’s really amazing and I think a lot of people are going to relate to that when they watch the show. Life can be hard sometimes, and we have to learn how to get through it.
Looking at the themes of the show, is there one that resonated with you?
The theme that really spoke to me would be trying to prove yourself. We spend a lot of time proving that we deserve to be in the space we’re in. Rhiannon does for the whole series, she’s just trying to prove that she should be there.
Marina is trying to prove that she should be a police officer and trying to prove that she does a good job. And I think we all do that a little bit, but it really spoke to me because I suppose I do it too.
“S**t Britishness” was an amazing creative term used to describe the set design and locations, what’s it been like shooting on the sets? And what do you think that brings to the show?
This phrase “s**t britishness” makes so much sense when you see the show. The suburbia has this energy where it’s thick with smog and the pavement is covered in gum; we’ve found these amazing locations that authentically show that.
It’s not pretty, it’s not been polished, it’s just suburban life as it is. It’s grey, sometimes it rains. We’ve been able to travel all around London to create that and it’s been really fun.
Sweetpea is full of unpredictable plots and a lot of unexpected turns. How do you think audiences are going to react to Marina’s character development in those last few episodes?
I was waiting to get the scripts for episodes five and six with bated breath. When I got them, I was genuinely shocked by some of the things that happened. I don’t think the audience will expect what happens.
It’s going to be exciting to see how people respond to it because the best thing about a show like this is that you don’t know what’s going to happen and they always catch you off guard. I was shocked by what lengths Marina goes to in the scripts for later episodes and thought “where can you go from there?” which I guess is the whole question of the season.