Siân Brooke is putting it out into the universe: she wants to do a period drama. 'I'd like to dress up in corsets,' she tells Metro. 'I'm saying that, give me a week, and I'll be like, untie me! But I've done quite a lot of realistic women in gritty situations, which I love, but I wouldn't mind a bit of a period drama.'
It would certainly be a sharp right turn from the Channel 4 spy series The Undeclared War, the second season of which hits screens tonight. 'I'm quite greedy. I really like doing something that throws me in the opposite direction from the one that I've just been coming from,' Brooke, 46, explains. Wigs and corsetry would definitely be that.
The Undeclared War season 2 cast shake-up
The Undeclared War returns with a shake-up in the call sheet. Simon Pegg has been bumped up to the starring role, with Brooke joining the cast as his wife and fellow GCHQ analyst Barbara. The season revolves around a foreign-backed malware attack, aided by a mole in their midst. There are lots of suspicious looks and furious work at computers, all of which will probably leave you watching your phone with mistrust.
Brooke had to 'hit the ground running' after a quick turnaround to come on board. It was no small feat, given that Barbara is a former spy who's proficient in Mandarin ('I could lie. But no, I was not fluent in Mandarin'). Neither has Brooke seen the inside of GCHQ, but she did get to speak to individuals working at the organisation, which she describes as a perk of the job. 'You never get to do that in real life,' she says, even if it seems the experience was a sobering one.
'I was aware of how things work now tactically in warfare – it's much more covert, online. But it was terrifying to really understand the damage that can happen. You can push that button, and within seconds, a country will feel the impacts.' Put this in a TV show and you've got good, old-fashioned stakes.
Married couple with compartmentalised work lives
Plus, there's a married couple with a notoriously cagey line of work at the centre of it. Brooke and Pegg's characters are in a Severance-type situation where they can never talk about work with one another. 'They call it "compartment". I found that one of the most intriguing things,' says Brooke. 'I definitely do not live within the realms of compartmentalism.'
I suspect Brooke might be better at it than she realises, given the response when I ask where the whole hack/mole/compartment business goes. 'I can't say anything. I can't say anything,' she insists. 'But it is mind-blowing.' When Brooke played Benedict Cumberbatch's unhinged sister Eurus in Sherlock, she was part of a stonking big twist that similarly had to be kept under lock and key.
This is the show Brooke identifies as the one she hopes her two children watch, once it's age-appropriate (even if they aren't usually 'that fussed' by mum's work). 'I feel like it's really formative television,' she says of Sherlock. 'That's not because I'm in it. I'm very much removed from that character, hopefully, in real life. Actually, it might instil a bit of fear into my children about listening to what Mum says,' she adds, with a grin.
As for the trick to keeping all these secrets on the job? 'It's knowing fear. The fear that I would be the person that lets the cat out of the bag means I just stay silent, almost to the point of being mute in interviews.' Not this one, thankfully. She compares it to the game Articulate, forever speaking around the thing at hand. 'As the years have gone by, I think my memory has just got really poor. If it's over six months since we filmed something, I can't remember.'
Bafta nomination for Blue Lights
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blue Lights is the show Brooke is recognised most for, alongside the BBC comedy Trying. This year, she finally earned a Bafta nod for her turn as rookie copper Grace. Brooke found out while on set for the Belfast-set crime drama, filming a scene in which, coincidentally, a spot of good news is announced. 'It was like life imitating art, imitating life,' she says. The gong ultimately went to Narges Rashidi for Prisoner 951, after a long, nervy day. 'It's one of the last awards,' Brooke recalls. 'It's a brilliant day. It's a real celebration of what we do, but you're living on your nerves for the whole day. It's sort of like, oh my gosh, can we just get through it, please?' Admitting it's a cliché, she adds: 'To just have the recognition from Bafta, I really did feel like I'd won already.'
The show's fourth season is slated for release later this year. After that, who knows? 'Whenever the time comes for Grace to hang up her police hat, I think it will always hold a dear place in my heart,' says Brooke, speaking warmly of the cast, crew and craic in Belfast, as well as her sadness at the riots there this summer.
Personal connection to Blue Lights
Blue Lights had a 'massive pull' from the off, given that her father worked as a police officer for decades. When she read the scripts, the banter between coppers immediately struck her as true-to-life. 'It was part of the tapestry of my youth,' she recalls. 'His friends were in the force. The conversations I'd hear him have on the phone, them coming back to our house and having a drink after work. These people spend such huge amounts of time confined in a car, watching the world go by, dealing with the oddest, extreme situations. You can't help but form quite intense bonds with each other. That's something I think the show prides itself in.'
The Undeclared War season 2 will be available on July 21 at 9pm on Channel 4.
