Former Death in Paradise star Ben Miller has confessed he was initially "frightened" of drumming, a new skill his character takes up in the upcoming series of ITV's Professor T.
Miller, who played DI Richard Poole in the BBC crime hit, now stars as a criminology professor with OCD who helps police solve cases. The fourth series is due to start later this month, and Miller appeared on The One Show with co-star Sunetra Sarker to discuss it.
Drumming confession
When presenter Roman Kemp asked how the drumming was going, Miller said: "Well, I'm thrilled to tell you I've stopped playing." He described it as "great" but admitted: "I kind of resisted it a bit to begin with because I was a little bit frightened of drumming. But then I was sort of, I thought it was the idea that it was a bit like tapping for the professor and it was a way of kind of him calming himself."
Character's traumatic past
Miller also opened up about his character's backstory, revealing the professor's past was "traumatic". "That trauma sort of haunts him all the way through the stories," he said. "And it's a trauma that I think he really tries to grapple with." He added: "He's really on a journey to try and kind of enter the real world. He started in this ivory tower, and he's now sort of coming out. He's helping the Cambridgeshire police solve truly baffling crimes."
Co-star's take
Sarker, who plays DCI Maiya Goswami, said her character and Miller's "could not be more different". "I mean, my character is all about evidence-based," she explained. "She is procedural. She is hard talking. She says it how it is. And the professor is his own animal that kind of creates his own world where he works it out. So we're never in the picture. He's never including us in how his thinking is."
The One Show airs at 7pm on weekdays on BBC One. Professor T returns on August 19.
