Colin Farrell felt death was around every corner filming his epic new TV series in the chilling conditions of the Arctic Ocean.
The Dublin actor is almost unrecognisable after bulking up to play harpooner Henry Drax in a BBC series based on Ian McGuire’s 2016 novel.
Cut off from modern communication during the month-long stint on location on the Svalbard Archipelago just a few hundred miles from the North Pole, the dad-of-two was unable to contact his sons.
Colin said: “None of us had been up to that part of the world before, we were all seeing it with child’s eyes.
“We all went through whatever we went through individually, missing our children, our lovers, our wives or husbands, because we had no communication, no email.
“It’s only three or four weeks but three or four weeks in a world in which we’re so used to having such accessibility at our fingertips.
“I found it really hard not to be able to be in contact with my guys, but it certainly created a bond between us all.”
Set in the 1850s, The North Water follows his character on a whaling expedition from Hull to the Arctic.
Line Of Duty’s Stephen Graham stars as Captain Brownlee while Jack O’Connell plays an army surgeon who keeps his recent court-martial secret from his shipmates. Out in the Arctic wilderness, Colin told how he had an acute sense of his own mortality.
He added: “I did feel that death was just around the corner at any given time, that we were just one mistake away from someone falling into the Arctic Sea and either very quickly getting hypothermia or sinking under the weight of the waterlogged costume.
“There were also polar bears around, that are beautiful and elegant and majestic but also apex predators.
“It was a very profound experience for us all to share.”
He describes his whaler character as Darwinian, someone who believes in the survival of the fittest.
Colin said: “More than any character that I’ve ever played he is a character that lives without compunction. He has no apology for anything that he says, does or feels.
“It’s an extraordinary character to have the opportunity to play.”
Colin and O’Connell were among the cast who braved the polar plunge by jumped into the icy waters in their pants.
He added: “That was lovely, one of those rites-of-passage things, the polar dip. God, it was cold, to state the obvious, a dip in the Arctic ocean, but it was terrifying.
“I was in and out fast. It was cold.”
- The North Water starts on on BBC Two at 9.30pm this Friday.
