White House Farm star Freddie Fox has explained the reasons why he did not meet Jeremy Bamber.
The actor is playing the convicted murderer, who is serving a whole life term for killing five members of his family in 1985, in a new six-part ITV drama.
At the start of the interview, the This Morning hosts claimed that Freddie had turned down the opportunity to meet the killer in prison.
However, during a slightly awkward exchange, Freddie insisted that they did not reach out to Bamber at all.
When Holly Willoughby said it wasn't something he wanted to explore, he said: "I should make it clear at the beginning of the show you said I turned down an opportunity to meet him.
"I didn’t turn down an opportunity. I never made an approach. I decided to do that in conjunction with my director and criminal psychologist who I was talking to and consulting.
"We decided it wouldn’t be beneficial for a number of reasons. So we didn't decide to go down that route.
"There's so much factual material there. Video footage from the funeral and audio footage. It wasn’t going to add much to my creation."
Freddie, who was joined by co-star Mark Addy, admitted he felt duty bound to get the performance right.
He said: "I think inherently my Jeremy Bamber had to, for the sake of the drama, be as plausible a possible for as long as possible.
"It depends what you believe. We had to keep the audience asking the question all the time and make him an enigmatic figure."
Freddie admitted there had been a lot of "salacious driftwood" and "clutter" around the case.
On whether he researched the role, he added: "You feel certainly duty bound to get through as much of it as you can.
"Real people are involved there and there are surviving victims. I went to Colin Caffell's retrospective of what happened and Carol Ann Lee's meticulously researched book. I talked to criminal psychologists and officials connected to the case. I listened to the voice of Jeremy Bamber."
"Colin has been very resistant to something like this being made. Still retelling that moment for a public audience, I think he knew this team would do it right. He was so supportive of me personally and to the entire group to make sure we got this entirely right."
Mark Addy, who plays Detective Sergeant Stan Jones, had just left drama school in the 80s when the case came to light.
He said: "I remember seeing Jeremy Bamber at the funeral and feeling uneasy about the way he was behaving.
Watching Freddie play that in our drama brought all that flooding back. I was not convinced, me personally, by the way Bamber behaved."
*This Morning airs weekdays on ITV at 10am
