Keeley

TV star Keeley Hawes has appeared in everything from Line of Duty to The Durrells and is currently starring in Prime Video’s The Assasin

Keeley Hawes has made a candid admission.

The star of a host of TV dramas from Spooks and Ashes to Ashes to The Durrells and Line of Duty is back for series 2 of Prime Video’s comic thriller The Assassin.

Keeley plays Julie, a contract killer forced out of retirement when ghosts from the past threaten her and her estranged son Edward, played by Freddie Highmore.

But it seems the 50-year-old was left a little scarred by her experience of filming. In a new interview she admitted that she has been left with “quite dark thoughts”.

“I do have really quite dark thoughts about people that perhaps I didn’t have before – like if someone’s on a video call on the train. That could also be my age. But I’m blaming Julie as well,” she said in a new interview with the Radio Times.

Keeley, who turned 50 earlier this year, admitted it was empowering to be playing “a perimenopausal James Bond”, as her character is described by her on-screen son.

She said: “It’s written by two middle-aged men [Harry and Jack Williams], and they get it. In terms of the big set pieces, I’m having a ball. Julie’s a bit fitter this series, so there’s less groaning when I get up off the ground. But she’s no gym bunny. I’m still a woman in my 50s.”

Ahead of series one of The Assasin, which was primarily was shot in Greece, specifically Athens, the cast had discussed the harsh filming conditions as they battled against sweltering temperatures.

And Keeley, who is married to Succession star Matthew Macfadyen, confessed she had to handle some enormous stunts, but relished the challenge. “This is some of the biggest stunt work that I’ve ever done,” she revealed.

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In season one, Edward discovered that Julie, who he was raised by, wasn’t actually his birth mother, and in actual fact took him in after killing his father on a job.

The synopsis for season 2 says: “Hitwoman Julie and Edward reluctantly team up once again, when Edward’s dream honeymoon with Kayla is hijacked by the arrival of a mysterious new threat.

“Plunged back into a world of international crime, kidnapping and high-speed car chases, to survive the job and mend an already fragile relationship, they’ll have to take down Spain’s corrupt underworld… and hopefully not each other first.”

The Assasin season 2 will release on Prime Video on Friday, November 6. Read the full interview with Keeley and Freddie in this week’s Radio Times