Fake NEWS!

PAAPA ESSIEDU on playing a politician whose TV interviews have been doctored

- CAREN CLARK

THE CAPTURE

SUNDAY & MONDAY, 9 PM, BBC1 DRAMA

A politician's life always brings challenges, but the career of ambitious MP Isaac Turner has taken a particularly unsettling turn in BBC1's thriller The Capture.

The Security Minister, played by The Lazarus Project and I May Destroy You's Paapa Essiedu, had researched and then decided to recommend rejecting a bid by a Chinese company to introduce facial-recognition technology at UK airports.

But Isaac was horrified when one of the research team was murdered and his own appearances on current-affairs show Newsnight were manipulated so that he seemed to back the proposal and support racial profiling.

Now, Isaac has been made aware of the existence of 'correction', whereby footage can be faked by organisations across the globe. DCI Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger), who is working in the UK's secret Correction unit in the hope of unmasking their shady behaviour, is trying to get to the truth. But can Isaac survive the fallout from the sinister cyberattack?

Here, Paapa, 32, tells us what to expect...

What appealed to you about joining the show?

Ben Chanan, our amazing showrunner, emailed me about the character and about season two. I hadn't watched season one, but I watched it halfway through shooting series two and thought, ‘Thank goodness, it's really good!'

The scripts speak for themselves. Ben has a talent for dialogue and creating tension.

How do you see Isaac?

A lot of politicians have a 'fake it till you make it' attitude. Isaac's no different - he's confident and feels like he knows what he's doing. There's strategy and purpose to the way he goes about his business.