‘After the Flood’: Sophie Rundle dives into disaster driven crime show

In ‘After the Flood‘, the effects of climate change are weaved in with a murder mystery that really ramps up after an aggressive flood overtakes an English town. PC Joanna Marshall (played by ‘Peaky Blinders‘ actress Sophie Rundle) kicks off the investigation after becoming obsessed with finding out what happened to a man who was found dead in the after-effects of the flood. What was first thought to be an obvious drowning turns out to be a murder, and audiences are taken with Marshall on a hunt to crack the case in a community where she knows most of the people—she just doesn’t know their secrets.

Rundle sat down to chat more about what audiences can expect from BritBox’s ‘After the Flood.’

What first stood out to you about this project and made you want to sign on?

I was really fascinated by how they were going to do all this flood stuff… It’s quite a punchy thing to write down on a piece of paper that the whole town is flooded and [Joanna’s] making her way through it, so that was exciting because I don’t get to do a lot of that stuff. 

A lot of women, we don’t often get to do the big stunts, that’s often the blokes. So it was quite fun to be, oh, that’ll be me, that’s my character. I was also really interested in her pregnancy storyline [too]. Again, often that’s a kind of periphery storyline: She’s pregnant, she goes away for an episode, she has the baby, she comes back [to the] story. So I really liked that that was integral to who she is and what her journey is through the show. 

With the flood, I would have to imagine that it was quite an interesting experience for you as an actor, especially since they built those sets and created the aftermath. Does anything stand out to you from filming those scenes in particular?

The actor always turns up last and you come onto set and you’ve got your coffee cup and everybody’s been there for weeks or months beforehand and they’ve been there for hours before you that morning, and a lot of the time with that work, you don’t get to see it. You turn up and you do your bit and then you go home. But what was lovely on this is that you really saw the extraordinary work that goes in the departments to making this happen. 

It was amazing. After the rainwater had stopped and we walked down the street and it’s totally flooded and the quiet after the storm, it shows the devastation that really does happen to communities. They built the facade, this entire street, and they built it in this huge tank in a car park, and then they flooded it and then they propped us in it and off we went. That’s the thing I love about being in this job is that you are the one on camera, but there are all these people around you behind [the scenes] with all this talent and it all comes together. And everybody’s like, oh, I’ve never done anything like this before, this is really cool. 

Since the show is dealing with climate change, which I feel is such a dark cloud that lingers over everyone, to mix that with a murder mystery, what does that bring to the audience experience?

Well, I think it’s smart because it’s such as you say, this looming dark cloud and it’s so enormous and it’s so intimidating to know how to have these conversations. And I think it shuts a lot of people down. That’s why people kind of deny it, they don’t want to talk about it. It’s too big to comprehend. So how do you have that conversation? I think the way to do it is to distill it down into the very human element of this enormous thing that is happening and it’s getting worse. 

How does it affect you and how does it affect the people around you? And actually, when we were filming it, it was happening in real time across the country. Smaller communities, particularly in the north of England were being flooded and destroyed by these floods… so what are the after-effects of that?  That’s how you can start to have a conversation about climate change that perhaps isn’t too intimidating. And then when you braid that together with this murder mystery, it makes it entertaining. That’s really important as well, that it’s not just a lecture. It’s fun to follow along the story and then it’s fun to have the conversation afterward. 

What can you tell me about your character, PC Joanna Marshall, and her journey throughout the series? Especially with her pregnancy playing such a factor in her story?

There’s something unusually compelling about her, and I think it’s because there is this enormous thing looming on the horizon and it’s quite terrifying. You find out you’re pregnant and then they just give you the date and you may go, oh, your life’s going to change then. Especially if it’s the first time. So I think for Jo, she’s thinking, people are already treating me differently because I’m pregnant. How are they going to treat me when I’m a mother? Am I even going to be allowed to do my job? 

So it kind of gives her this propulsion if she can just solve this crime, if she can just figure out what’s going on in this case, then she can prove herself, and it’s almost like she banks some security. And I think anybody that has been pregnant can kind of understand that feeling of this time limit. It just makes her fun to watch. You don’t want your protagonist to be completely by the book all the time, you want ’em to do something a little bit nuts. It makes it interesting.

Catch ‘After the Flood‘ when it premieres May 13 on BritBox.