Channel 5 has a new four-part thriller – The Drowning – starting today (Monday 1st February), which stars Jill Halfpenny and Rupert Penry-Jones.

Here, the 45-year-old actress tells us more about the show…

The Killing Times: What were your thoughts on your character, Jodie?

Jill Halfpenny: My initial thoughts on Jodie were that I loved how messy she was as a character. How she didn’t have everything together and how, within the first five minutes of the audience meeting her, she was clearly making mistakes. I like it when characters are immorally vague as it creates an interesting dynamic to play – your intentions can be good and pure but can still be perceived as being immoral and that’s what I was drawn to in Jodie. Her reasons are clear but her actions are wrong and that was appealing to me.”

TKT: Jodie goes on quite a journey in this series…

JH: Jodie does become somewhat erratic, but her intention becomes clearer. She is so sure of what she is doing and why she is doing it and that Daniel is her son. I can only imagine that if your child went missing and you thought you saw that child again, there is nothing you wouldn’t do in order to get close to them or to get actual proof. 

I imagine losing a child has to be the most awful loss one could suffer, that seems very obvious to me. I think losing a child under circumstances where you do not fully know what happened is another layer of torture. Some of her family think Tom is dead and Jodie thinks he is still alive. She feels it clearly inside her. Not only is she dealing with this unbearable grief and loss, she is also dealing with the people and their feelings around her. People who are supposed to love her, be there for her, comfort her and show her compassion and are now imploring her to accept what has happened and to move on.

She is trapped living in this madness where she probably only has one friend she can truly talk to and who truly listens to her. I don’t think Jodie’s family really listen to her- they just try to shut her down and therein lies the insanity of it all. She is completely gaslit by them. They tell her she is mad, that she drinks too much (of which she does) and that she has destructive patterns in her life. This does not mean to say what she is doing now is the wrong path to walk on. I really empathise with her- that she is living in her own madness as well as living amongst these influencing people around her too. That would be my idea of torture. I guess that is why Jodie drinks- to numb the pain of it all, to forget and to make life a little more bearable. Of course, it has its consequences. She is in an unenviable position; I wouldn’t want to be her in a million years.

The Drowning: Monday 1st – Thursday 4th February, 9pm, Channel 5