Cobra season 2: Robert Carlyle on his ‘toughest ever’ shoot

Trainspotting legend Robert Carlyle has revealed his new TV series was the hardest production he’s ever worked on.

Scottish actor has had some intense roles over the years, including Trainspotting’s wild-eyed and volatile Begbie and as Renaud, the Bond villain in The World Is Not Enough.

But in his 30 years in the industry, the toughest time he’s had on a production was for the second season of political thriller Cobra.

“It was very tough, the toughest I have ever been involved in,” Carlyle told news.com.au.

The second season of Cobra, in which Carlyle plays a British Prime Minister besieged by a series of disasters as the country comes under cyber-attack from a foreign power, was filming in the UK from late 2020, as Covid gripped the world.

“We were also shooting in Manchester, which at that time in UK was kind of the epicentre of the whole thing.

“I was going from my apartment straight to the studio and back, and that was five months. It was stressful, knowing this virus was out there and worrying that if you contract this thing, not just for your own self but then the entire show would go down.”

Robert Carlyle as PM Sutherland in Cobra.

Add to that, the Glasgow-born actor actually lives in Vancouver, Canada (where the productions for Carlyle’s roles in Stargate Universe and Once Upon A Time were based) so being separated from his family, wife Anastasia and three children, over the holidays was particularly difficult.

“There was a two-week break which was scheduled at Christmas and New Year so that people could go home but I couldn’t because of quarantine regulations. There was no way I could go home and come back.

“It was the first time I’ve ever spent Christmas and New Year without my family. There was an extra sadness to the whole thing.”

If there was an upside to the experience, his personal isolation fuelled the intensity of his process and his onscreen character.

“It made me even more intense,” Carlyle explained. “I tend to be quite like that anyway, very deeply into stuff, sinking myself into characterisations. [The five months of isolation] probably made it a more intense experience.

“It suited because [my Cobra character Robert] Sutherland is always under enormous pressure in this series.”

Carlyle in The Legend of Barney Thompson, which he directed.

The first season of Cobra had wrapped production and was broadcast before Covid hit, and the story of a PM dealing with the aftermath of solar flares and personal scandal was a hit in the UK, becoming of the most binged series on its British network Sky’s streaming platform.

After such a dramatic entry, it’s hard to envisage how a second season could escalate the stakes – but creator and writer Ben Richards found a way.

“There is nothing else like it,” Carlyle said. “There’s no other kind of political drama like it, I guess that’s why there’s an appetite for it.”

Carlyle said Richards had even pitched, before Covid, an idea about the crippling effects of a pandemic – “Who would believe that?”

“He’s got a fantastic imagination so anything he was going to come up with, I was going to be happy to join.”

The resulting second season story about an unexploded munition wreaking havoc on the Kent coastline coinciding with an all-out cyber-attack is the kind of pulsating story that barely lets you take a breath.

With Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner and Jonny Lee Miller in Trainspotting 2.

It wasn’t something Carlyle knew a lot about before plunging into that world, but he certainly is now.

“I was aware, of course, that cyber-attacks and cyber-wars are real things,” he said. “But I hadn’t really considered it to that extent, and the effect it can have on the infrastructure – the political infrastructure of a country, the communication system, the emergency services and even down to the nuclear facilities.

“I had no idea it was possible and of course it is.

“It’s actually terrifying, this idea of a cyber-attack on a country. It’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. You can see the effects of that throughout the world in different countries, the interference by other powers.”

On a personal level, being involved with Cobra’s storyline has made him more cognisant of his personal cyber security.

“My wife would say, ‘Have you updated your phone, have you updated your computer’ and I was not very good at that. I’d be blasé about it and several weeks would go by before I did it but since the show, I have been very good at that.

“I’m very aware of that now and on it, thanks to Cobra and my wife.”

Cobra season two is streaming now on Binge, Foxtel On Demand and Fetch, with new episodes available on BBC First on Tuesdays at 8.30pm

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Originally published as Cobra season 2: Robert Carlyle on his ‘toughest ever’ shoot