The Rig star Iain Glen has revealed that he was so impressed by the scripts for the second series that he couldn’t fathom how certain scenes would be executed.
After the massive wave that caused havoc at the end of the first series, the crew of the Kinloch Bravo find themselves in perilous new territories in the Arctic Circle.
However, they barely have time to adjust to their new secret base, known as the Stac, before they’re plunged into more conspiracies, corporate conflicts and investigations into the unknown.
Game of Thrones actor Glen reprises his role as crew leader Magnus MacMillan, joined by Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire as scientist Rose Mason and Line of Duty’s Martin Compston as communications officer Fulmer Hamilton.
“I think the challenge is reading it on the paper and thinking, ‘How on Earth are we going to pull this off? This looks just impossible’,” Glen confessed in an exclusive interview with Screen Time and other media outlets, reports the Mirror.
“But you bring all the magic of film to bear with an amazing cast and crew.”
He also shared his thoughts on returning to FirstStage Studios in Edinburgh after the first series became Prime Video’s inaugural streaming project to be filmed entirely in Scotland.
“It’s just fantastic that we’re producing this in Scotland,” he continued. “But it’s just one of those where you read it on the paper and you think ‘I just don’t know how we’re going to do it’ and then you start getting into it and everything starts to land.
“You feel, as an actor, what you’ve just got to concentrate on is relationships and trying to get the story down as much as possible. Make the most of it then let them create the magic around you in certain scenes.
“But it’s story-led, it’s character stuff, however weird and wonderful the worlds we inhabit, it’s still about the people, I think.”
Series two of The Rig will also be a considerable departure from the first outing as the six episodes will follow multiple groups of characters in different locations. Following the destruction of the tsunami, medic Cat Braithwaite (Rochenda Sandall) and agitator Lars Hutton (Owen Teale) will be dealing with the aftermath in Edinburgh.
“Myself and Owen, we really missed everybody to be honest!” Braithwaite recalled.
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Amazon“We had a lot of fun doing it but the team that we built in such a suffocating environment with The Rig season one… we missed it. We missed being with everybody.
“But obviously we know that it’s such an important part of the story to tell, seeing the aftermath of the disaster and what it does to the average man rather than just concentrating on heroes and saying, ‘Yeah, they’re alright. Let’s move on to the next bit of the story’.
“You get to really see the utter destruction that the wave has caused off the back of things that have happened in series one. But we missed everybody, of course we did. There was a little bit of crossover, but not enough for our liking!”
Glen playfully remarked about their colleague: “Owen Teale is irrepressible, so he will stay an extra day and arrive an extra day early and want to inveigle everyone into rocking and rolling into the early hours of the morning.
“But I’m a true professional, so I never got drawn into it,” he cheekily added.
The Rig season 2 premieres Thursday, January 2025 on Prime Video.