Colin Firth has admitted he found it an emotional challenge taking on his role in the new Sky Drama Lockerbie: A Search For The Truth.
The show follows the aftermath of a terrorist bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 and killed a total of 270 people in the Scottish borders town on December 21, 1988.
Firth portrays Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed after boarding the plane to spend Christmas with friends in America.
Firth and Catherine McCormick, who plays Jim’s wife Jane Swire, sat down with Lorraine and both opened up on the emotional toll of taking on roles of real life people who had been through such a traumatic event.
Lorraine, who was one of the first on the scene at the Lockerbie disaster as a young journalist, said: “First of all thank you, both of you for doing this in the first place. It’s something that is very important and personal to me and the more people that know about it, the better so it was great that you did it in the first place, but it is very difficult to play real people anyway but did you have a few sleepless nights about this one? Was it a difficult one to do?”
Colin said: “Pretty much so, Ones own memories vary according to age and where you were and ow connected you are to it anyway are a starting point. The script had a huge impact on me.”
Catherine added: “The scripts were brilliant and we really wanted to be a part of it but when you are playing someone – what the Swires had been through – and portraying a real person who is still alive today and very much going through whatever that process of grief was and is for the family and that I found quite daunting and there’s a huge responsibility there so you can only hope that once you have said yes to it that you did some kind of justice.”
Speaking about Jim Swire, Firth said: “The admiration I had for his tenacity and sympathy as well because he wouldn’t have chosen this, he wouldn’t have chosen to go on campaigns, he wouldn’t have chosen to take the risk to go and meet Gaddafi, he wouldn’t have chosen to have to keep questioning what he was told and I feel this is something that goes very deep and it’s trying to fathom the unfathomable.”
He added: “I found that quite emotionally challenging to engage with really but I think one of things that propelled him as well wasn’t just tenacity it wasn’t just ‘I’ve got an answer that’s not enough I want more’ – the answers didn’t feel right to him.”
Scots star Lorraine was reflecting on how the incident had a personal impact on her due to being one of the first journalists on the scene of the Lockerbie disaster in 1988 and, after returning to the town 35 years later for a 2023 ITV documentary, the host said she unlocked undiagnosed PTSD.
Lorraine rushed to the scene when she was the Scottish correspondent for TV-am, and saw first-hand the shocking aftermath. Since then she has experienced flashbacks and nightmares, but said she thought she had “no right” to feel traumatised.
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