The Long Firm

Mark Strong is Harry Starks

Characters like Harry Starks don't come along very often.

 

The main protagonist in Jake Arnott's book, The Long Firm, adapted for BBC TWO by Joe Penhall, Harry Starks is, at first sight, a nasty piece of work.

 

But beneath the tough exterior lies an intelligent, sensitive, misunderstood man.

 

Mark Strong, who plays Starks, explains why there's more to Harry than blackmail, torture, rent boys and money-making schemes.

 

"Harry Starks is in the gutter but reaching for the stars. He's in his late thirties, gay, Jewish, working-class and he comes from a traditional East End family.

 

"He's used criminal activity to move himself on in life and he's had to use the threat of violence to get where he is.

 

"But he's an incredibly intelligent guy who is banging on the door of acceptability," says Mark, who has appeared in the films Fever Pitch, Hotel, It's All About Love, and had TV roles in the BBC's Our Friends In The North, Births, Marriages and Deaths, Channel 4's Falling Apart and ITV1's Henry VIII.

 

"Sure Harry's a gangster, but what's more interesting is his relationships with the four people that he comes into contact with, all of whose lives he affects," he continues.

 

"The Long Firm attempts to make the fact that the central character is a gangster the least relevant part of the drama."

 

While the other main characters – Lord Thursby (played by Sir Derek Jacobi), Ruby (Lena Headey), Tommy (Joe Absolom), Jimmy (Phil Daniels) and Lenny (Shaun Dingwall) – get to know and love the sensitive and misunderstood Harry, their lives are turned upside down by the man whose favourite method of torture is to threaten people with a white-hot poker.

 

But, says Mark, everybody is out to gain something from knowing the great Mr Starks – as indeed Harry is out to gain something from them.

"All the characters want something from one another – Thursby wants Harry's love of life and lack of fear and Harry wants Thursby's nobility; Harry wants a bit of Ruby's showbiz and Ruby wants a bit of Harry's scene; Tommy wants what Harry's got but Harry wants a bit of Tommy's youth; and Harry wants Lenny's intelligence while Lenny wants Harry's hardness.

 

"All of them are pulled into Harry's orbit and all four of them commit crimes because of that.

 

"Even Mooney [the dodgy detective determined to put Harry in prison] wants some of Harry's nous and Harry could probably do with a bit of Mooney's doggedness.

 

"Harry says to Lord Thursby at one point, 'What have you got that I haven't?' and he knows that he obviously has education, privilege and money, what he means is how can Thursby be a Lord while Harry's a gangster?"

 

Mark found Arnott's book a gripping read and had no hesitation in accepting the role.

 

He met the author when he spent some time on set: "We had a great chat about the project. I'm fascinated by the fact that all his novels are set in the past. He's got a fascination with the Sixties and, as a kid, I did too."

 

Born in 1963, Mark spent his early years learning about the decade by leafing through scrapbooks kept by his mother.

 

"She had cuttings from the Profumo affair and about Elvis and she's still got them all; books full of things that happened in the Sixties.

 

"As a kid, when I used to come home from school, I used to sit at home with nothing to do while my mum was at work, and look through these old scrapbooks, and it was like another world."

 

All Mark remembers from the Sixties is the Moon landing and 'our Ford Cortina' but, like many others, he is intrigued by the era.

 

"The Sixties is a very special decade, I think, because it's book-ended by the very austere, rational Fifties, with kids dressed like their parents, and then the lazy, banged out, hippy trippy vibe of the Seventies.

 

"It's like a decade caught in the light of a flashbulb. It's so glamorous, black and white and sharp. The suits were sharp, the music was sharp – it's just fascinating."

 

Indeed the suits worn by the cast of The Long Firm are incredibly sharp.

 

Mark says they were the real McCoy: "They're fantastic. All the cloth is original Sixties cloth, but they've been made to measure by our costume designer, James Keast, and a tailor, Mr Eddie, who actually made suits in the Sixties – I'm wearing exactly what people would have been wearing."

 

It's perhaps the fact that these sharp-dressed men seem so respectable that makes their violent crimes seem so appalling.

 

Mark says: "The Long Firm has got a bit of everything. It's got people being kind to their mums, it's got people blowing other people away; it's got the highs and the lows, making money and being on the run.

 

"It's just so shocking in the world of being dressed very sharply and behaving with respect to suddenly see the violence and messy deaths."

 

And while he admits that, as a boy, he would have loved to have been in a gun-toting gangster movie, Mark says that the reality couldn't have been more different.

 

"Now that I'm older, it's terribly unglamorous. Guns are just big bits of metal and I want to get rid of them as soon as possible.

 

"I found it unnerving. I always wanted to have a little look down the barrel to make absolutely dead sure that there was nothing in it. I wasn't gung-ho around guns.

 

"Phil Daniels hated having a gun pointed at him. Even though you know the gun's safe, it's still really weird."

 

Despite all the violence, death and torture that inhabit Harry's world, there is a bit of a light relief in his life, something that helped Mark get into character on set every morning: Harry’s love of Judy Garland.

 

"She's fantastic," enthuses Mark. "Harry loves torch-song singers and I do, too. I've got a couple of Judy Garland CDs that I played when I arrived on set in the morning to get into character.

 

"I'll tell you who's even better than Judy, though, Tracey Bennett, who plays her.

 

"The day Tracey was due to do her Talk Of The Town sequence where, apparently, Judy Garland couldn't even start singing, really sticks in my mind. She's in such an appalling state that people just started throwing bread rolls.

 

"Anyway, Tracey really looked the part and she hadn't come all that way just to have bread rolls thrown at her!

 

"She just said, 'Do you mind if I just warm my voice up?' and everyone was running around on set getting ready.

 

"When Tracey started singing, everything just came to a standstill. Everyone was gobsmacked."

 

In the drama, Judy Garland only ever gets to see the good side of Harry; the awestruck fan who hangs on to her every word.

 

But which does Mark prefer playing, the good guys or the bad guys?

 

"Bad guys are the best," he laughs.

 

"In terms of drama, just because there's something fascinating about darkness, about wrong doing. And if it's fictionalised, it's not dangerous.

 

"I've done both, actually – good guys and bad. I seem to swing between very kind husbands who do the cooking when the busy wife gets home and total head cases and villains!"

THE LONG FIRM