William Ash plays Chrissie
Mancunian actor William Ash has a special relationship with his hometown.
Naturally, he's a Manchester United fan and on the set of Conviction
it seems his passion for the city rubbed off on his co-stars.
"I love Manchester," enthuses Ash. "I love the people, I love going out
- everything about it - nothing compares to it. There's always a really
nice atmosphere when you go out.
"I think everyone who came up to film Conviction loved it here. In fact
Ian Puleston-Davies is desperate for his next job to be up here!"
Best known to 91Èȱ¬ THREE audiences as Jon from Burn It, Ash has had a
varied career including parts in Clocking Off (91Èȱ¬ ONE) and Daddy's Girl
(ITV1) and playing Pam Ferris' son in the ITV drama Where The Heart Is.
Surprisingly however, Ash doesn't get recognised that often and doesn't
seem to be interested in taking the Hollywood route like his Burn It co-stars
Kieran O'Brien and Marsha Thomason.
"I do get recognised a bit, but people just think they know me from
school! Having said that, I was in Scotland for a few days not so long
ago and got recognised a lot. I think Burn It was really popular there
and people came up to me and told me how much they liked it.
"Kieran and Marsha have done really well and we all keep in touch.
"I don't have any real ambition to make it big in Hollywood like
them, I just want to play interesting and challenging roles. It could
be in fringe theatre or in Hollywood, I don't care as long as it's challenging.
"I'm not ambitious for the level of fame that Hollywood brings.
I want to do things that will challenge the mainstream, and I think we
have done that with Conviction."
In Conviction Ash plays Chrissie. Following in his father's and brother's
footsteps, Chrissie is a young detective in the CID full of enthusiasm
and keen to impress in his new job.
Ash explains: "Chrissie is somebody with a strong moral code, and wants
to do the right thing all the time, so he's an ideal policeman in that
respect. He wants to get the job done properly.
"He's quite naïve and easily led in terms of the job and his partner
Joe, who is a very strong character, is very dominant in their working
relationship."
However, it's exactly this dominance that leads Chrissie into a quagmire
of guilt and remorse as their quest to find the murderer of 12-year-old
Angela takes a dramatic turn.
Joe is determined to get prime suspect Jason Buliegh to confess to the
murder and bullies Chrissie into coming with him to find their prime suspect
and use some old school tactics to scare him into admission.
However, a moment of madness sees the two officers breaking the law themselves.
"Chrissie is a happy-go-lucky young man," says Ash. "He's an affable,
straight-down-the-middle young guy – loyal, dependable and is full of
the verve of life.
"But in a moment of madness he and Joe end up murdering their prime
suspect and all that verve and exuberance disappears.
"Chrissie was coming to a point in his life where he wanted to settle
down, get married to his girlfriend Jemma. But she needed something from
him to prove that he was mature enough to do that - there were some aspects
of his character that were quite childish.
"Ironically, it's the murder that makes him commit to her. He completely
re-assesses his priorities and tries to cling to her; he needs something
concrete to hold on to.
"Unlike Joe, Chrissie is completely consumed by the guilt of what they've
done, the hypocrisy of the fact that his job is to catch people who commit
those very crimes they have committed.
"The guilt is all consuming for him and he can't cope or come to
terms with what they've done.
"Joe feels he can justify their actions by saying that by killing Buliegh,
it's one less paedophile in the world, but Chrissie is much more emotional.
To him, this is a human being, no matter what they've done, nothing justifies
murder."
Chrissie also has friction at home. His father, Lenny, is suffering from
Alzheimer's and was asleep in the car on the night that Chrissie and Joe
took Buliegh into the woods.
"The loving relationship that Chrissie once had with his dad has gone
out of the window," explains Ash. "Suddenly it's become fraught because
Lenny was in the car when Joe and Chrissie killed Buliegh.
"He doesn't know if his dad saw anything and if he did, whether
he can remember. His dad is a potential time bomb waiting to reveal their
fatal secret.
"All Chrissie's relationships are now completely infected by his guilt.
It contradicts everything about who he thought he was as a person.
"His life has been turned upside down, because he questions everything.
He can't look anyone in the eye because he is living a lie all the time."
Although Ash had to film some harrowing storylines, he enjoyed the more
humourous scenes and the joking that lightened the atmosphere off set.
"I found some scenes so emotionally draining because it becomes quite
hard to play that level of emotion for such a long period of time. You
really cherish the light-hearted and funny scenes.
"I had a fantastic working relationship with Ian [Puleston Davies],
on and off screen. We were both very supportive of each other because
we had so many scenes together and we had to make sure we were both on
the same page, emotionally.
"I think Ian's a brilliant actor. It was hard work, but he was on the
ball all the time. And it was good to have Ian's mad humour in between
such highly charged scenes!"
Ash spent a period of time with real police officers in preparation for
his role as a CID officer.
He was keen to find out how they dealt with the emotional side of the
job especially when they had the difficult task of informing relatives
of a murder.
Ash explains: "We were told that informing a relative of a loved one's
death, especially a murder, never gets any easier. You don't know how
people will react to what you're about to tell them.
"Sometimes even the police say inappropriate things but they are
only human, and I think people forget that.
"That's what this programme is about. I hope we show that they are just
like you and me and sometimes they make mistakes."
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