An interview with Ewen Leslie

Crosbie is a mass of contradictions. He has an enormous heart and there is this child-like innocence to him. He is someone that you can feel very safe with, but in an instant, be very scared of.

What is The Luminaries about?
The Luminaries is about a lot of things. It's about the gold rush in New Zealand in 1865, but it's also about greed, revenge, loss, survival and trying to find your place in the world. Ultimately, at the very heart of it, it is about love and a very beautiful love story.

Were you familiar with the book before coming to this project?
I was familiar with the book but embarrassingly I hadn’t read it at the time I auditioned for the role. But my partner actually had bought the novel and read it, so it was sitting on my bookshelf as one of those novels that I had heard was extraordinary and must read. I auditioned for the part and then started to read the novel, and absolutely fell in love with it. It was a dangerous move as reading it made me really, really want the job. Luckily it had a happy ending for me.

Who is Crosbie Wells and what drew you to the role?
Crosbie Wells is a really fun character to play. He is a mass of contradictions. He longs to find his place in the world and has always wanted to meet his father. He has an enormous heart and there is this child-like innocence to him. He is someone that you can feel very safe with, but in an instant, be very scared of. He is very sensitive but can be ferocious.

Crosbie is also a tragic character who doesn’t realise he’s a tragic character. He doesn’t realise that all these machinations are happening around him and that makes him really fun to play. He has no idea that he's sitting in a scene that has a lot of stakes. Although the subject matter is quite dark there is a lightness to Crosbie. There’s an innocence to him that is really really beautiful.

What was life like on location in New Zealand?
It’s been beautiful. Rather embarrassingly, I haven’t been to New Zealand before! I’m from Perth. It's been a wonderful experience working with a bunch of people that I’ve not worked with before and whose work I’ve admired from afar. There has been a great love for the project, and belief in what we’re doing. And a huge love for Eleanor’s work, we all wanted to make it as good as we could. It was a very beautiful, supportive environment led by Eve Hewson and Eva Green, who are just absolutely wonderful to work with. That that makes a huge difference. They’re amazing.

Tell us more about the relationship between Crosbie and Lydia...
Crosbie and Lydia got together on a bet. He drunkenly came into her establishment and bet on the spinning wheel and Lydia had put herself forward as the prize. He placed his first ever bet and he won her as his wife, which plays into a lot of the themes of the story of chance and fate. He’s absolutely in awe and in love with her but he doesn’t entirely trust her. He’s fallen under her spell (which is very easy to play when you have someone extraordinary like Eva Green playing the role) and it’s a very interesting dynamic that has been a lot of fun.

What is the relationship between Crosbie and Anna?
In Anna, Crosbie sees a kindred spirit. He sees someone who is equally a lost soul looking for their place in the world but who also is a survivor.

How important is costume and set design to get into character?
The work that the art department, the make-up department, the wardrobe department bring is extraordinary and vital. This story set in 1860s New Zealand and that’s quite a long way to transport. I’m playing a character that comes from Northern England and I’m an Australian who grew up in Western Australia. So, there’s lots of leaps and stretches that you have to make! You sit down in the makeup chair and they start that transformation. Then you put on these extraordinary costumes that Edward Gibbon has made and you walk onto these incredible sets that have absolutely blown me away. Everyone has worked so incredibly hard, it’s just amazing what they’ve done.

What has been the greatest challenge for you?
The biggest challenge has been playing someone so different to me. With a lot of roles, you try to locate the things you can relate to, because it's all about empathy. But there's lots about Crosbie Wells that is quite removed from me, and that can be a little daunting at first. But once you start and throw yourself into it, it becomes easier and easier. I always think on a film set, it’s easier once you’ve mucked it up a couple of times. Just get those mistakes out early on! You’re in front of a whole crew who you’ve not met before and doing an accent that you’ve never done before. We’re all tentatively stepping into this world and once you completely muck something up then you’re like, right, everyone’s seen me fail and now I can sort of get on with the job at hand.

How do you hope audiences will react to the series?
It's a really exciting story with very well-drawn characters, set against a rich, complex world. The plot and characters form a very intricate, complicated web and I hope that audiences are going to enjoy the ride. The series is an accumulative thing which reveals more and more as it goes along. It's really not only until you get to the end that you realise just how rich, and just how densely plotted, and calculated, the story really is and that’s down to Eleanor Catton’s brilliance. It's a huge achievement.

Series synopsis

An epic adventure mystery based on the Man Booker prize-winning novel of the same name. Set on the wild West coast of New Zealand’s South Island at the height of the 1860s gold rush, The Luminaries tells an intricately woven, suspenseful tale of love, murder, magic, and revenge.

The story begins in 1865. Anna Wetherell (Eve Hewson) has travelled to New Zealand to forge a new life. On the last day of her voyage, a romantic first encounter with the radiant Emery Staines (Himesh Patel) fills her with great expectations for what lies ahead. But the scheming fortune-teller Lydia Wells (Eva Green) has other ideas for Anna, and lays a trap to ensure that the planned rendezvous between the young lovers never takes place.

Deceived, swindled, and betrayed, Anna’s fortunes begin to fall. She is drawn into an elaborate plot of blackmail, involving opium, gold, shipwreck, fraud, and false identity, which ultimately finds her framed for murder and fighting for her life.

But the bond between these star-crossed lovers is more than mere affinity. Anna and Emery are what is known as ‘astral twins’: they were born at the very same instant, and under the very same sky, which means that they share a single destiny.

When Emery vanishes without a trace, leaving Anna without an alibi for a murder she did not commit, the noose of the plot begins to tighten around her. Faced with the impossible, she must ask: do we make our fortunes, or does fortune make us?

Cast and Crew

Eva Green - Lydia Wells

Eve Hewson - Anna Wetherell

Himesh Patel - Emery Staines

Ewen Leslie - Crosbie Wells

Marton Csokas - Francis Carver

Benedict Hardie - Alistair Lauderback

Erik Thomson - Dick Mannering

Richard Te Are - Te Rau Tauwhare

Callan Mulvey - George Shepard

Kieran Charnock - Edgar Clinch

Paolo Rotondo - Aubert Gascoigne

Yoson An - Sook Yongsheng

Matt Whelan - Cowell Devlin

Joel Tobeck  - Benjamin Lowenthal

Matt Sunderland - Joseph Prichard

Byron Coll - Charlie Frost

Erroll Shand - Harald Nilssen

Gary Young - Quee Long

Mark Mitchinson - Thomas Balfour

Michael Sheasby - Walter Moody

&

Eleanor Catton - Writer, Creator and Executive Producer for Working Title Television

Mona Qureshi - Executive Producer for the BBC

Tim Bevan - Executive Producer for Working Title Television

Andrew Woodhead - Executive Producer for Working Title Television

Eric Fellner - Executive Producer for Working Title Television

Christian Vesper - Executive Producer for Fremantle

Claudia Bluemhuber - Executive Producer for Silver Reel

Tim White Executive Producer for Southern Light Films

Lisa Chatfield - Producer

Judith Trye - Co-Producer

Luke Robinson - Associate Producer

Claire McCarthy - Director, Executive Producer

Felicity Abbott - Production Designer

Edward K. Gibbon - Costume Designer

Denson Baker - Director of Photography

Jane O’Kane - Make-Up Designer

Alastair Reid - Supervising Editor

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Programme Information

• Episode one
• Episode two
• Episode three