The first season ended very ambiguously with the audience not knowing whether Elliot was alive or not, but season two starts with a time jump where he and Helen are happy and travelling the world together. What was the reasoning behind that?
I think it’s set 18 months or a couple of years [after the finale], and I think they wanted this to have enough distance so that it presented the idea of something else. They’ve distanced themselves from all the madness that they find out about Elliott’s past and the madness they went through in Australia, and they’re able to just get away and travel literally everywhere in the world and be in a totally different space from where we saw them last. Although, Danielle (McDonald) and I are still really confused about how they paid for an around-the-world trip. They’re in first class on that train.
Almost immediately at the start of season 2, your character gets into a pretty gnarly fight in a bathroom. Is that you or a stunt double doing all that fighting?
There are stunt doubles, but for the most part, it’s me and I really try to do it as me because I’m really stubborn about it. I still sort of back myself physically to do a lot of shit, and probably the older I get and the more kids I have, the more I’m determined to, like, prove that I’m still young and able.
That’s interesting. I feel like others might be even more aware of their own mortality and hold back.
No, I played five-a-side last night and there was a massive bang to my leg and it was throbbing in bed. And doing something like that, I think there’s part of you that goes ‘Just fucking stop, what are you trying to prove? You’re in your 40s.’ But actually, with me, it makes me be like, ‘I’m going to come back harder next week.’ I do think one day I will have to stop because football is becoming more and more painful and I play the game too aggressively.
Are you taking this weekly game far more seriously than everyone else?
It was one of the dads from my kid’s school that got me into this, and we were out for dinner a few weeks ago and they said to my wife that Jamie’s getting a bit of a reputation for being aggressive. Yeah, it’s just people trying to have fun on a Tuesday night [laughs].
So, you’re just going to be like Liam Neeson and continuously do more and more fight scenes as you get older?
It’s funny, I don’t see Liam too often, but when I do, he’ll sort of say something like ‘Oh, I’m doing something a bit more gentle next to time’ and then you turn on the TV and he’s just throwing people out of trains.
The Tourist is the first major TV show you’ve done since The Fall. Is TV something you always like to go back to?
