NEW YORK, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Breaking Bad and Umbrella Academy alum Adam Godley says one of the perks of starring in the new thriller Down Cemetery Road was reuniting with his Love Actually and Nanny McPhee cast-mate Emma Thompson.
Premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, the British drama is based on Mick Herron's Zöe Boehm book series. It casts Thompson as brash Zöe and Godley as her long-suffering, kind-hearted husband, Joe.
The show kicks off with the pair drawn into a high-stakes murder mystery after Sara (Ruth Wilson) hires private investigator Joe to find a young girl who goes missing in a building explosion.
Spoilers ahead.
"We have a bit of history," Godley, 61, told UPI about reuniting with Thompson in a recent Zoom interview.
"I've known Emma slightly for a while, so that was something we could already invest in their relationship and it helped us," he said. "She's a glorious human being and a mighty impressive actor and, so, any time I spend with Emma is a good time."
One of the first scenes they shot together showed Zoe identifying Joe's dead body at a mortuary.
"I remember it was quite a cold room and I'm pretty much naked under a blanket," Godley recalled.
"To give you a sense of who Emma is, Emma was standing at the foot of the slab and she noticed my feet were poking out from under the blanket and she assumed my feet would be quite cold, so she just tucked them underneath her jumper, pressed them against her belly to keep them warm."
Godley is also an admirer of Herron's brand of storytelling.
"Just from an actor point of view, the characters he creates are so real and so rich and so kind of broken and contradictory and all the things that actors love," Godley said about the author, who penned the books on which another hit Apple TV+ show, Slow Horses, is based, as well.
"Everything that attracts us to creating a character, he's done so much of that work and the particular challenge here was to create a sort of a backstory and a history between Joe and Zoe that really sticks in your mind and carries through the whole series, even though, as we know, Joe disappears at the end of the first episode."
Morwenna Banks -- who also writes for Slow Horses and voices Mummy Pig on the animated series Peppa Pig in her spare time -- was an excellent choice to adapt the source material for the screen, according to Godley.
"When it's really good writing, when it all makes sense, when you're curious about it, that makes the job so much easier," Godley said, explaining the costumes and the set decoration were also critical to his understanding of the world that Joe inhabits.
"You're dealing with people at the top of their game," he added. "It really does take a village, so it was a no-brainer for me dive into this."
The actor described the tone of the series as "British noir."
"It's going to have that ironic kind of humor. We can't take anything too seriously because it gets too intense and too intimate," he said.
"So, Brits are not -- I'm generalizing here -- but we don't do intimacy. We struggle with it and Mick captures that so beautifully in his books. And Morwenna captures it so beautifully in the characters," Godley added. "It's very dark. It's very surprising. There's just constant shocks from left field. Things you didn't see coming and all of that, hopefully, keeps you on the edge of your seat."
Read More Adam Campbell brings delightful Ducky to 'NCIS: Origins' Nicholas Denton: 'Talamasca' puts spy spin on Rice's supernatural lore Jeremy Renner on 'Kingstown' darkness: 'We still have a good time' Emma Thompson vows 'Dead of Winter' is not start of action career