ALISON O’Donnell clearly thinks a great deal about her role in Shetland, playing the young cop who could drink for Scotland and vomits over dead bodies.
In fact Motherwell-born O’Donnell deliberates to an unimagined degree.
“It is very intimidating when you turn up to film and here’s why,” she explains of her role as Tosh in the hit BBC Scotland series.
“There’s a feeling the camera is like a time-travel device and that you are standing there, doing something in the moment, surrounded by the nuts and bolts of film equipment.
“Yet there’s the other feeling, that people are watching this in eight or nine months in their living rooms and they’re seeing the glossy version.”
Alison adds, grinning; “It’s almost as if the two moments are happening simultaneously. Obviously, that’s not a helpful way to think when you’re standing their filming, but I can’t help but be aware of that.
“It can all be a bit surreal.”
Gosh, such a sense of awareness – and responsibility to the job at hand. And it’s not as if O’Donnell is lost somewhere up her own space-time continuum.
Far from it; she laughs easily and loudly in conversation. But given the focus she has on her work it’s no surprise that Alison MacIntosh has becomesuch a pivotal character.
Alison O’Donnell however is modest about the achievement.
“I am very, very lucky to be involved in a series which has now been reprised three times. When Shetland started out it was made in hour-long stories. This time around we have a running storyline so once you’ve met the key players you can develop the characters.”
Alison adds; “I get to do more with my character, but it’s also more of an ensemble piece.”
Come on Alison. Actors don’t really want ensembles. They want the spotlight to shine on their singular head?
“That’s a very cynical thought,” she says laughing. “No, in all honesty, we all get to develop but it allows for my character to reveal more about herself.”
What will we learn about her character, Tosh? “I’d like to think she has become more confident. When we met her in the pilot she was making silly mistakes, turning up on the job half drunk and vomiting over the murder victims.”
She did, but it humanised her. You never saw Alex Norton in Taggart be sick over a corpse once. “More’s the pity!” says O’Donnell, laughing.”
And it was good, you suggest, that Tosh looked as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards by a team of plough horses.
“I thought so,” she says, grinning. “But I think to have kept her in that place would have undermined the job. And you have to honour the relationship with Perez (played by Douglas Henshall.)
“He has fast-tracked her to success so she has to become a bit more responsible and it’s more about solving the murder.”
Ah, the case. The storyline. What can O’Donnell tell us about the new tales of Hebridean death?
What happens to her? Does she fall in love? Does she fall into a vat of lager? Does she fall by the wayside?
“I can’t really say,” she says, so tightlipped you feel her mouth has been superglued.
An easier question. Did she always want to act since Dalziel High School days. “I did, but I was also being told I should go to university.”
The very bright teenage O’Donnell did exactly that and studied European Law. For three months. Was there an epiphany?
“There was actually. I don’t ever mention it because it sounds as though I’ve made it up. But I was standing outside the university library when I heard a group of guys talk about their dads being a lawyers and how Law was in the family. Then one of them turned to me and said; ‘And what about you, Alison. Have you always wanted to become a lawyer?’ And without thinking I said ‘No, actually, I’ve always wanted to be an actor.’ In that moment it all came to me. I began to think ‘What am I doing here?’
“At that point, I got a really bad cold and missed lectures for a few days. But in fact I missed them forever because I didn’t go back.”
Her parents’ reaction? “They’ve both been great.”
Alison O’Donnell is now 33 but looks much younger, and clearly has a special talent for her chosen profession. Her theatre work, mostly in new writing, has attracted great critical acclaim.
But she had to adjust for television. “I was really green at first, but then you realise less is more. In theatre work your performance is about making sure you can be seen in the back row.
“But you learn that television picks up every tremor, every twitch, especially in HD. And here’s the thing. Sometimes you just have to think the thoughts and the camera will pick it up.”
Will the camera pick up the fact she’s thinking eight months ahead?
“I hope not,” she says, laughing. “I want to look like I’m in the moment.”
• Shetland, January 15 on BBC1 Scotland at 9pm.
