Robert Carlyle: ‘I think I was hacked’

Film star Robert Carlyle says his role in a new TV drama about the phone-hacking scandal has made him think again about his own experiences at the hands of the tabloids.

He told The Saturday Show on BBC Radio Scotland that he believes he was a victim of newspapers listening into his phone messages in the 1990s, when he was at the height of his Trainspotting and The Full Monty fame.

Carlyle says he can’t know for certain because at the time no-one was aware that “private investigators” were hacking phones and selling the contents to newspapers such as the News of the World.

But the 64-year-old says it was many years later, when the scandal broke, that he began to piece together what had been happening in his own life.

Glasgow-born Carlyle is starring in a new ITV drama about the scandal that led to the closure of the News Of The World and prompted an overhaul of print journalism standards.

The Hack is a seven-part series that interweaves two real-life stories.

David Tennant plays Guardian journalist Nick Davies who uncovered evidence of phone hacking at the tabloid.

Carlyle plays former Metropolitan Police detective Dave Cook who investigates the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.

“These two events seemingly have no real kind of correlation,” Carlyle says.

“But as the series goes on, you begin to see that the links between these things are quite wild.”

Mr Morgan, a 37-year-old father of two, was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, in 1987.

His brother Alastair claimed the News Of The World had followed and spied on Cook during his inquiries into the death.

A string of inquiries over the decades have unearthed allegations of corruption and led to accusations that the Met police force put its reputation above finding the killer.

Carlyle says he takes his role in the drama very seriously, especially as many of the people involved are still alive.

“Dave Cook, the guy I play, is still still around so you’ve got to try your best to make it accurate and to give a good portrayal of them,” he says.

“He did wrong things, there’s no doubt about it.

“What he wanted was to find justice for Daniel Morgan’s family. That was his drive and that was his thing all the way through.

“But because of the problems that he faced and trying to get these convictions to set, he broke little rules here and there.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Carlyle and Tennant, two of Scotland’s most famous actors, had never met before they started this project.

“You’d think it’s obvious that David and I would have done something together but we never worked together and never met,” Carlyle says.

“But it was an absolute pleasure working with David.”

He says the 54-year-old Doctor Who and Broadchurch star is one of the most professional actors he’s ever worked with.

“He was on it every second, every moment, every scene,” Carlyle says.

“I got a bit mesmerised sometimes.”

Tennant himself has a connection to the phone-hacking scandal, having accepted damages and an apology from the News of the World’s owner in 2018.

Carlyle, who grew up in the Maryhill area of Glasgow, has lived mostly in Canada for the past 15 years.

He moved to Vancouver when he took on a starring role in the long-running US fantasy-drama series Once upon a Time.

It ended in 2018 and since then Carlyle has worked almost exclusively in the UK in shows such as the TV version of The Full Monty and last year’s Toxic Town, which was written by Jack Thorne, the man behind Netflix smash hit Adolescence as well as The Hack.

“I think the perception of me is that I live full-time out in Vancouver these days,” Carlyle says.

“I still have the family home, it’s still very much in Glasgow. That will always be the case.

“My links to Glasgow will never, never diminish.”

Those links include his devotion to Partick Thistle.

“I still go there,” he says.

“I’m always back in Glasgow around Christmas time and New Year.

“Me and my two boys go. I always take them to a couple of Thistle games at that time. Absolutely love it.”

The start of next year will mark 30 years since the release of Trainspotting and Carlyle’s iconic performance as the sociopathic Francis Begbie.

The actor says he never gets tired of talking about the role and the film.

“I’m blessed that there was a couple of things that I did back then in the 90s – one of them was Trainspotting and the other one’s the Full Monty,” he says.

“These pieces and these characters meant so much to people – so to have been involved in something like that is an absolute blessing.”

In fact, Carlyle is working on a new outing looking at the further adventures of the character, based on Irvine Welsh’s book The Blade Artist.

“We have one script of six and that will be a six-hour piece for TV, probably it will see the light of day in the next couple of years.”

The full interview can be heard on the first edition of The Saturday Show from 10:15. The Saturday Show is on BBC Radio Scotland from 09:00 to 12:00 every weekend. It is also available on BBC Sounds.