Andrew Lincoln: ‘My violent ITV thriller made me nervous for my teenagers’

Following his time on The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln has joined an exclusive list of actors who are so synonymous with their characters that their real identity starts to blur.

Think Walter White in Breaking Bad, Tony Soprano or even Jon Snow in Game of Thrones – no matter how you see them in their civilian clothes, nothing can prevent your mind from wandering back to these iconic roles.

That is why for the first few minutes of David Ireland’s new ITV series Coldwater, which airs on Sunday night, it feels bizarre to see the Rick Grimes transformed into a rather weak, pathetic British character.

But for Andrew, who is speaking to Metro ahead of his return to UK television after more than a decade, that is the least of his concern.

‘Initially, I didn’t want to do it,’ he tells me. ‘It made me nervous because, for obvious reasons, I have two teenage kids and I’ve got a shower scene in the first five minutes that’s a very difficult opening scene.

‘A man is running away from a violent incident with a woman and all aspects of his masculinity seem to have been taken away from him, so it made me scared. I was quite nervous about it, but I couldn’t not do it. I felt compelled to.’

The role in question is John, who has moved his family from London to the idyllic fictional town of Coldwater after he witnesses an attack on a woman.

Upon his arrival, John is quickly befriended by his charming next-door neighbour Tommy, played by Trainspotting star Ewen Bremner.

John’s wife Fiona (Indira Varma) despises him and also becomes wary of Tommy’s wife Rebecca (Eve Myles).

Over the course of six episodes, the thriller sees John’s long-repressed rage come to a head with disastrous results as he remains unaware that Tommy is harbouring horrifying secrets.

It also involves several scenes of Andrew, covered in blood, running in the freezing cold night. He tells me: ‘I tend to choose roles that involve a lot of pain. I don’t know what it is… I have to suffer for it to count.’

After beginning his career in the Channel 4 sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey in 1994, Andrew, 51, went on to star in a number of successful British shows, including the BBC drama This Life (1996-1997) and Channel 4’s Teachers (2001-2003).

In 2010, he starred opposite Richard Armitage in Sky 1’s Strike Back before taking on the role of Rick Grimes in AMC’s The Walking Dead in the same year, which provided an international launchpad for his career.

While filming the zombie apocalyptic thriller from 2010 until 2022, and again in 2024 for the spin-off series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Andrew intermittently relocated to Atlanta in the US to film the series, which proved to be difficult for his wife and two children.

Outside of The Walking Dead, he has also starred alongside Naomi Watts in a 2020 film called Penguin Bloom and featured in an episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities in 2022.

Asked why now is the right time to be returning to the UK, Andrew explains: ‘I have a family and I spent a good portion of the last few decades away from them.

‘My daughter likes to remind me that I’ve missed 11 of her birthdays and I’m not willing to miss more.’

Just as he says this, a wry smile appears.

‘Although I am actually doing a play and the first night is on her 18th birthday,’ he laughs.

Beginning on September 10, the 51-year-old will be returning to the stage for the first time in five years to perform The Lady from the Sea until November 8 at the Bridge Theatre in London alongside Alicia Vikander.

‘Certainly for the next three, four years, until kids are older, I’m trying to be at home a bit more,’ he adds.

‘But I love that I loved David’s writing and I couldn’t say no. That’s the short version. That’s how I’ve always picked on scripts.’

Asked what in particular he enjoys about David’s writing, he says: ‘It’s something different.

‘I am a huge admirer. I read his last screenplay, The Lovers, and I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Then I saw American Ulster, had a meeting with David, loved him, and I said I’m going to do it… It’s the best thing I ever did.

‘I wanted to make something different, almost the opposite of what I’ve been doing for 12 years in the US predominantly with Rick Grimes.’

He adds: ‘I said to David at the beginning, are we making a middle-aged fight club? And he went, no, we’re not doing that. 

‘But there is a certain sense that…there’s this coercive, interesting, project, like a Frankenstein project for [Ewen Bremner] turning me from this cuck into something else. 

‘I’m immensely proud of [what we’ve made] because the actors and the people involved really cared about it and wanted to make something that had dignity and beauty and hope.’

Before we finish, I have to ask him about the 30th anniversary of his debut film Boston Kickout, starring John Simm and Marc Warren. 

Unaware of the milestone, he reminisces: ‘We were nutters. It was like gorilla filmmaking. I remember not sleeping for four days because my character went to see the Berlin Wall fall down and I thought, oh, I know what I’ll do. I’ll go to Notting Hill Carnival and stay up four days.

‘It was just shambolic, the whole thing. Insane. But it was one of those beautiful English low-budget movies about small-town mentality. I loved that movie and I’m very, very proud of it.’

Coldwater starts on Sunday September 14 at 9pm on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STVPlayer.

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