Jason Watkins used the raw pain of losing his daughter to play a heartbroken father in The Catch

It’s a long-awaited psychological thriller, but for actor Jason Watkins it was a chance to give the most moving and personal performance of his career.

In The Catch, based on the best-selling novel by The Holiday author TM Logan, Jason taps into the raw grief of losing his own daughter to play a heartbroken father in Channel 5’s tense four-part drama, airing tomorrow. .

It was in 2011 when Maude, the two-year-old daughter of Jason and his wife, Clara Francis, tragically died of sepsis. Jason found Maude, suffering from the flu, dead in her bed on New Year’s Day morning. Despite two visits to the hospital, her flu symptoms masked sepsis and she went undiagnosed.

Although the couple are avid activists to raise awareness about sepsis and its symptoms, it has been a little over a year since Clara was finally able to see videos of her beloved daughter and Jason chose to take on a role that reflects his own life. In an emotional twist, it’s been 12 years since Maude died and, in the script, 11 years have passed since Ed and Claire Collier’s tragedy of losing their son, Josh.

You are the sum of your past in many ways. We as a family also lost a son, so I really understand the feelings of Ed’s character and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to take on the role because he’s so well drawn on the show. It’s a painful journey, but you feel like you have something to share and can, through drama, illuminate what it’s like to be in this difficult place,” says Jason, best known for his BAFTA-winning role in Christopher Jefferies’s Honor Lost and as Prime Minister Harold Wilson in The Crown.

‘As anyone who has lost a child would say, you don’t want to be a victim, you want to make the loss of your child useful to someone and make it count. In the theater we are lucky to be able to explore our feelings, relate them and, by the same process of telling a story, reflect on our own lives and the lives of other people who have experienced similar tragedies.

‘My wife and I tried to help families come to terms with what happened, and to take it with them and not bury it. I talk a lot with parents about not burying what has happened and being able to talk about it. So it’s not just a process of sharing and talking with the audience, but also doing this between our characters in the drama.’

In the thriller, 60-year-old Jason plays Ed, a proud husband, father, and local fisherman who is determined to do whatever it takes to keep his family together. But when rich and handsome young Ryan Wilson, played by Peaky Blinders star Aneurin Barnard, begins dating her daughter Abbie (Poppy Gilbert) and threatens to take her away, Ed’s life spirals out of control. Plus, he hides a dark secret that comes back to haunt him.

“He’s perceived as closed off because he’s been hiding all his feelings about his son Josh, who died and he’s bottled up all those emotions, which is often the case,” says Jason, who dedicated his 2015 BAFTA award to Maud and is a patron of Child Bereavement. UK.

“In all the work I do with other families who have lost their children, my experience is that it is often the man who has difficulty sharing and shuts down. Ed has that underlying problem anyway, along with not being able to share a secret with his wife. No wonder Claire is furious and frustrated, and her marriage is really in trouble.

“People need to talk, as difficult and painful as it is, with someone, someone close or someone who isn’t, because keeping it bottled up inside will possibly destroy you and, more importantly, the people around you. “. And this is what this drama is about as well.

Set on the hauntingly beautiful coast of South West England, this suspenseful drama revolves around the themes of toxic masculinity and grief. Although Ed is an average man, he only has to scratch the surface to expose a torrent of turbulent emotions, which is accomplished by his wife Claire, played by Cathy Belton. ‘

“There’s a lot of confusion below the surface of anyone who’s had this kind of trauma and been tested all the time,” explains Jason, who is filming a documentary for ITV later this year, about sepsis and childhood bereavement in the one who talks about his own heartbreak.

‘When people face a crisis in their lives, it is often a combination of problems. You can deal with one problem and decide how to solve it, but when you have several, that’s where people struggle and it can lead to crisis areas. That’s what’s happening with Ed. You have to try to separate the problems and then be able to deal with them. Sometimes when there is a crisis, you have to let life take you.

“There’s a scene where Claire cares so much about Ed, who gets consumed with his problems and forgets about everyone else. She stopped looking for help and broke down, which is what happened when her son Josh died. We insert a line to Claire where she says, “Well, I lost a son too, don’t forget that.” That’s really important.

Irish actor Cathy, 53, agrees: “I think those scenes we have together, where we have to talk about our son, were almost impossible to bear looking at Jason.”

“I have never worked with someone who was so generous in sharing their own personal story with me. I found it very difficult to look into the gaps in his eyes and with someone who was so generous in his listening and it’s his own personal story.’

It’s an emotionally engaged drama that also raises pertinent moral questions, such as should we be judged for actions from our distant past, and at what point should we stop blaming other people for the life we’ve led?

“I’ve always loved thrillers and The Catch has all the ingredients to keep audiences hooked. Three-dimensional characters, a family unit under stress, with a tragedy at its heart, all brilliantly framed in the suspense genre. I’m always looking for parts that I may not have played before and Ed is a die-hard person, trying to do his best. Fail and succeed in equal measure.

• La Captura begins on Channel 5 on Wednesday, January 25 at 9:00 p.m.