³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and HBO tackle crucial Five Days in a gripping investigation
David Oyelowo plays Matt Wellings
Matt Wellings was just an ordinary guy, married with two children and holding down a job at a local gym, until one day his whole world fell apart.
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His wife, Leanne, disappeared, along with the couple's children, Ethan and Rosie.
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It's everyone's worst nightmare and actor David Oyelowo, who plays the distraught Matt, reveals that he had to dig deep into his own emotions to be able to portray the depth of his character's devastation.
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"One of the interesting things about playing this part has been the fact that you just don't know how you're going to react to this situation," he says.
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"We have all either experienced the death of loved ones, or know people who have, and very often people will say they laughed or they didn't cry for two years and then had a breakdown, or they cried there and then – there is no set way that we, as human beings, deal with grief.
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"So from that point of view, I just tried to be emotionally available in every scene and very much be guided by [directors] Otto [Bathurst] and Simon [Curtis], rather than come with a pre-empted way that this man would react."
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What struck David most about Matt was that he was just an average man in a situation that could happen to anybody: "Matt's an ex-Army guy, a gym instructor, so he's an ordinary guy just trying to make an honest living. The Wellings are just a normal, working-class family.
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"Matt's whole life is decimated by Leanne and the two children going missing and I suppose, through the five episodes, we see an ordinary man dealing with the pressures of not just the press plaguing him, because it's a high-profile story, but also the police and the suspicion that he's engendered not only by the fact that he's ex-Army, but also a little bit because he's black. He's an ordinary guy dealing with an extraordinary situation."
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The suspicion is further fuelled by the friendship Matt develops with Sarah (Sarah Smart), the recruitment consultant who finds his son.
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"Sarah becomes a helper of the family," says David. "She has quite a dark past in terms of what happened in her family and I suppose, in some ways, she sees this family as an opportunity to exorcise some of her demons, so she very much grafts herself onto the family.
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"Of course, for a man who is being hounded by the press, being seen with another woman is always going to engender suspicion, so that relationship comes under quite a lot of pressure.
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"Matt is very aware of that – he's very aware of everything going on around him. He's aware of the eyes on him and the effect having Sarah around has on his mother-in-law, the press and the children.
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"Rosie, Matt's daughter, doesn't like Sarah at all – she sees her as a threat to her mum's position in the family – but she is someone who genuinely helps them through. I think Matt feels a bit indebted to her because she found Ethan, so yes, it makes for a very complex situation."
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As often happens with high-profile cases like Leanne's disappearance, the media plays a huge part in helping to solve the mystery, and David believes that can only add to the stress experienced by the family.
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"Matt really loves his children. He's not one of those dads who's unable to express love but I think the closed-off nature of him emerges through the fact that, if you're someone who has never been in the public eye and never had a desire to be in the public eye, that is going to be very intimidating, very scary, especially if you think you are under suspicion and especially if you're a private person.
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"In our age of celebrity, I suppose you see a lot of people who actually embrace and gravitate towards the public eye but this is definitely a man who doesn't want that."
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Five Days is by no means the first hard-hitting drama in which David has been involved. His impressive CV includes Shoot The Messenger, in which he played Joe, a school teacher on a mission to save the black youngsters at his comprehensive from a life of gangs, crime and underachievement; three series of Spooks, in which he played MI5 team member Danny; and the recent Born Equal, in which he played Yemi, a man living in a B&B with his family, in a drama that was completely improvised.
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"That was an amazing experience. It was so exposing because it's all improvised and there are no rehearsals, so literally the cameras roll and you don't know what's going to happen.
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"Dominic [Savage] has done a lot of great films in the past but I think it's the first time he's used, for want of a better phrase, an all-star cast in terms of people like Colin Firth, Robert Carlyle and Anne-Marie Duff."
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David admits that he deliberately chooses roles involving big social issues that pack a punch: "It's something I actively look for in the sense that I want to do work that's about something. I think there's a place for fluffy entertainment and I don't mind doing it but, in terms of keeping myself challenged, I want to do stuff that I would like to watch, and that's a barometer for me of a project I want to be part of."
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David has no intention of taking the easy option as far as his career is concerned and, in 2007, he can be seen in The Last King Of Scotland, a film about Idi Amin's regime, and in Kenneth Branagh's movie version of Shakespeare's As You Like It.
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He also goes into rehearsals for Prometheus Bound which will play off-Broadway in New York and he has recently completed shooting a film version of the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's seminal 1959 play, A Raisin In The Sun.
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"It's a big start to the year but, as an actor, that's exactly what I want, to be kept busy. What's great about all those projects is that they're very, very different roles and that's absolutely what I've aspired to as an actor."
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