Dr Kate Millar
Actress Neve McIntosh has a wonderful first major role –playing the feisty Dr Kate Millar, whose sparky relationship with Dr Danny Nash forms the centre piece of C4’s new six-part drama Psychos.
She was drawn to the programme because “it was so original, and so unlike the usual run of the mill drama. David has written the most brilliant script it just leapt of the page when I read it, it’s very far from Casualty. It seems to get the mix right in showing what goes on in a hospital as a whole. It’s just so believable. There just hasn’t been a series like it before. So many medical dramas have a soap-opera’ish quality, but in this one the patients are as important as the doctors. It focuses on the patients’ world – they’re not just coming into the hospital and going straight out again. It shows how patients are perceived by other people. Psychos is groundbreaking and exciting.”
McIntosh, who has previously had roles in Taggart, Gobble, Noah’s Ark and Plunket and McLeane, was equally impressed by the sensitive way in which writer David Wolstencroft handled this tricky topic. “It’s a very difficult subject,” she concedes, “and it would have been easy to do it as ‘they’re loonies’ as opposed to ‘what is it that makes people break down’. The script made me sit up and think about the way we view people. Reading the research notes for Psychos started me thinking, ‘wait a minute, sometimes I feel that way.’ It’s all a matter of degree.”
The actress also feels her particular character is well fleshed-out. “I found the whole relationship between Kate and Nash fascinating – and Dougie was great to work with. She is more medicine-based – she comes from a strong medical family. She sees everything as black and white, whereas Nash has a more holistic approach. A lot of women have to toughen up to get ahead in their careers. By contrast, Kate has to soften up.”
McIntosh is now preparing to play the role of Fuchsia, a princess in a tower in an adaptation of Mervin Peake’s Gormenghast. “It’s period, and very dark, Gothic and funny. It’s so different from Psychos. I’ve done something very small and real to flouncing around in corsets. That’s the one thing I love about this job – you move so easily from one place to another.”
From the Psychos press pack