Vicky McClure wants to set the record straight.

We’ve found a precious 40 minutes away from the hustle and bustle of press day for season four of ITV‘s Trigger Point at London’s Soho Hotel. Tucked into the corner of one of its underground bars, McClure speaks to The Hollywood Reporter while her co-stars — Eric Shango, Natalie Simpson, Maanuv Thiara among them — dutifully pose for photos and laud the latest work of show creator Daniel Brierley.

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McClure, returning as the no-nonsense bomb disposal expert Lana Washington in another high-octane, watch-behind-your-hands instalment, is taking us through her early years at Nottingham’s Television Workshop, a Midlands-based film, TV, and theatre training school for kids from working-class backgrounds. She had initially eyed a career in professional dance and landed a place at the prestigious Italia Conti academy. But her family couldn’t afford the tuition. She stayed with the Television Workshop until the age of 21.

I halt the conversation early on to ask if what I’ve read online — that McClure was mentored at the Workshop by The Odyssey breakout Samantha Morton, a fellow Nottingham native — is true. The actress is quick to clarify: “That isn’t correct. Sam is a huge part of the Workshop, and my word, I mean, even now, the gigs that she’s in,” she says, alluding to the latest Christopher Nolan hit, wide-eyed with awe. “[But] we never crossed over. I actually didn’t know her while I was in the Workshop.” The pair would, later in their respective careers, meet at odd events. “You gravitate to each other if you’re both from Nottingham or the Workshop,” explains McClure, who was proudly born and raised in the English city (she has resisted the industry-induced pressure to relocate to the capital — a decision we’ll come to later).

It was only when both of them were leading Dominic Savage’s I Am… series that McClure and Morton ended up “having a long chat on the phone.” They’ve stayed in touch, and McClure certainly calls her peer “an icon of the Workshop, and of the acting world.” But, contrary to what the internet purports, this friendship didn’t blossom until well beyond the Nottingham Television Workshop, which McClure remains a devoted patron of.

And while Morton’s face currently graces thousands of cinema screens across the world, it is Vicky McClure who is known far and wide here in Britain. She has steadily risen through the ranks for two decades now to become one of the most prolific actors in the country, famed for her forthright characters and becoming, frankly, a legend of the U.K. police procedural (Line of Duty, Broadchurch, to name a few).

With Trigger Point continuing to pull in millions of viewers — season three’s seven-day consolidated average came in at 5.1m last year — and a hotly anticipated Line of Duty return imminent, McClure, now 43, enters a chapter of her career marked by prolificacy, freedom, and industry-wide reverence.

Her starring role aged 23 as Lol Jenkins in Shane Meadows’s 2006 film This Is England, and in the Channel 4 sequel mini-series This Is England ’86, This Is England ’88 and This Is England ’90 from 2010 to 2015, is what she considers her long-awaited big break. “But I went straight back to the office,” McClure tells THR about her job at a house valuation company. “There’s just an illusion that once you’re in a film or you’re in something, that’s it. Onward you go,” she continues. “I’d train new people, then I sort of went into the HR department, looked after things like the vending machines, the post, a wide variety. I was even fire warden at one point, which I think has done me well for drifting into Lana,” she laughs. “That was my thing. I’d go off and do This Is England, and then I’d come back.”

She worked at the business for eight years, and in that time, starred in a film directed by Madonna, Filth and Wisdom (2008). “We always think people care more than they do,” McClure says when asked what her office mates thought of the Madonna gig. “You know what I mean? They go, ‘Oh, amazing. That’s cool. Well, we’re having lunch.’”

The reality is, while McClure was shooting with mega-stars, she was also getting told “no” a lot. “I learnt very quickly to stop telling people when I had an audition because nine times out of 10, I never got the job,” she admits. She recalls going up for roles in Peaky Blinders and Sarah Gavron’s 2015 Suffragette film. “That was one of those moments,” she says about feeling particularly heartbroken by the Suffragette casting, which eventually went to Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff and Meryl Streep. “I wasn’t really that bothered about learning too much at school. I’d missed out on lots of history, so Jonny [Owen, McClure’s husband, also an actor and producer] sat down with me and we talked about the suffragette movement in great detail. I started getting really attached to this world and these characters.”

Over time, she nailed the accent — “at the Workshop, it wasn’t like you trained to do accents, you just did them” — but eventually, nothing came of it. “They’re a bit naughty,” she says. “Sometimes casting directors can do that thing where they go, ‘So you’re available for those dates?’ Come on, guys. That’s basically a: ‘Let’s shake hands and roll the cameras!’”

Still, on TV especially, McClure gradually made a name for herself with small roles in Five Daughters, The Body Farm and True Love. Then, in 2012, Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty hit BBC Two. The series, about an anti-corruption unit inside a fictional police force, accrued a cult following around the world. Perhaps for the first time, McClure, as the driven, undaunted Detective Constable (later Sergeant and Inspector) Kate Fleming, was getting her flowers.

“I don’t think I felt fame throughout This Is England,” she ponders. “People were really respectful of that show, and it was such an ensemble piece that it didn’t belong to just one person. It was a really special show… [And] I think Line of Duty [is too]. It’s not a fluke because Jed’s writing is obviously impeccable, but it’s all down to the audience, and if they start tuning in and if they show [interest], then you’re in a good spot. But there’s every chance it can go [the other way], and shows do, don’t they?” says the veteran of British broadcast television, likely well acquainted with the graveyard of BBC and ITV shows haunting various streaming platforms. “No one watches them, and then a few years later, there’s this weird surge where everyone starts watching them again.”

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When the news of Line of Duty‘s season seven broke last year, it certainly wasn’t a surprise to McClure. “We’d never closed the door,” says Mercurio’s star. “Me, Jed, [co-stars] Martin [Compston] and Aidy [Adrian Dunbar] meet up for a curry at least a couple of times a year. We’ve always had a sociable time when we make the show,” she continues, “and I think that comes across. We always said, ‘Oh, it’d be a shame if [season six] was the last one,’ because we felt like we had a really different experience [during] COVID… So then it was a case of: How are the stars going to align? We’ve all been lucky to get other gigs. Of course, Jed’s busy. He’s got to write it. We knew when he started to pick up his pen again…” she pauses, flashing a grin.

It is interesting, McClure adds, that Line of Duty is predominantly a cast of working-class people, “written by Jed, who grew up in a working-class family in Birmingham,” she says. “And it plays out on screen — you have accents and you have characters that are able to tap into certain flaws. Relationships were formed that are so long-lasting. Martin and Aidy are family now. I adore them both. So [hiring working-class talent] works. People need a bit more belief in those lives and characteristics.”

McClure has been a champion of opening doors for working-class creatives her whole career. Her work with the Television Workshop is testament to that, though she isn’t content yet — by any means. “London should not be the center of the universe. For anything,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing city. But there is Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow… The world’s a beautiful place, but with the industry in tow, it can’t all be London central. It has been and it still is, for so many years. And it’s just not serving anyone now.”

When I put to her that there has been something of a production boom outside of the capital — in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — she maintains that while shoots are there, all of the really important get-togethers still happen in London. “It’s really naive of us to think that people can just afford that horrendous train fare or the petrol, or whatever it may be, [and] to just up and leave to get to that meeting. And I remember it was tricky for me. To get here and go, ‘I need to grab a sandwich and a cup of tea’ or something. It’s expensive.” McClure knows from first-hand experience that thousands of young actors will miss out on network-building because they can’t pay London rent: “It’s a very privileged space, a very privileged industry.”

And even when the long-hoped-for acclaim arrives, the quote-unquote “fame” comes with unwanted side effects. “I don’t want to sit here and go, ‘It’s been a problem for me,’” concedes McClure, who says that staying in Nottingham has made showbiz a more liveable place — literally — for an actor of her calibre. “I like to do things here and there. When I get nice invitations, if I can make them, and it’s something I want to do, I’ll go, and the paps [paparazzi] will do what they’ll do. You can kind of control it, to a degree. You can choose to put yourself out there a bit more — and sometimes you need it. You need the promotion to help whatever business it is you’re trying to sell.”

This is the more pragmatic side to McClure. With a BAFTA and a handful of wildly popular shows under her belt, you can’t deny it: She knows the ropes. “It’s a business and I’m in my mid-40s now,” she continues. “I’m a bit wiser, a bit longer in the tooth. I can see what things are, and you’re less naive. I’m not Hollywood. I feel Hollywood talking to The Hollywood Reporter,” she says, smiling again, though admitting she’s never even been to L.A. (Tinseltown may yet come knocking — McClure’s next film, Kenneth Branagh’s The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde, sees her next to Jodie Comer, Patricia Arquette and Michael Sheen.) “I think when I’m on my deathbed,” she continues, “I won’t be worrying about my career.”

What might McClure be more concerned with? Her charity work, for one — in 2019, she formed Our Dementia Choir following her late grandmother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The organization was the subject of a BBC documentary, led by McClure, and over the years the group has performed in front of tens of thousands, including at Nottingham’s Splendour Festival. She also has a production company co-founded with her husband, Build Your Own Films, backed by All3Media and committed to nurturing projects “rich in subject matter, diversity and representation.”

Right now, however, it’s more Trigger Point on the telly for McClure. Releasing soon, the new season promises a deeper look into Lana’s trauma and, as you might have guessed, some pretty explosive drama. “There’s no joke to her job. It is life and death,” McClure says about returning to everyone’s favorite Expo. “We feel like we’ve seen it all in Trigger Point. Different types of scenarios.” She stops. Eye contact. “You haven’t seen it all.” She says this season’s writing team had a lot of fun concocting more dire situations for the Met Police bomb squad. “And we really own that. If there’s anyone that can go out with a bang, it’s Trigger Point. This is the bomb show.”

She remembers reading a Times paper describing the series as “Scooby-Doo on acid.” It was meant to be, according to McClure, a bit of a diss. She loved it. “It is Scooby-Doo on acid!” she beams. Most importantly, this Nottingham native is given the opportunity to take on the fearless Lana Washington once more, and it’s exactly where Vicky McClure wants to be. “I love it when she has one of them ‘fuck you’ moments. I always slip in a few more fuck’s than I probably should!”

Catch McClure in the brand new series of Trigger Point, coming soon to ITV1 and STV.

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