Georgia Moffett ('Spooks: Code 9')

Wednesday, August 6 2008, 12:34 BST

By Ben Rawson-Jones, Cult Editor
Georgia Moffett ('Spooks: Code 9')

As if playing The Doctor's daughter wasn't a large enough responsibility, Georgia Moffett's latest role as psychology student Kylie in Spooks: Code 9 finds her protecting Britain from terrorist threats alongside a diverse range of fellow young'uns. This futuristic spinoff is set at a time when London has been on the receiving end of a nuclear bomb at the 2012 Olympic Games, leading to a sudden recruitment drive by the ravaged government. We caught up with the charming actress for a chat about what lies in store.

How would you describe the show?
"Spooks: Code 9 is an example of what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off and destroyed a large portion of London and how people would survive that and cope with it. We're just six or seven young people who have been affected in different ways and we're all there for different reasons. But we have one fight that joins us all together, which is to make sure it doesn't happen again and to protect our country. We're called upon to take on the responsibility from our elders without huge amounts of training. We're not super-spies, we're not particularly slick or clever. But we've got the passion for it and that's what drives us through. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail."

How does Kylie fit into the group?
"Kylie is a bit of a loose cannon. She got radiation sickness from the nuclear bomb, so she could be gone at any point. I think because of that she doesn't have a 'stop' button and she would rather go out in style with a bang than let the sickness take her over and kill her, so she puts herself in situations that normal people wouldn't put themselves in. She's a strange character - she uses her psychology huge amounts, but then on the flipside of that she can go from being very clever and doing very little to beating the crap out of someone. She's quite an angry person and doesn't know when to stop."

What training did you need to prepare you for the role? Any work with guns or Freud textbooks?
"We had gun training. Maybe I should have done the textbooks! I had a lot of training for the job I did before, so I was in a good physical place by that point. I could run without choking. I do a lot of sprinting throughout the series - running up stairs, escalators, jumping off cars..."

Did you pick up any war wounds along the way?
"Yeah, I got punched in the face! I banged my knee, fell over a few times, broke a lot of nails... but I think the punching in the face was the biggest one. It was my fault though, because I was getting all like 'I wonder what it's like to be punched in the face?' Then after about two hours of shooting this scene I forgot to make eye contact with the guy, which is disastrous, and we misjudged where each other was and he just went [bang] at full pelt in my face."

Is that take going to be used in the show?
"It's in it! You can see the aftermath of it, which is me staggering around not knowing what's going on. We carried on, we're professional. It was fine! It's an experience that I'm quite pleased I had, because I wasn't punched in the face in an aggressive situation. It was followed by lots of people coming up to me going 'ooh, are you alright?' If I ever had to be punched in the face again, that's how I'd want it to be."

How similar is the visual nature of Code 9 to Spooks?
"I don't think if you watched them on two screens next to each other you'd go 'oh yeah, I can see the similarity'. I think some of the colours are similar, but the style it's shot in and the lighting is entirely different. It gives you the sense of being in the future and in a slightly different world. I think that's important."

How is the devastated Britain depicted in the show?
"In so many ways. Well, in the first episode you see what's happened to London and you see the bomb. Throughout the series you see the people that have been evacuated from London living in derelict housing estates that haven't been lived in for years. It has a refugee camp feel to it. But in a way, it's shot so beautifully and that's kind of the point: that throughout the horror these people have seen and lost family members, they're all surviving. They're still alive and they're still getting on."

It's obviously a fictional premise, but did the whole 'what if?' aspect of the plot make an impact on you?
"Of course, because it doesn't seem that far from reality. It's perfectly plausible that something like that could happen. We've seen it happen in loads of countries on smaller scales and larger scales. I think in this country, we say 'it's not going to happen to us' and so when things do happen we're thrown into a state of shock. London is such a massive part of all of our lives in this country, but what if it wasn't there? What if you couldn't go there any more? What if you lived there? What if your family was there? It's a massive thing to comprehend."

Spooks: Code 9 begins this Sunday, August 10 at 9pm on BBC Three.

Original article here.