Interview with Sion Daniel-Young who plays Colin Stagg

6 August 2021

How did you go about playing a character everyone will have preconceived ideas about?

I did a self-tape audition and had a real clear brief: they weren’t looking for an impersonation of Colin, just someone who could capture the energy of who he really is. One thing I avoided that some other people may have gone for was not to play him guilty for the sake of adding drama, but just to concentrate on Colin’s truth in those situations. That remained the same throughout shooting: to be the most truthful version I could possibly be.

What appealed about doing Deceit?

Emilia di Girolamo’s scripts. I devoured them in four or five hours, which is unusual for me. It was so pacey and there was so much detail, I had a really clear idea of who these people were without having any memory of the real-life case. I had so much to go off, and Colin has an enormous journey through the series. The scripts were so detailed. They were my blueprints, as much as the audio or visual material of him.

Who is Colin Stagg?

Colin Stagg is in his late twenties when he ends up becoming the centre of attention in a police undercover operation. A female operative honeytraps him and starts a relationship with the aim of getting a confession, because the police were adamant he was responsible for the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992. Even though he never confessed, he was charged with murder and spent 13 months on remand in prison before the case was thrown out. That’s what the public know, but what was fascinating was learning about Colin as a person. The portrayals were quite limited in the media.

Did you talk to him?

No, I never met him or spoke to him. I’m ultimately really glad because I don’t know what I would have gained from meeting Colin 30 years on. Meeting him with all the hindsight and life experience he’s had since might have affected how I approached playing him. Instead I could hone in on footage near the time, the telly stuff he did after he was exonerated and the book he wrote with David Kessler. That became my bible.

Was it important the project came with Colin’s input?

It’s better for having his input and for Emilia and Dave [Nath, exec producer] to have had that relationship with him over the past few years. If they have his trust and I have their trust, that sets it up well

How difficult is it to have to make Colin a plausible suspect for dramatic purposes, while knowing he didn’t do it?

I didn’t think about it at all. I knew the perspective of the show would take care of the “guilty” idea of Colin and the way people saw him then. My job was to be as truthful as possible in every scene because I knew I could trust the edit of the show. If I approached a scene thinking I could make the audience think Colin was guilty, that would get murky because that would be me trying to control the narrative rather than doing my job.

Deceit goes to some dark, difficult places. Did you manage to separate yourself from that?

No, we were filming across a lockdown and living in a bubble, so there’s a big difference between going home at the end of the day and going to sit in a hotel on your own. That added an element of focus that sustained itself through the entire shoot. You could never take your foot off the gas.

Did you switch off at any point?

No, I just tried to get a few hours’ sleep! We’d have light moments sometimes, but I probably underestimated it at the time. It wasn’t so easy to go and chat between scenes because of Covid, so you might just sit on your own, staying in your headspace. It added a level of intensity, and Colin’s quite solitary so it all feeds back into it. Any moment you had to yourself, you’d make sure you were on top of your own shit.

Some of the scenes are built out of verbatim transcripts and recordings. Did you listen to those?

No, Emilia and production had access, but all I needed was the script. I didn’t need to know if the actual lines had actually been said. It wouldn’t have made me treat those scenes with a greater level of respect.

How was Niamh to work with?

She’s great, really generous. We work in very similar ways, which got us into a nice routine so we could think of ideas to play things together. We were outside and it was freezing when we shot those date scenes, so it was nice to feel you could really bounce off someone.

Colin’s life might seem alien to some. What will people be able to relate to about him and his story?

I understand the mindset of wanting to be left to your own devices: as long as you’re not negatively impacting on anyone else’s life, why can’t you be left alone to just crack on? The main thing I found staggering was how he was demonised by sections of the press because he was seen to be other and different. People couldn’t understand the things he was interested in, so the easiest thing was to vilify him and make him out to be some sort of demon, which he just isn’t. Emilia and Dave have spent a long time with him and said that he’s just a sweet, kind man, which is really apparent the more you know about him. The very things people tried to use to highlight his strangeness, the paganism and Wicca religion, all come down to his respect for any living thing and a belief in kind spirits. It’s the polar opposite of how he was portrayed, which was as some kind of Satanist, but it’s so easy for people to jump on something to back up the narrative they want to follow.

What most surprised you about this story?

The fact that Colin doesn’t seem to harbour any anger or resentment about it. It’s incredible that he has got to the point where he can talk about it openly and calmly. He seems amazingly zen, probably thanks to the very thing he was being vilified for in the first place, which is a massive credit to him.

Does the way Colin was treated feel all too familiar?

Yes, but not every media outlet is trying to vilify people. It was important that the case was given the weight of coverage it had, because it was hugely important, even as that put more pressure on the police. You would hope lessons can be learnt, that people could be more open-minded and tolerant and want to understand different viewpoints. Tolerance is something we could all have a bit more of.

Are you interested in his opinion of the show?

Probably, but I’m interested in all things Colin at the moment. I think it’ll spark conversations, because it’s not your conventional true-crime drama. It’s a novel viewpoint and story structure – Channel 4 are willing to make those bold choices that maybe wouldn’t be made elsewhere.