Leicestershire’s Richard Armitage has said viewers should be suspicious of his character in the latest Harlan Coben Netflix series, Missing You. The actor has once again joined forces with the thriller writer – and is portraying a police officer for the first time in his career.
Richard, who was born and grew up in Huncote, near Blaby, is among the cast of Netflix’s Missing You – the latest thriller adapted from Harlan Coben’s novels – which streams globally from New Year’s Day. The series is the fourth Coben thriller in which Richard has starred, with last year’s Fool Me Once among the most successful shows on the streaming service in 2024.
This time round Richard plays DCI Ellis Stagger and believes viewers should be very wary of him. He told the Radio Times: “They should be [suspicious of Stagger]. The joy of working with this kind of material is that every single character has some kind of sub-plot that they have to hang onto, some kind of element of secrecy.”
READ MORE: Fool Me Once Leicestershire star opens up on ‘violent’ childhood bullies
Missing You centres around Rosalind Eleazar’s detective Kat Donovan, who comes across her ex-fiance on a dating app 11 years after he vanished. The shocking events lead Kat into uncovering details about the murder of her father Clint (Lenny Henry).
Ellis is a former colleague of Clint’s and the loss that he suffered both professionally and personally is made clear too, while the drama also raises many suspicions about his motives too. Richard said: “I think with Stagger, he’s holding on to 11 years. He was a contemporary of Clint, they came up through the force together.
“So, in that first episode, when you realise what’s happened to him and you’re seeing that effect in his daughter who is now working with Stagger, you just know there’s something going on. I can’t tell you what it is, but it is that classic thing of building up this sort of pressure cooker plot.”
Lenny Henry stars as Clint Donovan and Rosalind Eleazar as Kat Donovan in the series
(Image: Vishal Sharma/Netflix)
Despite his long career which has seen him play the likes of an MI5 spy in the BBC’s Spooks, a sexy surgeon in Netflix’s Obsession, Thorin in the Hobbit movies and Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood, Stagger is Richard’s first ever police officer role. That was something that appealed to the Leicestershire star in reuniting with Harlan Coben once again.
He said: “I’ve never played a police officer before, a cop. Taking on a role of authority was appealing to me. And also, knowing where the story went. The sort of secrets that this man has to keep buried, I just thought that little pressure cooker was going to be interesting and exciting.”
Ashley Walters, Jessica Plummer and Steve Pemberton also star in Missing You. The series will stream on Netflix from tomorrow (Wednesday, January 1).
We are now bringing you the latest updates on WhatsApp first