Stephen Graham has revealed the gesture he made to a teenage Jodie Comer when the pair featured in a scene from a BBC police drama where his character sexually assaulted her.
The Irishman star, 51, played Noel Finch, an awful criminal who harasses a young waitress named Amy, played by Comer.
You can watch the scene from 2012 series Good Cop below:
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Warning: This video contains scenes of sexual assault from a TV show which some viewers may find distressing.
"I think she may have been 17, maybe 18 at the time, possibly. And we had two scenes. And, you know, I met her on the day, and I was like, 'Hello, I'm Stephen'," Graham said during a recent interview with Josh Horowitz.
"And my character was kind of a horrible man, kind of very grotesque, you know what I mean. And he was meant to grab hold of her in a certain area, and this was before the days [of intimacy coordinators].
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"And I just said to Jody, 'Look, I want to make sure that you're comfortable. Is it okay if I put my hand there, and the camera will think it's there?'.
"And she was like, 'Yeah'. And she was really sweet and really lovely."
After Comer impressed Graham with her performance, he introduced her to his long time agent, Jane Epstein.
She helped Comer, now 31, land roles in the likes of My Mad Fat Diary, Doctor Foster, and Thirteen, before she was eventually cast in Killing Eve.
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"I phoned Jody and she was on the train going to London for an audition. And I said, Don't go for that audition. Go meet my agent," Graham explained.
"And she was like, 'Well, what do you mean?' I was like, 'Trust me, honestly. Trust me. If you if you trust me at all, do me this one thing, go and meet my agent. Don't go for that audition'.
"And she did, and she met Jane, and Jane fell in love with her, and the rest is history."
Comer thanked her Good Cop co-star during her BAFTA speech back in 2019.
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“I want to take this moment to thank Stephen Graham. Stephen, if I didn't owe you a pint before, I definitely do now,” she said.
“Thank you for the generosity that you showed me all them years ago and for introducing me to Jane.”
Epstein previously told The Guardian that Graham 'thought she was one of the most exciting talents he had worked with to date'.
“He was so impressed by her and asked if I would meet her. I did, and he was right,” she said.
Topics: Celebrity, Jodie Comer, Stephen Graham, TV, BBC, Killing Eve
Anish Vij