The recent harrowing storyline involving April, Ray, and Celia has pushed Marlon Dingle to his absolute breaking point. In a new interview, Mark Charnock talks about the “purgatory” of the situation, the weight of the secrets kept, and whether the family can ever truly recover from this nightmare.
‘The thing about this storyline, more than any other, really, is the powerlessness that the parents and people involved are victims. They just have no power. It’s very easy to say, “well, you should just batter them,” but it really doesn’t work like that. These people have no fear of doing the worst things to you. You can’t stop them, unless something very unusual happens. They will kill you. No matter how hard your relatives might be or how hard you might try physically to resist them, it doesn’t matter. You are the ultimate victim in this situation.’
As the situation escalated, Marlon found himself backed into a corner with no visible exit. ‘So there comes a point where he can no longer see where to go, and it leads into very desperate measures.’
For Marlon, watching his daughter April suffer while being unable to intervene has been a unique form of torture. ‘Oh, just the worst kind of horrible nightmare, again, it links back to that powerlessness, to have no say in the hell that she’s found herself in, to have no ability to wrench her out of that, and to know it, to be sort of it, to be demonstrated to you, that you actually can’t do anything, It must be the most appalling sort of purgatory.’
This desperation led to difficult choices, including keeping Laurel and Paddy in the dark.
‘He does find that secret hard to keep, but he and Rhona weigh up that if they tell her it could potentially put her in more danger, it would put them in more danger, certainly. And so they’re left with an impossible situation, really. They feel terrible guilt. Marlon, in particular, feels terrible guilt, but telling her will make the situation worse. It won’t protect her. So, it’s that awful moral dilemma that is unanswerable.’
Describing the moment Marlon sets out with a knife to find Ray, Mark explains the “tunnel vision” his character experienced:
‘He’s been sort of reduced into this sort of single celled attitude where he can’t see anything else. He’s had this blindfold put on him and all that’s left of this tiny slit in this, and all he can see is ending Ray. He can’t see any other option, but killing him. And that’s mixed in with just the logic of it, if I get rid of him, maybe he’ll stop. But also, the rage he feels of what this man has forced upon his daughter.’
As for the future of the family and his friendship with Paddy, Mark believes the road to recovery will be long.
‘Slowly, I think. I don’t know how you shed something like this without it hanging over for a long time. They’d been living on tenterhooks and expecting the worst hour by hour, day by day, for months. I don’t think it’s gonna be something they shake straight away.’
‘I don’t think Paddy will blame Marlon. He knows him too well. Marlon was in his own kind of prison and so I don’t think he has really been there for Paddy as much as he would have liked, ’cause he’s been going through this hell, but I think they’ll start to pull back together.’
Despite the darkness of the plot, Mark has found the experience of filming these special episodes incredibly fulfilling.
‘I’ve absolutely loved it. It’s been really well written and structured. The back and forth at the time, the way that the show’s played with the time frame of it, the future of the past, all mingling together. I think it’s really smart, the way it’s really detailed. It’s been a very exciting, hard story to tell, you know, it really is dark, and I’ve found it really rewarding.’
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