Iain De Caestecker (‘The Fades’) interview

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Iain De Caestecker (River City, Coronation Street) plays Paul in The Fades, writer Jack Thorne’s new fantasy horror series, which begins on BBC Three tomorrow night.

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Seventeen-year-old Paul has never quite worked how to fit in. Other than to Mac, he talks only when he needs to, out of certain knowledge that anything he might say would probably be under-appreciated. He’s always known he’s different and always not wanted the job. In some ways his journey through the series is the journey of someone who learns different can be great: Paul is special, it’s as simple and as complicated as that.

CultBox recently caught up with Iain at the show’s launch in London to find out more…

Can you tell us a bit about your character?

“I play Paul in The Fades and Paul, at the start of the story, is a 17-year-old who is at school in his last year and has a best friend called Mac.”

What’s Paul and Mac’s friendship like?

“I kinda use the word ‘geeks’ in the sense that they’re really into their comic books and their movies. They’ve sort of only got each other and they’re not very popular. Paul wants to be a bit more popular, so he’s got normal problems that a 17 year old goes through; coupled with the fact he’s having these really vivid nightmares and visions.”

How does Paul deal with these visions?

“He can’t really work it out; he thinks he’s going crazy, until he has an experience where one of his nightmares comes true. He meets Neil, a character who explains to him what he’s seeing are Fades, which are spirits of the dead. Then he’s trying to work out what’s really the truth and what’s not.”