Gregg Chillin (Being Human) stars in the second series of Kidnap & Ransom on ITV1 this week as hostage Mahavir Mehta.

Trevor Eve (Waking the Dead) reprises his role as international hostage negotiator, Dominic King, alongside Helen Baxendale (Cold Feet) as Angela Beddoes, Amara Karan (Doctor Who) as Carrie Heath and Natasha Little (Mistresses) as Dominic’s wife Sophie King.

Written by Michael Crompton (Silent Witness) and directed by David Drury (Ashes to Ashes), Series 2 begins at 9pm on Thursday 23rd February on ITV1.

CultBox caught up with Gregg to find out more…

Can you tell us a bit about your character in Kidnap & Ransom?

“I play Mahavir Mehta, the son of a very wealthy man. He flunks out of university early and with the help of money from his Dad goes to Mumbai to work on a startup business. It doesn’t go well and he ends up bankrupt, and his family travel over to see him.

“It all goes from bad to worse when his family get kidnapped! Mahavir is a very complicated character so is all is not what it seems – but I can’t say anymore or else I’ll give the whole story away!”

Is this complexity what attracted you to the role in the first place?

“Absolutely – that type of role is always much more fun to play. Fortunately I’m just not handsome enough to play the leading man or hero, but I’m more than happy playing the complex characters.”

What was it like working with such a diverse cast?

“Fantastic – it was amazing working with real pros like Maddie (Madhur Mittal) who’s been in Slumdog Millionaire and Christopher Fairbank from Pirates of the Caribbean. It was just a really nice coming together of people from all different walks of life and work.

“I personally always find it nice being surrounded by older actors, because you can ask them endless questions – like how many hours sleep they get when working, because for me I find it difficult when working to sleep very much.

“And just silly things as well about who’ve they’ve worked with and what they’ve worked on in the past!”

How was it filming in Cape Town, South Africa?

“It makes you feel like an actor, because you’re just doing something really cool. I have to say it made a welcome change from working in wet Bristol which is what I’d been doing for a month before I flew out there!

“One of the best moments I had happened when I went surfing with Maddy on one of my days off. We surfed quite a lot whilst out there but one day we were waiting to put on our wetsuits and just happened to see whales, only 200 yards from the beach.

“It was really lucky because other members of the cast had gone on whale watching trips on their day offs but I had been working, so it was great to see them naturally.”

Have you kept up with Being Human since your role as Annie’s murdering boyfriend in Series 1?

“I don’t really but I did watch bits of Episode 1 from the latest series because I did a film with Michael (Socha) last year and I also wanted to see Russell (Tovey)’s exit – which was pretty emotional.

“I’m interested to see where the series goes from here because it was exciting to see how much it had changed from Series 1. When I was in it the settings were all quite compact – there were just three locations of the house, the vampire lair and the police station. Now there’s so much going on and so many mad characters!”

What’s next for you now?

“My character is just about to properly appear in Inside Men on BBC One. There was a brief glimpse of me in the last episode but I’m much more involved with Episodes 3 and 4. I play a kind of loose cannon in the programme.”

You always seem to get these kind of parts!

“I know! It was Being Human that did it. I always used to be cast as the geeky funny guy but ever since I played Owen I get all of these nasty parts as well. I’m really proud of Inside Men – it’s the sort of show I’d love to watch myself.

“Apart from that, there’s also the film I’ve been working on with Michael, called Twenty8k. It’s a thriller about two seemingly unrelated deaths and the conspiracy that gets uncovered behind them – that should be coming out in the middle of the year.”

Are you looking forward to Series 2? Let us know below…

> Buy the Series 1 DVD on Amazon.

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