Tom Burke Talks New Strike Adventure The Ink Black Heart

Into The Heart Of Darkness

Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike returns for a new TV adaptation this week, The Ink Black Heart, and here’s Tom Burke, who plays Strike on the new series courtesy of the BBC website…

Where do we find Strike and Robin at the beginning of this series?

There is a gap between major cases; they don’t know that they’re about to be on another one. It’s a belated birthday dinner for Robin. Just the two of them. And we see them really the freest with each other that we’ve ever seen – partly because of alcohol.

This builds to a particular moment of spectacular mistiming. And subsequently, for most of the rest of this story, the communication goes back several steps. I was a little worried about that before I’d read Tom’s scripts; the book is incredibly detailed about what they’re both going through, but in a sense it’s very private stuff to each of them.

But Tom Edge, our screenwriter, dealt with that brilliantly, and also with the whole masked ball-ness of the suspects, which is due to the fact that we’re dealing with online presences, more than flesh and blood people.

What do you think the attempted kiss at the beginning of episode one means to them both?

The way Robin talks about it, she thinks, had she kissed Cormoran back, he would’ve regretted it and then would have had to address it in a very awkward way.

I don’t think Strike feels that way about it. He just thinks he’s completely misread the situation, and a lot preceding it – going back years. It’s very human, and everyone’s been there – where you’re never quite sure about how the other person feels and you boomerang between the extremes in guessing. It’s the scariest thing on earth to make that leap of faith hoping that they feel the same way.

Do you think Strike has got to the point where he’s going to have to deal with his inability to commit to relationships?

Well, he is actually dating somebody for the majority of the story. But interestingly she’s become an off-screen character because he never actually tells Robin about the relationship.

Strike is subliminally or deliberately pushing that bit of his life to the periphery – so ‘off screen’ in more ways than one… And of course, there’s a big question mark over why he wouldn’t have told Robin, who of course does find out. Strike’s always been a bit cagey, there have been more moments to play this series where his defences are down now… Maybe less of that military tone in his voice. Something softer.

His health is absolutely catching up with him. And in terms of how he feels about Robin it’s less a case of ‘a man with toothache cannot be in love,’ and more that he’s begun to feel inadequate to the task of a relationship, even the most harmonious relationships can be quite energetically expensive.

There’s a sadness there and a sense of trying to be a realist; that maybe it’s not something he’s got the energy or time for.

Are Strike and Robin able to pick apart what is being said online in this series because they’re so good at being able to decipher people in real life?

It’s a strange puzzle that they’re working out. Mainly to do with who’s online typing when we have a visual. When you’re reading the book it’s almost like a Sudoku, working out who knows what, who is who, and who’s in the dark.

What is your own view about anonymous online personas and how they can be misused?

I do worry because I think there’s that interesting thing that happens when, let’s say, you’re arguing with a loved one and you’re actually in a room together. If neither of you storms off, you inevitably reach a point where words become a bit meaningless.

It’s a vitally important part of relating, because you find you’re just now looking at each other; and seeing something in the other person’s eyes, and you put down your invisible legal brief, and actually go deeper. To me there is no version of that online. It’s relentlessly verbal. You don’t see someone else’s face.

Do you have any moments in your life when you think, “What would Strike do?”

Do you know, I do. The time that I remember, which was pretty mundane really, I was queuing for a visa a few years ago and I realised there was the relatively new rule that you weren’t allowed your mobile phone in the American Embassy.

I couldn’t ask the stranger next to me to hold on to my phone cause we’re all there for the same reason, and I remember thinking “What would Strike do?”

And I went into a cafe across the way and found somewhere to hide my phone in the bathroom. And it was a very cluttered bathroom actually. It had shelves with an abundance of toilet rolls. And I felt so proud. I thought, “Yeah, that’s what Strike would do.”