Interview with Sam Spruell

What can you tell us about your character?

Steve is a member of the community and is a well-meaning individual who is full of misjudgement. You get these situations where he tries to get involved but does it in quite a ham-fisted way. He’s a slightly self-styled law enforcer in the respect that nobody has given him a position of authority. He’s just assumed it in his own eyes which ultimately leads to him being a figure of fun amongst his community even though he’s pretty unaware of that. The last thing he would want is for people to be laughing behind his back. He yearns to be taken very seriously by the other members of the community in which he lives.

Steve also has a brother, Seth (played by Tom Fisher), who weighs quite heavily on him, not only because he feels compelled to make sure Seth is alright and look after him, but it doesn’t help that it feels like Seth’s presence distracts from his standing in the community. Steve is really worried about that.

How is Steve linked to missing Hattie’s family?

Steve had a relationship with Angie, the sister of Hattie’s mother. He was completely in love with her and I don’t think this was reciprocated. He takes the relationship so seriously, even after its finished, that he still considers himself to be basically related to the family. But because the relationship ended very badly, in other words Angie ran away to get away from him and the family don’t tell him where she is, there’s a kind of rift between Steve and the family. Steve looks to heal that rift when the girl goes missing because he feels that by helping them find their daughter, while he’s genuinely concerned and wants to find her, he spies an opportunity to fix the relationship between himself and the family.

How do you think Hattie’s twin sister Caitlin (played by Leila Mimmack) feels towards Steve?

Caitlin is quite cold towards Steve. She is an interesting presence because she’s a difficult presence for the men in that community. Steve and her have some kind of history, not necessarily like anything untoward, but there is something about her that makes him feel uneasy. He doesn’t feel like the adult compared to her. She’s very much the adult and he’s very much the child, that’s how their relationship is working. She makes him feel vulnerable and he hates that.

She also seems to be much more sophisticated than anyone else around her along with Linus (played by Max Fowler). So those two are the most sophisticated characters in a way in terms of just their intelligence and social intelligence, and Steve feels quite threatened by their presence.

What is the feeling between the members of this small market town community?

In any small community everyone knows each other’s weak spots, but they’re prepared to tolerate them because you have to in order to get along. When something of this magnitude and severity happens then people fall under the microscope of the community’s glare. People are trying to find the culprit, so any character trait that might have a connection to something untoward is examined very closely or is brought out more into the open.

What stood out for you when filming Mayday?

I’d like to say how original, incisive and interesting the director (Brian Welsh) was. He really forced us to re-think scenes in the moment, because you can prepare as an actor and turn up, but he really gave interesting notes that changed the dimensions of scenes and made our characters more interesting. He’s really good at trying to get the juice out of these small town local political tensions and was excellent in upping the tension within the scenes.