With parts in Our Girl and Roadkill before she stole the show in the last series of Line Of Duty as the tenacious DC Chloë Bishop, British/Australian actor Shalom Brune-Franklin is one of the most exciting talents on screen right now. And next, she’s in what’s set to be one of the TV moments of the year, BBC One’s new cinematic thriller The Tourist, playing a mysterious waitress called Luci.
With talented writers Harry and Jack Williams (the brothers behind Baptiste and The Missing) and a stellar cast, including Jamie Dornan in his first primetime TV role since The Fall, The Tourist deserves the hype it’s been getting. Set in the Australian outback, it’s packed with twists, turns and jaw-dropping moments that will definitely secure its place as 2022’s first major appointment viewing.
50 Shades star Jamie plays The Man, a mysterious character who loses his memory following a brutal car crash – and we follow his attempts to try and piece together who he is. In the first episode, we see Shalom’s character Luci help him in his quest to remember – but who is she?
Shalom, 27, was born in the UK but moved to Australia aged 14, where she took up drama and excelled; she attended the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts and, from there, her talent propelled her into the Aussie and British TV spotlight. This is her biggest role yet. ‘I remember reading the script for that first episode and I’ve never really had that kind of feeling before, just thinking, “Oh my gosh, what is going on here? And why?”
The Williams brothers are amazing. And the director Chris Sweeney made a show that I absolutely love, which is Back To Life. It almost feels like a golden egg that’s been dropped in front of me. I was just like, “This is the job. This is the one.”
Shalom says that the show has the kind of unpredictable plot that has made others, like Mare Of Easttown and Line Of Duty, the toast of Twitter. ‘It’s a series that keeps giving you little breadcrumbs,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be quite exciting for people to be on that ride. It’s real edge-of-your-seat stuff.’
Her co-star Jamie knows all about thrillers, having starred in three seasons of The Fall, in which he played a serial killer. Shalom explains, ‘I feel like I learned so much from him. We got to have these amazing two-hander scenes pretty much throughout the show. Harry and Jack’s writing is so great, so we got to really explore these two characters and their relationship is so complex.’
There are just four protagonists in The Tourist – as well as Shalom and Jamie, Danielle MacDonald (Unbelievable, Patti Cakes) and Darri Olafson (The Missing) also appear. She’s got a friend for life in fellow Aussie Danielle. ‘We’re obsessed with each other,’ she raves. ‘Danielle’s become like my sister. We’re Australian and yet we both had to have a dialect coach, because I have a British twang and she has an American twang because she’s lived abroad for so many years. So the two Aussies who were cast in these Australian-speaking roles had to have dialect coaches.’
Speaking of accents, having now worked with two of Northern Ireland’s finest leading men, who’s her favourite, Jamie or Adrian ‘Mother of God’ Dunbar, aka Line Of Duty’s Ted Hastings? Shalom pretends to be horrified, saying, ‘There’s absolutely no way I’m going to ever be able to pick. There’s no way! They’re both amazing, great craic, both of them.’
As for the rest of 2022, Shalom’s got big things lined up that she can’t talk about yet. ‘Let’s just say that I’m not going to be in the Australian outback next year – I’m going to be in the UK, and it’s something I’m really excited about.’
Is it something she’s worked on before, perhaps? A seventh series of a hugely popular police anti-corruption show? ‘I’d love that but it’s not.’ Shame, but at least we know this is not the last we’ll see of Shalom, Line Of Duty or no Line Of Duty.
‘The Tourist’ starts on 1 January, BBC One