The drama is subtler than your average mainstream police procedural – exploring as it does what it’s like to feel both British and, at the same time, “other” – but also has all the plot twists and high-speed chases you’d expect from anything involving Mercurio.
Nagra, who temporarily relocated to Birmingham for filming, 45 minutes away from her family in Leicester, says there are photos of her at the weekends conked out on her parents’ sofa.
“It was nice becoming a kid again,” she says. “My mum making me tea and parathas.”
Nagra never intended to move to Los Angeles permanently, but when she had a son, Kai, in 2009 (with photographer James Stenson, whom she divorced in 2013), it became harder to leave. Now she considers the celebrity enclave of Laurel Canyon home and is close friends with fellow Brit actors and Spooks stars Raza Jaffrey and Lara Pulver. There is, though, nothing starry about her life.
“I’m doing the same thing I’d be doing if I was in England. Just the mere mention of Los Angeles and everyone’s like…” Nagra lets out an exaggerated gasp. “And then you live here and you’re like, ‘Oh it’s really not that… shiny.’ The other day we were driving, and my son said, ‘God, Hollywood is such a dump.’”
Although she jokes about retiring to a village on the outskirts of Leicester, Nagra has no plans to move back to the UK, even if she is frequently travelling in order to get to where the parts are. “Nothing seems to be shooting in LA which is frustrating,” she explains. “As a single parent, I’d love to get a regular job on a show here, it would make my life a hell of a lot easier.”
At a time when more and more stars over 40 are combating the lack of interesting roles by creating their own à la Reese Witherspoon, Nagra is almost refreshingly unambitious. “My thing is, I just want to act and that’s it,” she shrugs. “I’ve no real ambition to do what Maya [Sondhi] did so I’m at the mercy of what someone else is creating. I wish I’d that [writing] side to me, but I just want to act.”
