Just like its resident serial killer Paul Spector, last year’s The Fall crept up on us and wouldn’t let us go.

Indeed, while many detective dramas leave viewers in the dark, The Fall introduced us to the psychopathic Spector from the outset, which meant the audience have always known more than the investigative team, led by Gillian Anderson’s brilliantly aloof DSI Stella Gibson.

And perhaps that’s why the series proved so powerful. We saw the psychopath at work, his manipulation of both family and work colleagues. And despite the nightmares it induced, the drama became BBC Two’s biggest in years.

Now it’s back, picking up 10 days after the last series ended with the revelation that Spector’s last victim had regained consciousness, tracking the psychological impact of the killings on the police team, the victims’ families and on the city of Belfast as a whole.

“People have an appetite for this kind of drama and a morbid fascination with death,” muses Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan who plays the disturbingly handsome killer.

“And what’s particularly interesting in The Fall is knowing who the killer is from the start,” adds the former Calvin Klein model.

“I think there’s a slightly different tone with the second series, which is going to surprise people,” continues 32-year-old Dornan, who’s soon to be seen in Fifty Shades of Grey.

“We set out a lot of things in the first, where it was more about the act [of killing], and maybe the second series is more about what activates the act and the hunt [for Spector].”

“Definitely the hunt,” agrees Anderson, 46, who recently earned rave reviews for her role in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

“The team continues with the information they have and are following leads. There are more characters because the team is larger, and there’s an interesting dynamic in having people in different aspects of the investigation working simultaneously.”
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Gillian Anderson glides into the room, not a hair out of place, a padded jacket covering the suit and silk blouse favoured by her television alter-ego Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson.

The old Masserene Barracks in Antrim have been transformed into studio spaces for season two of crime thriller The Fall and today the tables have been turned on Anderson, as she faces interrogation from a roomful of reporters.

The Fall sees Anderson play a glacial detective, seconded to Belfast from the Metropolitan Police, to sniff out a serial killer stalking the city streets for his female prey. It’s a psychological spine-chiller that examines the lives of two hunters within one story.

Written by Allan Cubitt, the mini-series, shot entirely in Northern Ireland, became BBC2’s biggest drama launch in eight years when it aired in May 2013. It was well received by critics and audience alike and won a number of accolades, including three Iftas and a Bafta nod for lead actor Jamie Dornan.

Anderson and Dornan are back again for season two, having eventually managed to co-ordinate their increasingly hectic work schedules. Most of the cast from season one also return, with the addition of a new face to the police team, DS Tom Anderson, played by Co Armagh man Colin Morgan.

The London-based, Chicago-born actress has long been a sex symbol since her portrayal of Special Agent Dana Scully in US hit Nineties series The X Files, so it’s interesting to hear her describe how playing Gibson has changed her.

“In terms of how I feel as a female in the wider world, there is a level of self respect and maturity,” she explains.

“Also in how she takes care of herself, in the small ways, like how she takes care of her clothes and does herself up. In the first season, I started to pay more attention to myself and honour myself as a woman more.

“So it’s in how she treats herself mostly that she’s changed me. I have always been very opinionated and I don’t take b******* so I don’t feel she’s exacerbated that for me. She changed me more in terms of my femininity.”

In previous interviews Anderson has stated how she “became” Gibson the moment she slipped into her signature blouse and let the on-set hairdresser work her magic. Producer Julian Stevens says of her: “she turned up on set with her hair done and in costume and was Stella Gibson straight away”.

Anderson admits Gibson has got under her skin, more so than any other character she has played.

“When I was in London and The Fall was in the process of airing, it was not so much as there’s Gillian Anderson, but there’s Stella Gibson,” she says. “It was very different from other experiences I’ve had.”

She describes the character of Gibson as something of an enigma to viewers, an “unknowable” entity who gives a little bit more away about herself and her past in season two.

“We do learn more about her in the second series,” she says. “There are definitely some small reveals she gives and also we learn more about her in how she responds to situations.

“Anything that Stella is that we haven’t seen yet is the result of the past and not present. There are aspects of her nature which are dark, and if you look back to the first season, they are there as well.”

Season one of The Fall ended with a cliffhanger – Jamie Dornan’s serial killer Paul Spector, a family man and grief counsellor by day, is still at large, but his last victim has regained consciousness. Anderson says season two feels “more like a hunt”, with the net closing in. And viewers will see a different side to Gibson.
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The photo shoot done, Jamie Dornan is ushered away to a quiet corner of the studio by his publicist, who needs to brief him for five minutes on his international press schedule. Requests, requests. They do not concern the new series of The Fall, his sophisticated and critically acclaimed crime drama that starts again on BBC2 this month. They relate to the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey, which is not being released until February yet is already bulging over the 32-year-old actor like a heavy nimbus cloud.

We shall come to that. For now I watch him as he finds himself standing next to a vaulting horse. As he listens to his publicist, he takes hold of its sides and raises himself up, his 6ft frame forming a gravity-defying diagonal behind him in the air. Seeing this impressive gymnastic feat, the photographer stops packing away his camera and starts clicking again.

When the photographs are done, we walk to a nearby restaurant for lunch, and Dornan tells me it was just as well the photographer didn’t ask him to do a second take, because “I would have been crying in the corner if he had.” He broke his shoulder a few years ago, and “stupidly I put off having surgery on it until last year”.

He doesn’t realise he is doing these exercises half the time, he adds. In fact, he thinks he is “probably quite irritating to live with” because he has a condition which means his adrenaline levels are abnormally high, so he is always dropping to the floor at home and doing press-ups. “I’m quite hyper, and my wife [he married the singer-songwriter Amelia Warner last year] would prefer it if I sat down and read a book.”

In contradiction to this professed hyperactivity, Dornan has a languid delivery, with a crackly County Down lilt. His manner is composed, too. And he is open and self-deprecating, punctuating his conversation with an easy laugh. He even seems to wear his good looks lightly, behind a five-day beard. It’s sickening.

And it gets worse. With his spatchcocked chicken he orders a regular Coke. Really? Not diet? “Yeah, really.” He claims he doesn’t need to watch what he drinks and eats. Seems to stay in shape naturally. In fact he usually drinks beer, and opens a bottle of wine every night after helping his wife put their 11-month-old daughter to bed. And he eats “any old crap. I could eat 10 packs of Hula Hoops a day and not think about it.”

Dornan also claims that he doesn’t need to spend hours each day in the gym (do we believe him?), and that he feels insecure about his appearance.

And at this point we need a little context. For almost a decade, you see, Jamie Dornan was one of the highest-paid male models in the world. Dubbed the “Golden Torso” by the New York Times, he was photographed by Bruce Weber and contracted to Dior, Armani and Calvin Klein; for one memorable billboard campaign, he and Kate Moss posed together wearing nothing but their tight Calvin Klein jeans.

Did he feel objectified when he was a model? “At times, yeah; on the whole, no. I got lucky with that gig because quite early on I could be picky about what I did, where I did it. And because I was on contracts, I was working maybe 10 days a year and getting paid really well for it.”

He says “working”. Actually what he had to do most of the time was “lean against a wall while looking depressed”.
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I’ve added outtakes of Jamie from a photoshoot for The Observer to the gallery! This is probably one of my favorite photoshoots Jamie has done!

Edit: I have replaced the photos with HQ ones now!

I have added two photos from a photoshoot Jamie Dornan did with co-star Gillian Anderson for The Daily Telegraph and scans from the issue to the gallery.

I’ve added two episode stills from the first episode of the second season of “The Fall” and three photos from the promotional shoot to the gallery!

I have added photos of Jamie out with his wife Amelia and their daughter in Vancouver, Canada to the gallery!

Thanks to @Shades_Blog, I have added HQ scans of Jamie featured in the October 24th issue of eNews Magazine to the gallery!

Fifty Shades of Grey Fan put up two exclusive videos of Jamie filming Fifty Shades of Grey on October 13th. You can watch them below!