[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for D.I. Ray Season 2 Episode 3 “The Hunt for Rav.”]
“It felt like a good meal,” Parminder Nagra says with a laugh. She’s referring to her character, DI Rachita Ray, having to go see her ex-fiancé, the corrupt cop Martyn Hunter (Jamie Bamber), now in prison for his crimes uncovered at the end of Season 1. Now, in D.I. Ray Season 2, he claims to have pertinent information about the murder case she’s working.
Martyn insists on talking to Rachita alone and remarks that solving this case would be a chance to prove herself. She keeps her focus on the case. He brings forth an alternate suspect, who was once tight with one of the murder victims before a falling out and has a score to settle. Rachita knows he wants something in return, and Martyn claims he’s hoping to put things right between them. She argues he wants a reduced sentence because he knows he won’t survive in prison He says he tried to break through her shell, kindle a spark of emotion, anything, and even asked her mom how to reach her and she didn’t know, and reaches out to her. In turn, she tells him she never wore her ring at work because she was embarrassed to be engaged to him. He wonders what would happen and what people would think if they knew she was involved with a subordinate. She counters that she’ll be sure to tell the person whose name he gave up it was him who volunteered the information. It’s like a tennis game, back and forth, and such a good scene.
“Honestly, I’m so happy he came back. I mean, I know he’s playing a horrible character, but just the loveliest man—of course they always are,” Nagra tells TV Insider. “And it is a long scene, that scene, and I’m not saying that in a bad way. I was relishing wanting to go toe-to-toe with him and the amount of gaslighting that he is trying to put her through and has probably put her through in the past and she is not going to take it and she pushes back.”
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She continues, “It’s devastating actually, I think, for her because she probably still actually to some degree loves Martyn, and now she’s sat opposite this man who’s betrayed her. And there was a little bit in that scene where he touches her finger and I think she does feel something, but she knows that obviously this man’s a very terrible man and morally, she has to step away from him and she’s not going to let him pull one over her basically.”
But doing that scene that she compares to “a good meal … felt satisfying,” she shares. “And then I left the room and I was like, yeah, you can bugger off. But it was a real thrill to play. And actually the crew as well, just in rehearsal, everyone was like, ‘Ooh.’ So I felt like hopefully it’s translated on screen and we were doing something right. And the place where we were filming actually I think was a prison or an old part of a prison, and it was just all very weird and it was a little bit creepy, but it was good because it worked.”
Rachita visited Martyn only because of the case, but did part of her want to see him to see what she could get out of it for herself? (She brushes it off when the rest of the team learns about the visit.) “Maybe a little bit,” Nagra admits. “But I think she probably would rather have not have seen him because it’s incredibly triggering because he’s actually quite dangerous and doesn’t seem to be—it’s always the people that are the most charming and disarming, and when you see that they’re actually very, very dangerous, it’s quite a scary place to be in their company. So I think she probably would rather have not.”
That being said, she does get something out of it non-case related. “What it does give her ultimately by the end of that scene is closure on all of that,” according to the star, but she doesn’t know if that’s changed anything regarding Rachita’s (very understandable) issues with trust.
As for the potential lead he gives her, Rachita has to rely on her instincts as a detective to determine if she can trust it. Those “are very much intact, and she still does know what the right questions to ask are of someone like that in that position,” says Nagra. “She knows that he may try and trip her up, but also she’s going to have to go in and see what the information she’s given is about, and there could be traps ahead. So I think she has to take some of what he says as the truth, but lightly enough to—but he wants to get out, which is why he’s also being so nice to her. He doesn’t want to be there forever. And morally she’s not going to give him that, of course.”
What did you think of that scene with Rachita and Martyn? Let us know in the comments section, below.
D.I. Ray, Sundays, 10/9c, PBS (check local listings)