The Fall: Can season three maintain the suspense?
Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan return for TV's most disturbing serial killer thriller
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Jamie Dornan: I stalked a woman on the Tube to prepare for TV role
4 April 2015
Jamie Dornan has admitted to stalking a woman on the London Underground to prepare for his role as a serial killer on the television show The Fall.
"Can we get arrested for this? Hold on ... this is a really bad reveal," the Fifty Shades of Grey star told the Los Angeles Times. "I, like, followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that."
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
He said he kept his distance, following her off the train and out of the station. "It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way," he said "I'm sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it."
The former Calvin Klein model from Northern Ireland faced an immediate backlash, with campaigners arguing his actions were tantamount to abuse.
The LA Times described the move as "maybe borderline illegal" and even Hollywood blogger Perez Hilton admitted that the revelation was "fifty shades of creepy".
Although critically acclaimed, The Fall has been accused of glamorising violence against women. One of the show's writers said it "lingered too intimately on the killer's brutal crimes, Sky News reports.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Fifty Shades of Grey, in which Dornan plays a "kinky" billionaire, is also no stranger to controversy. Domestic violence campaigners said that the film was a manual for sexual torture and even BDSM practitioners argued that it glorified abusive relationships.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Dornan admitted: "I consider myself quite light-hearted, pretty easy-going, and I keep playing sick psychopath bastards. It kinda worries me sometimes how comfortable I am in that zone."