Aidan Turner Wants a Cop Drama After Rivals and Stage Work
Aidan Turner said he was sitting in his trailer and thinking, "God Almighty. Can you just give me a cop drama?" The 42-year-old actor, from Clondalkin, was speaking while moving between television, film, and the stage, including his current work in Rivals and Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
From vampire to presenter
Turner has already moved through a wide range of roles: a vampire in the dramedy Being Human, a dwarf in The Hobbit, and Poldark in the television series Poldark. He now plays an 1980s TV presenter in Rivals, which makes his wish for a procedural feel less like a throwaway line and more like a reaction to years of playing parts that sit far from a standard police drama.
He also appears as a seducer in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre in London. That combination of screen and stage work is the backdrop to his complaint, and it shows why a cop drama would feel like a clean shift rather than another variation on the same kind of period or heightened character role.
Blackpool and dance-craft
Turner’s career also carries a second life story: he was a competitive ballroom dancer in 1990s Dublin, discovered dancing when he was 10, and won an All-Ireland championship. He said he trained four or five nights a week for a couple of hours every night and on Saturdays all day, while travelling to the UK almost every month for competitions.
He described the scene as physical and unforgiving, saying, "It looks beautiful and graceful from the sides. When you’re on there, you’re sweating and you’re meeting someone who’s six foot three, swinging his elbows around in a tango, and you’d better duck." He added, "Oh, it would happen all the time. You crash into people. People wouldn’t put down their arms. There’s an etiquette. It’s called dance-craft, where you move around [people]. And you’re trained to do that. But there’s lots of people who just would go straight through you... It’s pretty ruthless."
At Firhouse Community College in Tallaght, he said he missed days of school to go to Blackpool for the World Championships. His classmates noticed, too: "Hey, are you a dancer? Everyone is saying you were in Blackpool doing the chachacha. What’s that about?" His answer in class was simple: "No way!"
Ballroom before Bond talk
Turner’s ballroom years came with the kind of visibility that later fed a career in major screen roles and, at one point, whispers that he could be the next James Bond. The contrast is useful: a performer once moving through sequinned pants and high white collars now wants a cop drama, which suggests he is looking for something more direct than the period costumes and heightened worlds that have defined much of his public resume.
That makes the line about wanting a cop drama less like idle grumbling and more like a career note. Turner has done the vampire, the dwarf, the country landowner, the TV presenter, and the stage seducer; the next obvious move, if he gets his wish, is a role built on badges, interviews, and procedures instead of corsets, fantasy, or ballroom rules.
