*Warning – contains spoilers for Criminal Record season 2 episode 4.*
The fourth episode of Criminal Record season 2 has now been released on Apple TV, and it sees Cush Jumbo’s June Lenker beginning an affair with Luca Pasqualino’s new character, JP.
“I can’t think why she’s drawn to him. He’s not attractive in any way,” Jumbo joked when speaking exclusively with Radio Times alongside her co-star Peter Capaldi, who plays Daniel Hegarty.
Jumbo was asked about why June is drawn to JP in the new season, and away from her current partner, Stephen Campbell Moore’s Leo.
“Well, for a start, he’s pretty oppositional to her partner,” Jumbo said of JP. “There’s something going on with June, which is about flipping her life. I think when her son kind of moves away from her, home becomes a very empty place. It’s really magnified how much she doesn’t really want to be there, and how much it’s not speaking to her current sense of self anymore.”
She continued: “I think part of it with JP is that it’s fun. It’s a real remedy to what’s going on, but strangely, it comes out of her being so upset and them slightly trauma bonding over what had happened with Rohaan.
“Yes, it doesn’t hurt that he’s nice to look at, that works too, but Paul [Rutman, creator] wrote JP, which Luca plays fantastically, as somebody that brings a totally different energy into the team that she is not experiencing. And I think a lot of the time also, she’s not really being seen as a woman – not that she wants to be, but this particular season is very male heavy.
“She doesn’t really have another female protagonist that she’s working alongside or with, or she can even bounce ideas off very much. So I think it’s nice to be seen, and not just to be seen as ‘June the problem’. That can be very attractive to a woman that has to do a job that makes her very strong. And I think Luca has that balance brilliantly, the energy.
“He also does amazing scenes with Peter, which I think are super interesting, that he essentially slightly charms both of them.”
Jumbo then jokingly asked Capaldi, “Do you guys sleep together? You don’t do you?,” to which he responded: “No, but I love Luca.”
“He brings such humour, such charm,” Capaldi continued. “I know him because I was in The Musketeers with him. He was D’Artagnan and I played Richelieu. He was only a kid then, I seem to have worked with everybody at some point when they were a kid. And I just love what he brings.
“He has such a lightness of touch and an elegance about him. And also, because I’m a bit old now, it’s great to have someone I just go, ‘Go get them!’”
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Jumbo added: “I could feel in our scenes together, he’s a balm. He’s a real nice balm between us, because we can chafe quite a lot, and it’s just nice to have a character around who actually brings something a bit different. So yeah, I think that’s what it was about.”
Criminal Record will continue next week, with Lenker and Hegarty continuing to use Luther Ford’s Billy as an informant, in order to bring down Dustin Demri-Burns’s Cosmo.
Criminal Record season 2 will continue on Wednesday 20 May on Apple TV – sign up to Apple TV now.
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