- Have YOU got a story? Email ayaat.yassin-kassab@mailonline.co.uk
Emma Thompson was spotted debuting a very different look in the first images from an upcoming murder mystery series, where she plays a private detective with a spiky pixie cut.
The London-born actress will play Zoe Boehm in the new Apple TV Plus thriller Down Cemetery Road.
Coming to screens in late October, the new series is set to be a hit with fans of knockout crime show Slow Horses, as it’s based on writer Mick Heron’s other novels.
The plot follows the fallout of the sudden explosion of a home in a sleepy, suburban Oxford area, which leads to the mysterious disappearance of a young girl.
Local resident Sarah Tucker, played by Ruth Wilson, takes an interest in the case and enlists the help of private investigator Zoe Boehm, played by 66-year-old Thompson.
In the first images from the show, Thompson is seen with a striking silver jagged pixie cut, which only forms part of her rough-around-the-edges look.
The moody detective wears her flowing leather jacket with the collar firmly upwards, and opts for ‘no nonsense’ chunky black eyeliner.
‘The sleuthing pair suddenly find themselves in a complex conspiracy that reveals people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead,’ the synopsis reads.
The hotly anticipated eight-part series is set to land on Apple TV Plus from October 29, with weekly episodes and a two-part first drop.
The programme was adapted for the TV by screenwriter Morwenna Banks, who has also worked on Slow Horses for the streaming platform.
And author Mick Heron played a vital role as one of the executive producers behind the thriller.
The images come as JK Rowling shared a barbed critique of Thompson’s view on the sex industry in a sarcastic online post.
The Oscar-winning actress made comments during a live Q&A at a screening of her 2022 film Good Luck to You that sex should be recommended by the NHS because it is so important to our health and wellbeing.
Thompson, who played Professor Trelawney in the films, said: ‘What if when you’re unwell, you can’t make connections, but you need sex?
‘You need sex because it’s part of our health plan, if you like. It should really be on the NHS.’
She then admitted that some of her friends even hire escorts for this purpose.
Now, the Harry Potter author has hit out at the comments sarcastically writing on X: ‘Yes, funny how you never hear, ‘we’re so delighted – Tatiana got straight As, so now she’s trying to choose between law, medicine and prostitution!
‘It’s her decision, of course, so we’re trying not to influence her, but Nigel and I both think she’d make a MARVELLOUS sex worker.’
She continued: ‘I’m going out on a limb here, but I suspect most sex workers didn’t have the life choices available to a Cambridge-educated actress raised in Hampstead.’
And when one user said Rowling should not ‘look down on sex workers’, she hit back again to defend her position.
‘When did you last meet someone who was trafficked into accountancy? In your experience, do an unusually high number of addicts and abuse survivors tend to become plumbers?
Does the average quantity surveyor face a significantly elevated risk of early death because of his job?
‘I don’t look down on sex workers, I look down on the trade in vulnerable people’s bodies, and on the immense arrogance and wilful blindness of privileged people who think that by reframing the sale of human bodies as ‘a job like any other’, inconvenient and ugly facts about that trade simply disappear.’
The two former colleagues have not often had similar views in the past with Rowling being a prominent advocate of gender critical views, whereas Dame Emma Thompson signed an open letter in support of trans rights in Scotland in 2019.
The author has had similar run-ins with some of the other franchise stars such as Sean Biggerstaff, who savaged JK Rowling on social media, calling her an ‘obsessed billionaire’ and ‘bigoted’ for her views on transgender rights.
Down Cemetery Road will launch on Apple TV Plus on October 29.
