BBC Shetland star Ashley Jensen has disclosed her peculiar script demand as she discussed filming the series. The Scottish actress, 56, who rose to fame in the hit US series Ugly Betty, joined the BBC crime drama as DI Ruth Calder back in 2023.
She took over as the main character of the show, succeeding DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall). Now, the much-loved series is gearing up to return to our telly screens for its 10th season.
Prior to the new series, Ashley featured on Tuesday’s (November 4) episode of BBC Breakfast to offer fans a preview of what viewers can anticipate as she confessed that she prefers not to discover the conclusion of the script, reports Daily Record.
The programme will be released once weekly on BBC One rather than on BBC iPlayer as a complete series. Speaking to presenters Jon Kay and Sally Nugent, she said “It’s dropping just once a week, which is old school but I kind of like it.”
Jon interjected: “Rather than a box set, which is interesting.” Sally noted: “I heard a little rumour, when you get your scripts, before you get to the end, you like to sort of solve the crime.”
Ashley confirmed: “I do. I like to not know who the murder is for the first three so I try to work it out myself. I feel like it makes more present with the other actors and you’re kind of really looking at them and trying to sort of see if you can work out something.”
She added: “And I do a little look behind to see as you leave the set to see if the guest actors are doing something they shouldn’t be doing.”
This follows the actress’s recent disclosure of a moment when producers were thrown into ‘panic’ after a vital scene faced disruption.
During Monday’s (November 3) instalment of This Morning alongside presenters Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, Ashley was questioned about what audiences can expect from her character.
Ashley revealed: “She’s had a tip off from an informant and she goes to this fishing boat and she thinks she is going to find a lot of drugs. It involved sifting through a lot of fish and there were none, just a lot of fish.”
The actress then took the opportunity to disclose how they nearly failed to complete the critical scene owing to a major interruption.
She continued: “We shot the first scene and then we got wind that the fisherman was going to sell his boat and we were like ‘we’ve still got scenes to do with the boat’ – it let us know that life goes on.
“Despite the fact we are making a BBC One prime time TV show, he was like ‘well, I’ve got a buyer for my boat’. We ended up having to go back and use a different boat for the interior.”
The star added: “And then at one point our lovely producer Louise was quietly panicking but not letting anyone know she is panicking and she was like, ‘We’ve got to find another boat, we are going to have to build a set.'”.
“They were talking about getting refrigerated because obviously there was fish. We did end up using another boat after he sold his boat so the magic of TV.”
Shetland comes to BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Wednesday November 5.
