Coldwater's Andrew Lincoln shares reason he originally rejected 'unpleasant' role twice

Coldwater star Andrew Lincolnhas disclosed he initially rejected the part on two occasions before having a change of heart.

The Walking Dead actor is making his comeback to UK television in the new ITV thriller, where he stars as John, a man grappling with his past demons when they return to torment him.

Having moved himself and his family to the rural idyll of Coldwater (a fictional Scottish village) to get themselves as far away from London as possible after a violent confrontation and an identity crisis, John finds himself resenting his repressive and mundane life as a stay-at-home dad in middle age, with his secret rage threatening to upend his life as he knows it.

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Despite hoping for a calmer future for his family, he finds more disturbances arise when he befriends next-door neighbour Tommy (Ewen Bremner), a seemingly charming man and devoted husband to the local vicar Rebecca (Eve Myles), and John finds himself at the centre of a series of unsettling events, caught in Tommy's web.

As John's long-suppressed anger reaches breaking point with catastrophic consequences, he soon finds himself reluctantly beholden to Tommy, whose own terrifying mysteries start to surface, reports Glasgow Live.

The synopsis hints: "This is the story of a normal man, in a normal marriage, who finds himself in a far from normal situation. A man who discovers a newfound sense of his own power, right at the moment he falls under the influence of someone incredibly dangerous."

Prior to the series launching, Andrew disclosed his initial reaction upon discovering Coldwater, where he also serves as executive producer, telling press: "I got sent the script and loved it, it made me laugh in all the wrong places, made me squirm with recognition, and constantly surprised me with the unpredictability of the characters, but it made me scared as well.

"I was quite scared about playing a character that was so unpleasant and weak and emasculated, and I wasn't quite sure tonally where it sat.

"So I said no twice to it and then I had a lovely chat [with writer David Ireland] and couldn't walk away from it."

He jokingly went on: "I love working but I also love not working, and I said to Toby Jones a long time ago, 'You've got to learn to say no, it's empowering'. And then I can't say yes, I get into the habit of saying no to things, but then I met everybody [from production] and just thought, let's break some windows, and they all said, yeah we're in the business of breaking windows, so that's why I'm here."

"I thought this is going to be frightening, this is going to be difficult to thread the needle, and I think I'll probably learn something doing this part and grow a bit," he added.

In comparison to his best-known role in zombie series The Walking Dead as Rick Grimes, Andrew called Coldwater "a palate cleanser", saying it was a great opportunity to "play something that is diametrically opposed to an archetype of a hero, and to look at another version of masculinity."

He said: "I'm a bit worried about that word because I think we can get in trouble - it's just a middle aged man that is struggling with his place in the world."

Andrew continued: "It made me uncomfortable, because there are so many brilliant lines in it and it's familiar to me about the tribal nature of human beings and class and urban and rural, and it's all... the vanity of small differences.

"There's moments in this that become quite farcical."

Coldwater airs from Sunday, September 14 at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.