Amazon series The Rig stars including Martin Compston and Iain Glen discuss making of oil rig thriller in Edinburgh studios

Martin Compston, Iain Glen, Emily Hampshire and Rochenda Sandall chat to Rachael Davis about The Rig, a spooky oil rig thriller coming to Prime Video.

Those of us who spend our lives on dry land will find it hard to imagine the isolation of life on an oil rig. The enveloping darkness, the ever-present threat of the sea, and the creeping knowledge of just how many nautical miles there are between you and the next nearest person...

Prime Video's The Rig makes good use of this eerie remoteness by using an oil rig in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland as the setting for a dark and spooky thriller. Starring Line Of Duty's Martin Compston, Schitt's Creek's Emily Hampshire, Game Of Thrones' Iain Glen and Small Axe's Rochenda Sandall, The Rig follows the crew of the Kinloch Bravo who, while waiting to change shifts and head back to the mainland, find themselves enveloped in a mysterious, dense fog that makes even simple communication with the outside world impossible.

From there, things get stranger and stranger, as an unknown force beyond the crew's wildest imagination takes hold, pushing them to their limits in terms of trust, loyalty and endurance - and issuing a stark warning about the impact humanity has had on the planet.

Iain Glen plays offshore installation manager Magnus in The Rig, while Emily Hampshire stars as Rose, an oil industry executive and petrochemical geologist.

"Everything that happens is about the planet biting back," explains Iain Glen, 61, who plays Magnus, the Kinloch Bravo's offshore installation manager - "kind of captain of the crew". "Particularly over the last few decades, humanity has been doing quite a bit of damage. And the globe feels like it's telling us, it has been for some time, that we have to stop doing some of the things that we're doing because we're causing an imbalance. So in our drama, which is obviously about carbon fuel and the oil industry... it's kind of saying, what would happen if the planet tried to speak back and react?

"I have no idea what it was like, thank goodness, to live through an ice age, the various extinctions (that) have happened to this planet. But I would imagine some pretty weird stuff took place as you lived inside it.”

"I'm not personally a fan of supernatural stuff, or science fiction, unless I can really believe in it," adds Emily Hampshire, 41, who plays corporate oil company rep Rose. "And what I loved about this is that the science fiction of it is based in real science fact. I love Black Mirror in that same sense of... it's just the next thing that could actually happen. And the bonkers thing that happens in this could happen, I think. So that's what I think is really special about it."

The isolation of life on an oil rig makes it an ideal setting for a thriller, particularly as things start to unravel and the crewmates need to rely more on each other than they ever thought possible: as Rochenda Sandall puts it, "it's about human nature as well as Mother Nature".

(left to right) Martin Compston, Emily Hampshire and Iain Glen arrive at The Rig world premiere at Everyman Edinburgh. Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Wire

"It's claustrophobic before you add anything else - it's really tight spaces, it is a dangerous environment," adds Martin Compston, 38, who plays communications officer Fulmer.

"It's a dangerous job. That's why it's a high reward for paid stuff and very skilled work. So even if you don't add in the supernatural elements, it would already be a great place for a drama, but then when you throw in everything that starts happening, to be in that kind of situation but so isolated... it gets quite feral."

"They get more and more cut off as the series goes on," Glen continues. "It's very, very high intensity work, and usually when you work on a rig you're on for 14 days and off for 14 days, and part of that is just the relief of it. But quite often, people don't necessarily know about each other's personal lives. When you're suddenly forced in on each other, then that's the sort of stuff that starts percolating to the surface a wee bit.

"Past histories emerge, people's deeper relationships with each other on the rig emerge, stuff that people don't want to share starts to be shared. So you have all that going on with all these external elements, which I think makes for really good drama."

Iain Glen on set at FirstStage Studios in Leith, Edinburgh, filming for The Rig, the first Amazon Original to be made entirely in Scotland.

To truly understand the life of the crew on an oil rig, the cast were connected with real-life offshore riggers who performed the same roles as their characters, helping them to make their performances - from the plot structure to the vernacular used in conversation - as realistic as possible.

"There's tonnes of research material they had for us, and (we) got to speak to people in similar positions - I got to speak to my dad, which was lovely, and some of my friends now who are still offshore, just to get your head around some of the terms and all the acronyms and all that kind of thing," says Compston, whose father, like that of writer David Macpherson, worked on offshore rigs.

"I also met with this geologist who has the same job as Rose, although not in an oil company," adds Hampshire.

"She read the script, and she was almost crying when she told me that my character, to her, is like a superhero would have been for her when she was younger, playing with rocks and stuff... to see a woman scientist in that position. I thought that was just so special."

Due to practical and Covid restrictions, filming on location on a real rig was not possible, and the series was filmed entirely on set at a studio in Leith, Edinburgh - but this did not detract from the experience for the cast.

"Even if Covid hadn't been floating around at that time, it's completely impractical to fly cast and crew out to genuine rigs in the middle of the North Sea," says Glen. "They created a stunning rig, inside and out, in one of the biggest studios in Leith in Edinburgh, and the attention to detail... every single part of that set was taken from a real rig somewhere. It was just fantastic, a fantastic set to work on. And then occasionally we would go into the water nearby in Leith for certain sequences. Honestly, I watch it now and I don't have a clue what's real and what's not. And we were there!"

"There were moments when we were all together and then you could see the scale of it," adds Compston. "There was one bit, I think it's the end of ep one, but it was when we were all in the kit and we were all on the helideck and then the ash starts... you're like: 'this thing feels massive'."

The Rig comes to Prime Video on Friday, January 6.