Hollyoaks star Rishi Nair has spoken about joining Grantchester season 9 and what makes his character Alphy Kotteram different from previous vicars-turned-detectives.
Ahead of his debut — and Tom Brittney's departure as Will Davenport — Nair spoke to Radio Times and shared how Alphy's first meeting with Robson Green's Geordie Keating doesn't get off the best start.
"[Alphy] is anti-police. He has this kind of perception about the institution. Growing up as a brown man in the '40s and '50s in Britain, his experience with the police would have been very different to the previous two vicars," Nair said.
"So, he has this kind of perception about them, and he has this personality trait that anyone that abuses their power, or anyone in a position of power that abuses that, he always stands up to that morally.
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"And obviously Geordie’s first interaction with Alphy is he's come to arrest him. He thinks that he's broken into the vicarage and he's stealing.
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"So [Alphy] immediately puts Geordie in that box of this police institution that he's grown up around, and that's why their relationship is really rocky to begin with.
"And Alphy actually doesn't want anything to do with Geordie, and Geordie comes and asks him for help with the case, and Alphy’s like, 'I'm a vicar, why am I going to help you with the case? Absolutely not'."
Of course, that animosity doesn't last, as they will develop their relationship over the course of the season.
"As the series progresses, Alphy sees Geordie for the man he is, and actually he sees that they have a lot more in common than they first thought," Nair continued. "And how those two characters develop in that relationship is a really beautiful thing."
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Green added: "Because it's Grantchester, we have to develop this relationship that these two people are going to go in and solve crimes.
"So there has to be a scene where there is an unstoppable force against an immovable object, but they have to discover a common ground in order to be together."
He explained that the case Geordie goes to Alphy over involves a religious matter, and while Alphy refuses to help at first, his curiosity soon leads him to get involved.
Meanwhile, the show itself has already been renewed for a 10th season.
Grantchester season 9 begins on Wednesday, January 8 at 9pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
