Cyril Nri speaks out about Cucumber’s shock end for Lance

We’re still finding it pretty hard to get over – SPOILER ALERT – the shock killing of Lance in Cucumber last night. For those who missed it, it all started out pretty nicely when loveable Lance enjoyed a flirtatious night out with bi-curious Daniel on Canal Street.

But then, it all went dark when after getting up close and personal with his workmate, something snapped and a crazed Daniel, angry at himself for succumbing to his latent feelings, smashed him across the head with a golf club.

Still shell-shocked, we gave Cyril Nri, who plays Lance, a quick call to see if he’s dealing with with his character’s violent murder better than we are…

Wow, Cyril. WHAT AN EPISODE! We’ve been in tears all morning. Did you watch the episode like the rest of us?
I was actually performing last night in a play so I only caught the last five minutes of the show in the dressing room. Then all of a sudden, my phone went crazy. Then when I got back to my digs, I sat down and watched the show on 4OD. It was like – wow! I had so many great reactions to the show. One of my friends sent me a screen grab of what’s going on on Twitter and I was shocked.

Did you know from the outset that Lance was going to die?
I knew it was coming but I was sworn to secrecy. When I saw the script I had the same reaction when i read episode one and the first episode of This Life. I remember thinking I just had to do it. When I read episode six, I thought ‘This is so brilliant. I hope i don’t f*ck it up!’ It was such an amazing story and twist! I knew people would be shocked by it.

I had watched it without seeing the life and death dates at the start – so the final scene was absolutely traumatising.
It came as a such a surprise, it was just shocking. There’s been a lot of reaction about the dates – about whether or not they should have been there? I mean, I did think if you’re giving away at the beginning that Lance is going to die then how are you going to keep the audience there? But I had a chat with a friend and they said it’s a bit like Columbo, only with a sexier cigar to suck! It was quite brilliantly written. And I loved the way the murder scene was edited. It was quite a hard scene to film. I had to stay in that mindset while they were changing the applying blood and prosthetics. There was one point where i just sat there in the same position for an hour and a half.

Daniel’s turn from funny guy to killer was pretty shocking too – but that violent streak came from the fact he couldn’t deal with his sexuality.
James Murray, who plays Daniel, was just stunning. His character has a lot of self-hate and that’s the problem we have with internal homophobia –we saw it a bit earlier in his character when he was quite rude to poor Lance and you just wanted to shout at the screen and say ‘Lance, stay away.’ But poor Lance was looking for a chance to be alive again after a nine year relationship so the way it turned out is really quite tragic. I hope the story urges people to be a bit more careful going out and getting drunk – though admittedly Lance stays sober through that punishment. It’s tragic and that’s what makes it so sad.

There are two episodes left – we’re guessing you don’t come back as a ghostly spirit do you?
I couldn’t possibly tell you. But I did suggest to Russell, when we were filming that beautiful scene with Denise Black who plays Hazel, that she and I could have a spin off show set on Canal Street called Hazel and Lance Deceased, in which they solve the deaths of the lost boys found in the canal. It’d be just brilliant. And with Russell you just never know. He might just do it.

Cucumber continues Thursdays on Channel 4 at 9pm