Matt Stokoe has spoken out about the immense sadness he felt after portraying Raoul Moat in a contentious upcoming ITV drama.
Moat was released from jail in July 2010 after completing an 18-week term for assaulting a nine-year-old cousin. He then targeted his ex-partner, Samantha Stobbart.
Moat arrived at the house where she was living in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, and shot and killed her lover Christopher Brown at close range before killing Samantha.
The next day, he shot police officer David Rathband, sparking one of the largest manhunts in British history.
The Hunt for Raoul Moat, a new three-part ITV documentary, reframes the tale of the notorious figure, who became a kind of cult figure to some despite his heinous crimes.
Instead, the drama focuses on his victims, including the police officers who risked their lives to capture him and a local journalist attempting to tell the story in the midst of sensationalist reporting and social media provocations.
However, Matt, who has previously appeared in Misfits, Bodyguard, Jamestown, and Cursed, admitted that by the end of shooting, he wasn’t quite prepared for the mentality he found himself in.
‘I think I prepared myself quite well that I was in quite a robust place when I went into it, but throughout the process, playing a role like that, there was a kind of sadness that creeps it,’ he said.
‘When the subject matter is so heavy and you’re really taking it seriously and trying to connect to it and give it the effort it deserves, over time there is an accumulative pressure to perform.’
While Matt, 34, claimed he worked hard to ‘insulate’ himself and his family from the depressing stories, he couldn’t escape the melancholy sensation.
‘By the end of the job I very much felt like my central nervous system didn’t know the difference and it was like I’d been through some really heavy sad grief or loss myself,’ he explained.
‘It took a few weeks to realise I was moping around almost and feeling sorry for myself.
‘But I hadn’t been through anything or had anything wrong.’
He added: ‘When you finish a job you are usually on cloud nine because you are done and you made some good work and some new friends and you get to go on holiday now and socialise again, but I had to spend some time in a type of decompression chamber to take myself out of that mindset.’
Getting rid of the hairdo Moat was famous for also aided the process.
‘I think it was quite cleansing at the end of the job that I got to shave the mohawk off and get rid of it because it felt very oppressive by the end… so it felt nice to literally shed all that.’
While the authors of the show conferred with Brown’s family, who gave their approval, and informed Moat’s relatives of the project, Samantha’s sister Kelly slammed the show this week.
‘I’m so sick of hearing Raoul’s name, and I’m so sick of him being on TV. I hate seeing his face on social media and then having to read all the comments people make about Sam,’ she told The Mirror.
‘So many people blame her for what happened on social media and troll her. This is something we can never forget but we would like to move on from it.’
The week-long search ended when Moat committed suicide by shooting himself near Rothbury, Northumberland, after a six-hour standoff with armed police agents.
Lee Ingleby plays Neil Adamson, the senior Northumbria Police Officer in command of the search, Sonya Cassidy plays local journalist Diane Barnwell, Sally Messham plays Samantha Stobbart, and Josef Davis plays Christopher Brown in the series.
The Hunt for Raoul Moat starts Sunday, April 16, at 9pm on ITV1.
Source My Celebrity Life.