Russell Tovey has said he was desperate to play a different type of role in new drama Banished – but got so fixated on one character that he didn’t realise he was being offered the lead instead.

The Him And Her actor stars as pickpocket James Freeman, who is shipped to Australia with a group of other convicts to set up a penal colony in the 18th century.

He admitted that he usually played the “loveable d**khead, but as I’m getting older and filling out and able to grow facial hair, things are changing.”

Banished Russell Tovey
Russell Tovey plays James Freeman in Banished (BBC)

Russell had been hoping to play Major Ross in the BBC Jimmy McGovern series, but was initially devastated to be asked to play a convict instead.

He said of Major Ross: “He’s completely against type for me. Very cold, calculated, and my heart was set on it.”

Talking about being offered James instead, he said: “I went, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to play him, he doesn’t have that much of a journey’, and they went, ‘Are you crazy? He’s the lead’.

Banished
MyAnna Buring, Julian Rhind Tutt and Russell Tovey star in Banished (BBC)

“I just got fixated on Ross, so didn’t put myself in the frame for anyone else, and hadn’t read the scripts through James’ eyes.”

Russell added of filming in the Australian wilderness: “I had a real leech attached to me, I ate a Witchetty grub, and one of the crew got bitten by a mouse spider. My nature skills, particularly in relation to avoiding certain death, have improved a lot.”

:: Banished begins on BBC Two on Thursday, March 5.