‘There’s no way back for him’: Martin Clunes talks about playing Hugh Edwards in controversial new drama | television

HEdwards has not sat at a newsreader’s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC following a report in The Sun that he paid a teenager £35,000 for intimate photos and conversations. A year later – when Clive Merry, the BBC’s new Ten newsreader, announced that his predecessor had been convicted of possessing indecent images of children – the Welsh broadcaster’s career was effectively over.

But on the night of March 24, Edwards returned to the screen on Tuesday, reading the late-night news that had occupied him for decades. He is played by actor Martin Clunes and his BBC desk was recreated in Channel 5’s London news studio by the producers of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

“I don’t know because I didn’t ask, but I bet this was an offer to Michael Sheen,” Clunes says cheerfully in the building’s interview room.

Given that Shane is the leading impersonator on the market and is also from Wales, this seems like a good guess, but the Channel 5 director sitting for our interview seems noncommittal. Edwards was sentenced for “making indecent images of children” (a statutory charge that includes possession of digital images – seven of which are Category A, the most serious level of graphic abuse), so was Clunes hesitant to play such a notorious character?

“No. Because it’s my job. Roles don’t take over.”

Behaving with annoying or controversial people is a professional challenge. But Natalie Dormer recently announced that she was donating her payment for playing Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, in ITV series The Lady to sex abuse charities, because she felt it was wrong to profit from portraying an associate of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This virtuous gesture, if it becomes routine, will result in actors having to play villains for free. Did Clunes feel any pressure to pay his fees for a good cause?

He evades the question with a joke: “It’s Channel 5, so it’s not that much!” – Then he adds more thoughtfully: “I wonder if I’ll get attacked for being a straight man playing a gay man, which is very unfashionable these days?”

Clunes and the drama are careful to draw a distinction between Edwards’ homosexuality (which he said in a court medical report had long been suppressed) and his criminal sexual interest in children. The former caused his first downfall—in grooming a young man—but his undoing came from the latter activities. The drama shows both sides of Edwards’ life, including the online stalking of a boy in his late teens, played by Ossian Morgan (details were provided to the writer, Mark Burt, by the child’s real-life family) which led to in-person encounters. This was not illegal but could be considered an inappropriate use of his public profile by Edwards. “That’s why drama is called power,” Clunes says.

Since his ITV dramas Manhunt, about the hunt for a murderer whose murder included Milly Dowler, and Out There, which looked at county lines drug gangs, Clunes has played huge dramatic roles that fans of Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin didn’t necessarily expect. This trend continues with Mr. Earnshaw’s impressive distraction in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, and now Edwards’ impressive turn. I compliment him on his movie-stealing scenes as Cathy’s drunken, scheming father, which show how much he’s grown as an actor, but he replied: “After 18 years of Doc Martin, anything else would look different!”

This is extremely modest, and his dramatic versatility is most evident through Edwards, suggesting the volcanic pressures of public pretense while pulling off a performance similar and similar to Sheen’s. The makeup includes “no prosthetics, just…” Clunes flattens his somewhat prominent ears on either side of his head. “I think they used some kind of putty. But whatever they did, it was very clever because the camera comes right behind me and you can’t tell my ears are stuck in the back.” The drama shows Edwards during a period in which he lost a significant amount of weight and became chiseled and ripped through boxing and working out. Did Clunes have to do a lot of gym work?

“No. Apparently I’m blessed with a really great body! I lost a little bit of weight. Then they had to slim down my lips a little bit.”

With those cosmetically thin lips, Clunes copied another twitch he noticed in Edwards, an occasional curl that sounded like a sneer: “This seemed to happen when he went to concentrate.” Another behavior captured exactly was the left arm being raised away from the body with the hand gripping the desk, as if the broadcaster was literally anchoring himself in the studio.

The drama revolves around Edwards’ announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022, that is, just 10 months before the start of his scandal.

“I really studied that passage,” Clunes says. “It shows what a cornerstone of the British state he is, and it is so well known that I had to get it absolutely right.”

The result is an eerie reproduction of Edwards’s solemn, slow tones in the final afternoon of the second Elizabethan period, in which he reads the passage twice as if to give viewers a chance to immerse themselves in it.

“They said I wanted to practice using the Autocue. But I’ve been practicing ‘Have I Got News for You Forever’. I also have my own Autocue at home.”

This seems to be one of the most bizarre celebrity confessions. Why?

“Oh, there’s a lot of home recording during Covid. And when you’re recording stuff for charities, it’s often a long read.”

During the research, Clunes spoke informally with Edwards’ former colleagues who, although they had never guessed the inner darkness, remembered the outer coldness: “I spoke to a number of people who had encountered him in a professional capacity. They said a variety of things – I won’t take offense to him – but let’s put it this way: no one said it was fun.”

One sportscaster, who often co-hosted newscasts with a newsreader, called Clunes’ attention to Edwards’ habit, even though all his words were on Autocue, as he hesitated and looked at the spare script on his desk before reading a number: “It’s like he’s pretending he’s not reading Autocue! It’s helped that I have a lot of archives but what I wanted was to find the parts when he’s not on duty. I’ve seen shows by real people – especially politicians – where you only get the person they present to the audience rather than the real person; With that, I had to take him off screen as well, for example, he’s a bit more Welsh when he’s not presenting.

Clunes was fascinated by the presenter’s guest appearances on talk shows and podcasts, including episode 232 of the BBC podcast Fortunately… with Faye and Jane [Glover and Garvey] It was removed from BBC Sounds following Edwards’ conviction. He also closely studied some 24-hour news footage from outside 10 Downing Street, in which Edwards, during another broadcast, appears on the edge of the shot to present the live news at 10pm later: “While he was waiting – unfortunately given what had happened – he was sending messages on his phone!”

While the broadcaster’s digital interactions that day could have been entirely innocent, the clip of Edwards’ phone tech was instructive for several texting and swiping sequences in which he grooms a young man.

Because Edwards went from being the BBC’s voice for royal events to narrowly avoiding arrest at His Majesty’s will (a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years), there may be a temptation to see his TV persona as fake.

“I’m not sure fake is the right word,” Clunes says. “Performing but not fake. Kind of stepping up. My daughter says that when I act, I have a different voice than at home.”

In fact, his conversational tone became so calm today that I pushed the tape recorder closer to him. The show itself has also remained surprisingly quiet: In the world of gossip, keeping news of a drama around such a talked-about story seems like a major accomplishment. Did Clunes sign a non-disclosure agreement? “No. I don’t think so.” But couldn’t he have gone to Graham Norton and said he was filming him? “I don’t know. No one asked me not to do it.”

The Channel 5 director explains that, unusually, the drama was not announced until after filming was completed, and was therefore filmed in a secret manner. During filming, in December 2025, Edwards posted on Facebook a flipped photo that appeared to be a new publicity photo, sparking speculation that he was trying to make a comeback. The development sparked fascination on set, Clunes says: “We were like, ‘Has he heard about the drama?’ But there’s no evidence he did, and he’s now cleared it up.”

English libel is so serious that – even in a dramatization of a convicted sex offender – the drama had to be careful not to suggest any action or motive not supported by reports in the Sun newspaper or in court proceedings. One scene with a psychiatrist, using a quote from the mental health report submitted to the judge, is the closest we get to inside Edwards’ mind.

“It’s been really helpful,” Clunes says. “With that and the bits of real-life WhatsApp messages in the dialogue, I thought: ‘Wow, that’s what he really said. “It’s not speculation.” So there’s added weight to those scenes.

Although it is largely a docudrama, Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards has an unusual final fictional scene in which the presenter from the Autocue news desk reads a description of his conviction: “Finally, today I was sentenced…” Here, Clunes effectively uses that sportscaster’s report about Edwards’ convulsion to focus on the numbers, giving devastating effect to the number of indecent images (41), the quantity in the most offensive category (seven) and the quantity in the most offensive category (Seven) The age (between seven and nine) of the youngest child accessed by child sexual material.

In that epilogue – perhaps seeming to suggest that Edwards did not get away with it – might it have come as a surprise to many viewers to hear the hard-hitting details of what the former broadcaster actually did?

Clunes nods: “Yes, I think that’s true. I think there was a video of a child.” [about] Eight were raped.”

Could he allow himself to think about what Edwards might think about the drama or did he have to close his mind to that? “Well, I don’t think he’d like it. But I mean he shouldn’t watch it, right? And he’d be happy to report other people committing similar crimes so I wouldn’t worry about that aspect. There’s no way back for him. People are forgiven for cheating on their wives and dodging taxes a little bit. But, in this series, I don’t think you’ll come back. I don’t think we’ll get a second series.”

The Power: The Fall of Huw Edwards will be shown on Tuesday 24 March at 9pm on Channel 5.