Molly Vevers is in her mum’s back bedroom, on the brink of fame.
It’s the day after the Edinburgh premiere of Amazon Prime’s star-studded new Scottish project, The Rig; a thriller series following a group of oil workers on rig Kinloch Bravo, who are cut off from the outside world when a mysterious fog rolls in and their comms go dark.
For Molly, 31, who plays newcomer Heather Shaw in the tense six-parter, the premiere was her first – but hopefully not her last.
“It was really good!” she effuses, revealing that her date to the glitzy event was her mum – a North Berwick singer who Molly grew up watching perform on stage.
“I’ve never been to anything like that before, so I was quite nervous – you don’t know what to expect. As soon as I was there, it was great, but I was knackered after!”
If you’ve never heard of Molly Vevers before, don’t worry, you’re probably in the majority.
After grafting mainly in stage acting since her early teens – starting with a panto debut as Sleepy, one of Snow White’s seven dwarves, at age 12 – she made her film debut in Harry Michell’s feature Chubby Funny (2017).
But The Rig, which airs on January 6 2023, will be her breakthrough TV role.
And with co-stars including Scotland’s leading man Martin Compston (Line of Duty, Traces), Schitt’s Creek fan favourite Emily Hampshire and fellow Scot Mark Bonnar (Shetland, Guilt), she’s holding her own as a relative unknown against some big players.
And once the series hits the streams, it’s unlikely she’ll stay unknown for long.
‘A proper ensemble’
“When I found out the cast, before we started, I was a bit like ‘Oh my god!’” laughs Molly, admitting that she had “a slight element of imposter syndrome” when she arrived on set.
“It was lots of people I recognised from other TV and films, so I was like: Oh, I better not be s***!
“But as soon I got there, everyone was really lovely, and it did feel like we were all just a big team of equals.
“We’re all in every episode, and the script and the story does feel like a proper ensemble.
“So it didn’t feel like there were ‘starry stars’ and then ‘the rest of us’ – even though there are some very famous people in it!”
In many ways Molly’s journey on The Rig parallels that of her character Heather, who starts off learning the ropes but ends up integral to the team tackling the mystery of the deadly fog.
‘Now if you just do a banana’
“She’s one of the newer recruits to the rig, one of the youngest,” the actor explains.
“She’s one of fewer women in a very male-dominated environment. So certainly when the series starts, she’s got a bit to prove.
“She does have inner confidence, so she believes in herself, and she’s religious so she has that faith as well.
“But I think she has a really nice journey through the show, because we get to see her grow in confidence, and by the later episodes, she’s more sure of her place.”
As for Molly, walking on to the big-budget Prime set at Edinburgh’s new FirstStage Studios was about as otherworldly as walking on to an actual oil rig – which, despite some false reports early on in filming, she assures me she was never on.
“Just walking into the studio on those first couple of days and seeing the sets and the scale and the detail, seeing what the art department had done… it blew my mind!”
And going into the world of television on such a high-pressure production made for a steep learning curve – but one which down-to-earth Molly seems to have relished.
“I learned loads!” she says. “Everyone that was involved was at the top of their game.
“But there’s so many terms and stuff with filming that I just hadn’t heard before.
“And one of the first scenes I did, I remember the AD went: “OK great Molly, now if you just do a banana’. I was like ‘Sorry?’
“I thought, ‘I better just do something and pretend I know what that means!'”
(For fellow trivia collectors, a banana is “basically when you walk from A to B, and where in life you would just walk straight, for the camera you sort of put a wee bend in it like a banana” – you’re welcome.)
TV Renaissance well under way in Leith
And after a baptism of fire – or supernatural North Sea fog, as the case may be – Molly is now ready to take the TV world by storm.
As well as The Rig, she’s set to appear in upcoming ITV drama The Long Shadow, based on the Yorkshire Ripper and alongside David Morrissey (Sherwood, Britannia).
Indeed, since the Covid boom of prestige telly, she reports that Scotland’s ‘TV renaissance’ isn’t just a term media types like me are throwing around. It’s being felt inside the industry too.
“I do actually think with screen stuff, in Scotland especially, that really does feel like it’s come back to life in quite a major way,” she observes.
Indeed, The Rig is one of three shows which have brought £50m in investment and 750 jobs from Amazon to Scotland.
“I suppose people were consuming TV and film so much [during lockdown], it was a really big part of people getting through those strange times.
“And I feel like there’s lots more TV drama and films choosing to come to Edinburgh – not just using it for bits of location and stuff, but actually being based here.
“And now we’ve got FirstStage Studios as these world-class facilities that huge productions are coming to. So I think The Rig coming out next year will just boost that even more.
“The scale and the ambition of stuff that can be made here, using Scottish cast and crew and creatives… hopefully with this momentum, it’ll just build and build.”
But that doesn’t mean the North Berwick-raised actor is forgetting about her stage acting roots.
And after having all hands on deck in The Rig, she admits her feet are itching to tread the boards again.
Panto was ‘big deal’ in hometown
After all, her love of performing all started on stage – first watching her mum singing in local pubs and clubs around her childhood home, and then later acting in community pantos.
“My mum and dad used to do a lot of the amateur dramatic stuff in my hometown, and I always really loved it,” Molly says.
“I remember watching it thinking: ‘Maybe one day I could do that.’ But I felt quite shy.
“And then I think it was when I was 10 or 11, I auditioned for the town pantomime – which is a very big deal in North Berwick.
“And doing the actual performances, I didn’t feel shy.”
Crediting much of her success to her creative parents’ supportive attitudes, Molly explains how she went on to “get a bit more focused” on acting throughout high school.
“I remember getting on to the Scottish Youth Theatre course when I was about 12 and I raised money via a jumble sale to do it,” she recalls, smiling.
Then after a year at Telford College, she got into Glasgow RSMD (now the Royal Conservatoire) and never looked back – even working for a spell at Dundee Rep, which has acted as a springboard for the careers of many big names, such as Alan Cumming, David Tennant and new Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa.
And though she lives in London now, Molly admits that for her first “epic, Hollywood-esque” production to be created just thirty minutes from where she grew up is “very, very cool”.
It seems like for the first time in TV production history, Scotland (and Scottishness) is where it’s at.
“[The Rig] was one of those ones that when I got the audition I thought: ‘There’s no way I’ll get this – nobody knows who I am!’” laughs Molly.
But the show itself uses Scotland – and particularly the North Sea – almost as another character. So having Scottish actors, particularly fresh new talent, must have been at the top of the priority list.
“Obviously because it’s set in a world of oil rigs and the North Sea, it asks a lot of questions about humans’ impact on the environment and the oil industry generally,” explains Molly.
“But it doesn’t hammer it home, it just opens it out to discussion.
“And it pays a lot of respect to the oil industry and what that has done for Scotland, and the people who work there risking their lives.
“But it also questions the future – it’s not going to last forever so what do we do next?”
However, Twitter’s accent pedants can rest easy – although the cast includes a mix of English, Canadian and Scottish actors, Molly insists “people will be happy with the accents”.
“Sometimes people will put on a [Scottish] accent and it’s either quite and exaggerated Glaswegian-y sound or like a Highland one.
“It’s quite hard to do a more neutral Scottish accent, without rolling your Rs and all that!” she remarks.
“But there’s nobody in The Rig putting on a Scottish accent – so I think that’s good!”
The Rig will be streaming on Prime Video from January 6 2023.
Conversation