Arsher Ali

March 2015

THE mystery surrounding Doctor Who is legendary. Cast and crew are sworn to secrecy in order to ensure storylines for future series are never leaked.
“It’s the first thing you sign; even before you sign your contract,” says Arsher Ali, of the confidentiality agreement with the makers of Britain’s long-running sci-fi series.
The Nottingham-born actor has already filmed his two episodes for the next series which is likely to hit the small screen in late summer.
“I can say it’s a two-parter and my general view of Doctor Who but no more than that,” says the 30-year-old, whose acting breakthrough came five years ago in the comedy film Four Lions.
He has since appeared in Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, The Guilty, Complicit, The Missing and, most recently, Arthur & George opposite Martin Clunes.
About Doctor Who, he says: “I am a fan of the show although it was a shame that the first Doctor for me when I was growing up was Sylvester McCoy.
“You could see that the show was dying so I didn’t really appreciate it until they brought it back with Christopher Eccleston,” says Arsher, who lives in the city centre with Emmerdale actress Roxy Shahidi. “He is up there on my favourite actors’ list so I started watching it again.
“I don’t like the sillier elements of Doctor Who; when it’s really camp and everyone is running around. That’s why I like Peter Capaldi,” he says of the current Doctor.
“The show should be dark and mysterious, and shouldn’t pull any punches in terms of being scary. When we were kids it’s what we all wanted.”
He adds: “Peter Davison was an underrated Doctor; he had a kind of vulnerability. And Tom Baker was silly but he could be serious as well. He was just mad, like The Joker.”
Doctor Who is just the latest in a string of TV series and films that Arsher has been busy filming over recent months.

At the end of last year he was in hit BBC drama The Missing opposite James Nesbitt, then in March in Arthur & George, a three-part ITV drama adapted from Julian Barnes’ acclaimed novel about the true story of The Great Wyrley Outrages.
In 1906, George Edalji, a young Anglo-Indian solicitor, was imprisoned for mutilating animals and writing obscene letters. He served three years before being released, after which he set out to clear his name in order for him to return to practising law.
Helping him in his quest was Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“I can’t believe it’s real; it’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence,” says Arsher, who played Edalji opposite Clunes as Conan Doyle.
“You think you know him from Men Behaving Badly, that he’s a kind of oafish, comical guy but he’s not at all,” he says of his co-star.
“He’s super smart, super sophisticated, very witty and super posh. And he was so good in it.”
The three-parter pulled in up to six million viewers.
“The actual case, and the achieving of the pardon was quite an historic event. A lot of laws and regulations were changed from that first case. So it is an important landmark case in terms of law now.
“I’d read the book when I left drama school. Then the Nottingham Playhouse did a co-production of it and that landed at my door. But I thought ‘no’ because they don’t do catering,” he jokes.
The theatre’s artistic director, Giles Croft, is a neighbour and has often asked Arsher to appear in various productions there but he’s always been too busy.
“I’d love to work at the Playhouse; it’s where I saw my first theatre really.”
That was when he was at Bilborough College.
“It would be great to work with Giles. My missus has. She did The Importance of Being Earnest with Anjli Mohindra,” he adds, of the Nottingham actress who played his wife in The Missing.
After Bilborough College, Arsher went to East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, then graduated to roles with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
There will be two more films featuring Arsher out this year; one with This Is England actor Stephen Graham with the working title A Patch of Fog.

“It’s about stalkers and Stephen’s really good in it; very creepy. And he has a menacing persona which he plays on, just for a laugh. Some of the cast members who’d not met him before didn’t know how to take him.
“It was fun. I don’t do a lot of film because I get offered a lot of good TV stuff.”
He had complained that due to his looks, he’d been repeatedly offered roles as a terrorist.
“If you see anything that has a kind of terrorist plot at its heart, be sure it landed at my door,” he laughs.
“It’s getting better though.”
Arsher, who’ll be in another film due out this year called Remainder, based on the cult novel by Tom McCarthy, is writing a screenplay about heavy metal music in Iraq.
“I’m very excited about that, because it’s mad,” he says.
“It’s from an article I came across and I optioned it. We’re on the third draft of the script now.”
He adds: “I’ve always fancied writing. I read so many scripts, why wait around for that perfect thing to land at your door? Why not do it yourself?”
When he’s not working, Arsher’s free time is dominated by sport. His first choice of career was sports journalism and he’s sort of achieved that with regular columns in the Nottingham Post about his beloved Nottingham Forest.
“I’ll travel everywhere to watch them. And if I can’t make it I’ll ring home and get my mum or my missus to put the phone to the radio so I can listen to the commentary on Radio Nottingham.”
He played football for his school team but was “too lazy” to make a go of it.
Arsher, the son of a Raleigh welder, now retired, is also often to be seen at Trent Bridge during the cricket season.
“You can just walk around there and everyone is so friendly. You can get friendly with the players; they are always more wordly than footballers, so you have a proper conversation with them.”
He adds: “I started a cricket team when I was at Haywood School in Sherwood.

“We only had two other teams to play against and I think we always lost those games.”
He and Shahidi will soon be moving North to be closer to Yorkshire Television, where Emmerdale is filmed.
He says with a grin: “If it was up to me we’d be in West Bridgford, but with the City Ground and Trent Bridge just down the road, she knows I’d never be home.”

Arsher Ali - Arthur & George

February 2015

ITV expects its new drama, Arthur & George, to be a hit with viewers, as it sits in ‘the Broadchurch slot’.

The three-parter, which begins on Monday at 9pm, is based on a true story that became known as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

In 1906, George Edalji, a young Anglo-Indian solicitor, was imprisoned for mutilating animals and writing obscene letters.

He served three years before being released, after which he set out to clear his name in order for him to return to practising law.

Helping him in his quest was Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“I can’t believe it’s real; it’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence,” says Arsher Ali, who plays Edalji opposite Martin Clunes as Conan Doyle.

“The actual case, and the achieving of the pardon was quite an historic event,” continues the 30-year-old actor, last seen in BBC drama The Missing alongside James Nesbitt.

“A lot of laws and regulations were changed from that first case. So it is an important landmark case in terms of law now.”

Arthur & George is based on Julian Barnes’ acclaimed novel.

“I’d read that when I left drama school. Then the Nottingham Playhouse did a co-production of it and that landed at my door,” he says, meaning he was offered a part.

“But I thought ‘no’ because they don’t do catering,” he jokes.

The theatre’s artistic director, Giles Croft, is a neighbour and has often asked Ali if he’d like to appear in various productions there but he’s always been too busy.

“I’d love to work at the Playhouse; it’s where I saw my first theatre really.” That was when he was at Bilborough College.

“It would be great to work with Giles. My missus has,” he says of Emmerdale actress Roxy Shahidi, who he lives with in the city centre.

“She did The Importance of Being Earnest with Anjli Mohindra,” he adds, of the Nottingham actress who played his wife in The Missing.

After college, Ali went to East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, then graduated to roles with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Comedy film Four Lions, his breakthrough, was five years ago. Since then he’s been a fixture on the small screen, appearing in Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, The Guilty and Complicit.

There will be two more films featuring Ali out this year; one with This Is England actor Stephen Graham and another called Remainder, based on the cult novel by Tom McCarthy.

He’s also writing a screenplay about heavy metal music in Iraq.

Ali is sworn to secrecy about his role in the next series of Doctor Who, which he finished filming in January.

Arthur & George is his first work playing a real person.

Filmed at the end of last year in London, Oxford and the Black Country Museum in Birmingham, it also stars Art Malik (The Jewel in the Crown, True Lies) as Edalji’s father, Emma Fielding (Silk, DCI Banks, Kidnap and Ransom) as his mother and Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey) as Alfred ‘Woodie’ Wood, Sir Arthur’s trusted secretary, who helps him pursue the apparent miscarriage of justice.

“It is an amazing story which emerged from a letter George wrote campaigning to get people on side,” says Ali.

“Sir Arthur is immediately taken by the letter, and is convinced beyond a doubt that George is innocent.”

Of Clunes, Ali says: “You think you know him from Men Behaving Badly, that he’s a kind of oafish, comical guy but he’s not at all. He’s super smart, super sophisticated, very witty and super posh.”

Ali is an avid Forest fan, who writes regularly for the Post and gets to all the games that his schedule allows.

He’s also often to be seen at Trent Bridge during the cricket season.

“I started a cricket team when I was at Haywood School in Sherwood. Although we only had two other teams to play against and I think we always lost those games.”

He and Shahidi will soon be moving North to be closer to Yorkshire Television, where Emmerdale is filmed.

He says with a grin: “If it was up to met we’d be in West Bridgford but with the City Ground and Trent Bridge just down the road, she knows I’d never be home.”

Arthur & George begins on ITV1 on Monday at 9pm.

The Missing: Arsher Ali

 November 2014

IT was the quality of the writing that drew Arsher Ali to The Missing, BBC One’s prime time thriller about child abduction.

“I was sent the first few episodes and they were good, old-fashioned cliffhangers,” says the 30-year-old, who plays journalist Malik Suri.

“When I’d run out of episodes to read, I was genuinely annoyed,” adds Ali, who rose to prominence in the hit film comedy Four Lions.

“It was like only having the first hundred pages of a good book. The writing was superb. It’s obviously the first thing you look for, as an actor. You don’t have to expend energy trying to find the reason behind what you’re saying, it just is what they would say.”

The Missing follows Tony, played by James Nesbitt, as he searches for his missing child Oliver in Paris, and charts the impact the hunt has on his relationship with wife Emily, played by Mr Selfridge actress Frances O'Connor.

“Malik is an ambitious man,” says Ali.

“At the beginning of the story he is a fledgling journalist looking to make a name for himself, driven on by the memory of his father who was also a journalist. He manages to find a way into the case via some of his father’s past discoveries and as the case progresses he is faced with some ethical and moral questions whose outcomes shape him and haunt him in later life.”

Journalism was a trade he had considered before acting.

“Acting came along as a happy accident,” says Ali, whose TV credits include Silent Witness, Beaver Falls, mini-series The Guilty and Channel 4’s feature-length drama Complicit, for which he won an award at the 2013 Monte Carlo Television Festival.

“My interest was in sports journalism, a different field all together to Malik’s,” says the avid Forest fan who writes about the Reds for the Post.

After flunking media and English - “because I couldn’t be bothered” - he turned to acting with the encouragement of a drama teacher at Bilborough College.

Once he’d graduated from the East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex, where he won the Laurence Olivier Student Award, Ali worked on the stage, with stints at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, before Four Lions came along in 2010.

“I’ve never experienced such a calm, unified and productive atmosphere on a set before,” he says of The Missing, which was filmed in Belgium with Rebus star Ken Stott also in the cast.

“The crew were super-chilled but extremely diligent. In the UK, I think most people like to work themselves into a tizzy.”

He adds: “The most memorable thing for me was the strong smell of herbal cigarettes. It’s a distinctive smell on film sets or on stage for ‘character smoking’. I’m not sure how many packs I got through as Malik, but it felt like an unhealthy amount.”

The Missing returns to BBC One on Tuesday, the fifth episode of eight.

“It’s a very compelling story and it’s been afforded the time to tell it properly. I can’t believe the BBC gave us eight epiosdes to tell the story. And I’m surprised that people have stuck with it because they usually want everything wrapped up in two or three.

“British TV can have a tendency to sometimes rush through stories but if we’ve learnt anything from American or Scandinavian drama, it’s that if the story is compelling enough then people will go with you no matter what.”

Ali, who grew up in Sherwood, now lives in the city centre with Emmerdale actress Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi. The pair are yet to start a family but the horror of child abduction wasn’t hard for him to imagine.

“It’s every parent or family’s greatest fear, isn’t it? Losing a child. It’s earth shattering.”

He has just finished filming with Martin Clunes and Art Malik for Arthur & George, an ITV drama about Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“It’s a true story about a guy, who I play, wrongly imprisoned and Arthur Conan Doyle comes to his defence to get him a pardon. I can’t believe it’s real. It’s like someone getting done for terror charges and Russell Brand leaping to their defence.”

Today he’s off to Belfast to shoot a film alongside This Is England star Stephen Graham. But his biggest role is coming soon, one will that will see him once again on prime time television. Although he’s sworn to secrecy.

“I can’t say but I’m slowly getting there,” he says of a career that will keep him busy for the foreseeable future; one which threatens to interrupt his love of watching Forest play.

“I’m nuts,” he admits.

“I’ll travel everywhere to watch them. And if I can’t make it I’ll ring home and get my mum or my missus to put the phone to the radio so I can listen to the commentary on Radio Nottingham.”

The Missing continues on BBC One on Tuesday at 9pm.