“David Budd definitely needs a vacation”

Bodyguard star Richard Madden has revealed that a second series of the BBC1 drama could be set up to two years after the events of the season one finale.

Madden, who won a Golden Globe for his performance as troubled war veteran and police officer David Budd, said his character “needs a vacation” and that he and series creator Jed Mercurio think it would be “much more interesting” to “catch up with him 18 moths later, two years later”.

Speaking at an event in LA organised by Netflix, which streams the show internationally, Madden said: “We’ve been talking about it and I spoke to Jed about a month after the show had finished airing over in the UK and we sat and decided let’s give it at least a year while we work out how to do something better.

“A couple of things. You cannot jump into it. David Budd definitely needs a vacation after that. He’s not going to go back to work, is he?

“And also he’s the most famous man in London because of what happens at the end of episode six. He couldn’t just go straight back into work.

“And me and Jed both agree that there’s something much more interesting in, ‘Let’s catch up with him 18 months later, two years later after this has happened and say where is he now? What’s happened to him?’”

Bodyguard’s tense series one finale saw Budd walking through the streets of central London with a suicide bomb strapped to his chest, and was the most-watched episode of any drama since new records began in 2002.

Madden added that he is excited to return to playing Budd: “I’d love to get back into his head. If he didn’t have enough going on in his head already, after all this experience, throwing that on top of everything, where does that put this man in terms of his morals?”

In the meantime, Madden can be seen in the Elton John biopic Rocketman and the First World War film 1917, and he is in talks to star in Marvel movie The Eternals.

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