Brenda Blethyn says she's 'embarrassed' to watch her work

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Mark Edwards (played by Riley Jones) was introduced as a uniformed police officer in series one of Vera. Since then, he has become an integral part of DCI Stanshope’s (Brenda Blethyn) team and is often seen doing the background work for the detective. After spending 12 years in the role, Riley opened up about his time on the show.

When asked whether he thinks about his future as Mark, Riley began: “I tend not to really because all of that is out of your hands as an actor.

“You just do what you can and then when the scripts come in, you read them, you can’t really have much influence over that.”

“So it’s nice,” the actor continued before going on to praise the “brilliant” writers on Vera.

He said: “There are some brilliant writers… like Sally is brilliant.

“I mean, obviously all of the writers are brilliant, but what I think Sally does really well, is that she does think about the ensemble and some of those nicer moments.

“What’s nice about Sally’s events and things, is it’s really interesting to get to talk to the writers because we don’t get to do that very often.”

Riley admitted that while the scripts “aren’t in your control”, he’s “happy to let them roll in.”

“I am happy to be working and doing the job,” he added.

Riley also discussed Brenda’s future on the show following his co-star’s comments about hanging up her hat and mack.

“Well, I think it’s like any job, especially a job where it’s so intense,” the Mark Edwards star explained.

“Especially for Brenda obviously, she’s in pretty much every scene and she has so much dialogue, it’s a lot of work and it’s very intense for Brenda.

“So, like any job when you do a big stint where you finish it and you just think, ‘I just need a break’.

“The thing about Brenda and why she is still working and why she’s doing the quality of work that she is doing is because she has that desire to be doing good work.

“We all need that little bit of downtime to recharge the batteries and then hopefully, it goes again and we do another one.”

The final episode of series 12 aired last weekend, and while series 13 hasn’t been confirmed, the actor is hopeful.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he simply admitted when quizzed about series 13.

“I obviously hope there is and I’ll be waiting to see if we get that call.

“And when we do it’s all go, but I am in the know as much as you.”

Vera returned in January with the final two episodes of series 11 which was quickly followed by the four instalments of series 12.

Vera is available to watch on ITVX and BritBox.

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