The killer has now officially been identified on Gone as the finale for the six-part series has finally arrived on BritBox. After the savage strangulation murder of Sarah Polly, detectives frantically searched for the culprit, and, as is common, the prime suspect was her husband, Michael (David Morrissey).
However, the series saved its biggest twist for last. Warning: Spoilers for the finale of Gone ahead!
After Michael tried to hang himself in the very spot where Sarah was murdered, he claimed responsibility for her fate and was thus arrested. However, DS Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles), despite his confession and the fact that she’d had him pegged for the crime since the very beginning, no longer believed in his guilt and sought out other potential leads.
This brought her to the home of Rory Bowman (Rupert Evans), Michael’s colleague at the school who took over the rugby team in his stead. After finding that the key at the crime scene worked on Rory’s front door, she gently confronted him for answers — recognizing his agitation, she used effusive compliments and empathy to coax the truth out of him. In the end, Rory confessed that he had feelings for Sarah and was incensed by her extramarital relationship with Stephen Sedgwick (Elliot Cowan), ultimately killing her in the heat of the ensuing argument.
Michael’s confession was still born of guilt — but only for being an absentee husband who was too tied up in his duties as headmaster to recognize his wife’s unhappiness or act on his suspicions of her affair. Thanks to Rory’s confession and Michael’s own moment of clarity about his marital neglect to daughter Alana (Emma Appleton), the two could finally connect on an emotional level over their feelings about the loss of Sarah, while justice was served for her murder.
For David Morrissey, the job of portraying a character whose strident behavior was indicative of his guilt was a challenge — but one he sought out from the very beginning of the series’ inception. TV Insider caught up with the actor to unpack the ending of Gone and what might be next for its characters.
Did you know when you were filming this the ending and whether Michael was guilty or did you keep that a mystery to yourself?
David Morrissey: No, I did know. Yeah, I mean George [Kay, creator] and I had worked together before. We’d done a show called The Long Shadow over here, which was all about a true story about a serial killer called the Yorkshire Ripper, and I played the main police officer in that investigation. And during that time, him and I talked about something that fascinated us both, which was basically someone who gave bad victim in terms of the public. So someone who, when something had happened to them tragically or whatever, they didn’t react the way that we as the public wanted them to — probably television is a bit at fault there, but immediately it’s unsatisfying to us as a public, and therefore it can cast suspicion on that person. So, we were starting from the point that Michael was not responsible, certainly not responsible for the crime, but the way he reacted to it made him suspicious, and I think what the show explores is what he is responsible for, in terms of the chain of events that lead up to that event.
What was it like for you to thread that needle in your performance? If you knew the whole time, playing someone who you know we don’t know if he’s guilty or not, and, like you said, his behaviors are odd in a lot of key moments.
I think what was good for me about it — I mean, obviously, in a television schedule, it’s never told in a linear way — so we started our show in the school, so we did all our stuff in the school, and all the boys that we use, the pupils that we use, are pupils from the school. So all the rugby stuff they knew how to do, and that was great. But then the second location was the police station. So things like the breakdown at the end with my daughter, that was for me happening halfway through the process, rather than the end.
So my job — I mean, but that isn’t unusual for me, and that’s the way it always is for me as an actor on television — is to piece it through. So the way I do it is, I will break down the script obviously in story order, but then I will have it in schedule order as well as knowing where I need to be, what happens before, even though I haven’t shot it, where I want to be. So I keep that whole thing in my head as we’re shooting it.
The thing about Polly, which I think is fascinating, is he is fighting something in himself, which is his own guilt and his own shame. And for the audience, what’s confusing is, you see this man who is feeling guilty. He is feeling shame. He is feeling responsibility. But what we’re confused about is, in the end, he’s not feeling that for the crime. He’s feeling it for something else, and that I think fascinated me: a man in this position, what’s he carrying, and also what’s his emotional ability to express it, or not being able to express it? It was more to the point, and that I find really fascinating about somebody’s inability to become vulnerable and admit that they’re in trouble, even with their wives and their people who are closest.
So when he’s speaking to Alana and Annie, and he doesn’t really deny that he’s done it, the detective has this theory that he’s willing to just take responsibility over his guilt. Does he give up the pursuit of justice in that moment?
Yes, I think what he gives up is not the pursuit of justice, but the pursuit of the culprit. What he does is he sees a self-sacrifice, and he doesn’t see that in terms of being a martyr. He sees it in terms of what he deserves. He deserves to be punished. He believes he deserves the worst life can give him. I mean, he tries to take his own life because he feels responsible for the pain and the upset that has been caused around him, and I would say that that was the big character point of this man is, he feels so responsible. He felt so responsible for years and years and years for the pupils that came through his door, and he took that responsibility really seriously, but what he forgot in that time was the responsibility for those in his family and the people he loved most, like his wife, and he gets distracted. And I would suggest that that is something that many people can relate to in their life, particularly in a vocational life. Teaching is, like acting is, like journalism is, sometimes there’s a vocational nature to it that we as individuals can get caught up in, so we can end up doing stupid hours that we’re not being paid for because we’re in this treadmill of like, “I chose this. This is the job. I’m so lucky to be here. This is my responsibility. Who’ll do it if I don’t do it?” And that ego feeding that he has is his downfall. I think, essentially, he’s a good man, but his ego is what gets him, and his duty gets him, and his sort of sense of responsibility gets him, and it blinds him to love, vulnerability, connection. And I think that’s what he comes to realize in this show, and that’s what he says to his daughter: He saw it happening, and he didn’t have the ability to stop it. And that’s where his culpability is.
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It’s so interesting that you say that because what just flashed through my mind was that scene with Dylan when he comes and he needs a history lesson, and all of a sudden Michael snaps back into that mode. Do you think he kind of readopted that for a brief moment, and then was it the fact that he let Dylan down that ultimately pushed him to the edge?
That’s sort of one of the final dominoes that falls. I think there’s many things that happen. One, he gets reignited in the thing he’s good at, which is teaching. One of the things that happens to teachers here is, the higher you go up the ladder of responsibility, and you become a deputy headmaster and a headmaster, the less teaching you do. You become a CEO rather than a teacher, and you came into the profession to teach, and you ended up doing time spreadsheets and sort of shaking hands and being the poster boy for the school. You do less teaching, so suddenly, in Dylan coming to him, he awakens this thing of teaching in him, which is what he naturally is. He’s a great teacher. But also, what happens is Dylan, that doesn’t work because other people are running the school now, and they’re running it in a way that he would never run it. So not only has he let this boy down, but the thing that means so much to him, which has ruined his life, which is the school, is now being run by people who don’t recognize that type of teaching, and so he’s lost on all fronts. And of course, his wife has been murdered, and he feels responsible.
With the culprit, what do you think the motive was? Obviously, you had a hand in creating this and developing it. What do you think the true motive was? We get this distorted version of it in the conversation with Annie, but it’s obviously she’s manipulating him. What do you think the real motive was there?
I think at the heart of the show with Annie, and this is what I think is great about what George has done, is she has to encounter different types of male misogyny and hatred. She’s dealing with it from Polly, which is he’s patronizing. He’s sort of presumptuous with her. He really undermines her. He makes terrible assumptions about her. She’s dealing with it with her boss, who’s a man who is constantly putting her down. He’s giving her menial tasks… And she’s dealing with it in her relationship with a man who’s coercive and controlling, and also slippery because sometimes he’s love bombing her, and then he’s angry with her.
So, she’s dealing with that, and then she gets to this moment with this man, this culprit, who is full of hatred towards women, and has this fantasy around this woman that he’s created in his own head, and becomes this murderous thing at the end of it. So, George is putting a woman at the center of this story, surrounded by four different men, who all, in some way, are putting her down or a danger to her. And in a way, Polly is the one relationship she has where he has catharsis, or he has realization through their relationship. He’s the one man in this story with her who grows and recognizes and has enlightenment via his involvement with her, and that’s what happened.
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Going back to episode four, did Michael want Alana to burn those notes, and if so, why?
I think he does a very interesting thing, which is it’s a shaming thing that he actually makes it her responsibility, but he also lets her know that he would be very disappointed in her if that wasn’t the case. So, there’s a real coercive, subtly bullying thing that goes on there, and it’s how he uses his power against them, and that’s patriarchal. But it’s also to do with the fact that she’s in a vulnerable position, having lost her mother. Does she want to lose her father as well? Does she want to go down this journey? And we see that a lot in life. A lot of people who suffer abuse will not go to the authorities or will not take it any further because they’re frightened of where that will go to: “If it stops here, it stops here. I can deal with it.” So, he’s very clever in that thing, whether he wanted to or not. I think he’s glad that she does it, but he’s very clever in giving her the responsibility.
Yeah, and it’s not a red herring because it speaks to his personality, but it definitely leads us to believe he’s got something going on.
I mean, he has got something going on, though. I think what’s going on is not necessarily that he’s trying to cover his tracks for a murder, which is obviously what the audience might be thinking. But he’s trying to get away from the evidence that he was wrong in his relationship, that he was not the ideal husband. He’s trying to get away from that himself. He doesn’t want to be a mirror put up to himself in that time. He keeps saying, “Read it, read it. I want to hear. I want to hear it,” and he hears it, and it’s painful. But he just wants the world to know that, and that’s very different. So, it is a step in his catharsis. But it’s a difficult one to take.
Earlier, you mentioned the jail scene when he finally opens up to Alana, exorcising those emotions about his marital neglect. I know that was halfway through filming, but it seemed so cathartic to do. I wondered about that.
Yeah, so, I mean, again, that’s the job. I’ve been in that position as an actor many, many times. I’ve sometimes done my final scene on my first day. There’s times when it’s not ideal, but I have done it. And you’re relying then on your fellow actor, but also your director to mold that in terms of where we need to get to. Sometimes it can be really helpful in the sense that you know where you’ve got to. So, during the piece, that’s the escalator you’re on to that emotion. So, it can be helpful. The weird thing is, as the actor, you have the least power at that moment. You can’t say, “Can we do this at the end?” There’s all those decisions are being made financially by someone else. So, you have to suck it up and then get there in a way. The writing helps because you’ve got the writing. You know what’s going on around that piece. So, yeah, that’s where you can judge it.
After that scene where he’s opened up to Alana, and we find out who the killer is, it seems like the two finally have some genuine kind of connection. What do you imagine is next for those two?
I think they’re in a good place. I think they can grieve — the one thing that neither of them have been able to do. And I think this is true of many people who lose someone in a tragic, criminal way, is that the grief process is arrested, that they’re not allowed to grieve because they’ve got to deal with other stuff. People have that sometimes when parents die and leave a big estate… You don’t have the chance to grieve because you’re in a business mode, and they don’t have a chance to grieve because they’re in a massive investigation. So, I think what will happen is that they will have a period where they can grieve together when we see the start of that, where they’re listening to the music. Grief is a long process. It’s not, but it’s hard to do on your own. And these are two people that we leave being able to do it together. I think they will be able to support each other and find each other again as different people who can grieve their mother and their wife. I think we leave them in a very difficult, upsetting place, but it’s a place that can grow from.
Yeah, it’s an oddly happy ending.
It’s a positive ending… It’s an ending that acknowledges grief, and that’s a place where they can grow from.
Gone, Streaming Now, BritBox
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