Joanna Vanderham on filming Irvine Welsh's Crime in Glasgow

Set in Edinburgh but filmed in both Glasgow and the capital – “we knew we wouldn’t fool real Scots, but I think we got away with it as far as the worldwide audience goes,” says Joanna, with a grin – it also stars Dougray Scott as a detective investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl, while battling his own demons.

“On location in Glasgow, we accidentally filmed a scene involving someone getting hit repeatedly with a baseball bat RIGHT outside a nursery,” she explains, with a groan. “And the nursery called the police…”

She adds, apologetically. “On another occasion, we were filming someone getting chucked down a set of stairs. All our fake police were there, but the REAL police stopped and rushed over, saying, ‘can we help, nothing’s been called in…’

Joanna laughs: “We were just causing chaos all over the place.”

Born in Perth, Joanna “fell in love” with acting when she was six years old.

“We did a production of Tam O’Shanter at my drama club, and I got to play the main witch who chases him and grabs the horse’s tale and yanks it off,” she says. “In my mind, it was a big, full-on Hollywood production, with a real river - but we were probably just running about a church hall.”

She was accepted into the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and in her second year, landed the part of Cathy Connor in the Sky TV drama The Runaway, an adaptation of the novel by Martina Cole.

A string of roles in high profile TV shows followed including costume drama The Paradise; Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge; and period drama Banished. She made her film debut in What Maisie Knew with Alexander Skarsgård and Julianne Moore. In 2019, she joined the main cast of the American action series Warrior as Penelope Blake. Recently, she has appeared in the BBC drama The Control Room.

“There was always that sense of – is it going to happen?” she explains. “I was just putting one foot in front of the other, because I loved it, and I’d been given this opportunity to go to drama school, but there’s always that question in your mind of - will I work?”

She recalls a particularly sobering moment during her time auditioning for drama school.

“The tutor said to us that only two percent of the people auditioning that year would get into a drama school, and only two percent of those would work as actors,” she says.

“Someone in front of me got up and walked out. But in my head, age 17, I was thinking – that’s going to be me. I’m going to be in that two percent.”

She adds, with a self-deprecating laugh: “Not that I could really do anything about it, a lot of it is down to luck.

“Thinking back, I don’t know why I was so confident, but I’m glad I was.”

She admits to being fascinated by crime dramas.

“Broadchurch was one of the first things I saw that made me think – ooh, I’d love to be in a show like that,” she says, enthusiastically.

“Irvine Welsh is iconic – we studied him in college, so I was really familiar with Trainspotting and Filth. Crime is in the same world as Filth, so it has a lot of the same characters as the James McAvoy film, and to get to bring that to life was amazing.”

She admits: “I felt like there was quite a lot of pressure not to mess up.”

The story is “super-dark”, she agrees.

“There are a lot of producers saying, oh, we don’t want to make anything too dark because of the state of the world at the moment, but actually, people love it.

“They have this weird obsession with watching really dark stuff, and I’m just the same.”

To “get under the skin” of the character, Joanna researched past cases of similar crimes.

“It started getting to me because it was so traumatic, then, slowly you start to get quite numb to it,” she says. “That was the most surprising part for me – almost like the brain can only handle so much before it starts telling you ‘this is fine, this is normal.’”

She pauses. “I had to keep checking myself, reminding myself that this is absolutely NOT normal, this is shocking and terrible…. But it really gave me an insight into what detectives experience, and how they cope.”

More layers to Drummond’s story will be revealed in series two, says Joanna.

“She’s quite dry – a ‘grumpy feminist’,” she adds, smiling. “On the surface, she seems like a tight-a**e, who doesn’t really get how people work, a career policewoman, but actually there is a lot more going on.

“What’s really exciting is that in series two we spend way more time delving into all the other stuff she’s dealing with.”

Male fragility is central to the themes of Crime.

“Irvine uses the police force as a springboard to explore the way men are raised, and the way they interact with each other, and what that does to society,” says Joanna.

“At times, Drummond is almost like the audience: things are happening to her. So the challenge for me was to make sure she was a real character, and not just a witness to what other people were going through.”

Having the chance to film often in Scotland recently has been a boost, says Joanna.

“I love it, because it means I can be near my mum,” she says, smiling. “Also, the crews in Scotland are some of the best in the world. There is a lot of investment, and people are busy non-stop working so it’s exciting.”

She says: “We were all commenting on the fact everyone talks to you, too - if you’re just waiting for a bus, someone will just chat.

“I live in London now and if you even said hello to someone on the street, they’d look at you in horror.

“As someone who is fascinated by people, I find that really interesting. You’re always learning something about human nature.”

She adds with a laugh: “Even if it is just - don’t talk to people at the bus stop…..”

Crime, STV Player, Thursday, May 11