Steve Coogan ‘very pleased’ when Jimmy Savile drama came to an end

Steve Coogan has admitted he was ‘very pleased’ when his time playing Jimmy Savile in BBC drama The Reckoning came to an end.

The four-part series stars Alan Partridge star Coogan as it tells the story of how after Savile’s death in 2011, aged 84, it emerged that he had been a prolific predator and sex offender.

Even before it hit our screens, The Reckoning faced backlash with many people condemning rehashing the story and potentially re-traumatising Savile’s victims.

Coogan, 58, has now admitted he was pleased when it came to an end.

Appearing on Saturday’s BBC Breakfast with Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt, he explained: ‘It was a gamble, because The Reckoning was about a very troubled period for the media, the BBC and the press media as well who failed to bring him to account.

‘We knew it was a risky thing to do but we did it with a lot of the survivors, a lot of research, the process was very, very careful.’

Steve Coogan was pleased to stop dressing up as Jimmy Savile (Picture: BBC/ITV Studios/Matt Squire)

After Savile’s death aged 84 it emerged that he had been a prolific predator and sex offender (Picture: Michael Putland/Getty Images)

He went on: ‘From a personal point of view, as an actor, I knew it was a bit of a gamble and I knew there would be some consternation about me because of my background in comedy that it might be inappropriate.

‘So I was aware of that but I thought, with a fair wind, I could do justice to the whole project.’

Coogan continued to say that he’s received letters from victims who have told him how important the series was, after being worried about the project.

When asked how playing a ‘sinister’ character like Savile effected him, Coogan said: ‘I was very pleased the last day of filming, because I thought, I’ll never have to dress as him again.’

Coogan went on to reveal it wasn’t just about dressing up in Savile’s clothes, but he also had to shave his head for months.

‘The makeup took two or three hours when I was playing him as an old man, so they said if you shave your head it will save you an hour in the chair, so I thought one hour less being that person is welcome,’ he said.

‘It was very difficult sometimes,’ Coogan continued, recalling how he wanted to be back to ‘Steve Coogan again as quickly as possible once they said cut’.

‘Because, it’s a strange atmosphere. So I would have very ordinary conversations with these young women [on set] about what they were studying at college and I’d sort of jump in and jump out of it.

The series has been met with backlash and Coogan admitted he knew it was a ‘gamble’ (Picture: BBC/ITV Studios/Matt Squire)

‘I’m not a method actor, I didn’t have to wander around as him at lunchtime.’

Following the backlash to the series, Coogan explained in a recent Q&A that the series had been two years in the making due to ‘diligent forensic application about trying to make sure all the right decisions are made’.

When it came to portraying Savile’s offences, he said there was ‘no right or wrong answer’, but that he felt a responsibility to share his ‘opinion about what the right thing to do is’.

‘There’s a tension between showing too much of Savile’s offences, and it being grotesque, or sugar-coating them, which is also wrong [as we won’t] see the horror of what he did,’ he said, as reported by The Independent.

He added they had to ‘strike that balance’ of not ‘upsetting survivors’ and not wanting to ‘anesthetise the full effect’.

The Reckoning is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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‘It was very difficult sometimes’