Daniel Ings: ‘I don’t want to be part of the posh white dominance of everything’

I normally play the posh shagger to be honest,” says Daniel Ings with a laugh. “In this one, I guess I’m the opposite.” It’s true the actor is known for his feckless roles – as the shallow but loveable womaniser Luke Curran in Netflix’s Lovesick; as Prince Philip’s philandering, upper-class right-hand man Mike Parker in The Crown; and as the confident cad Jake Oakman in the Channel 4 lad comedy Pete versus Life. But in I Hate Suzie, the new TV series from Succession writer Lucy Prebble, he is Cob, the humiliated husband of Billie Piper’s famous actor Suzie.

“Whose c**k is it?” shouts Cob in the middle of one particularly explosive therapy session. Intimate photos of Suzie have been leaked online, showing her with another man. According to Suzie’s manager and best friend Naomi (Leila Farzad), it’s “a penis of colour” in the hacked photos – but while Cob and the whole world are trying to guess his identity, the shell-shocked couple are also dealing with the fallout.

Has Ings had any experience of phone hacking? “I wouldn’t really class myself as a celebrity, so nobody gives a s*** what’s on my phone,” he laughs. “I’m thankful I don’t have to worry about that. Honestly, I can say I don’t know anybody who has been through it – but I know it’s a very real fear, particularly for huge movie stars. For women, it seems to be more of a problem.”

The 34-year-old actor is talking to me on zoom from his bedroom in London’s Walthamstow, where he lives with his wife of 15 years and their three children – all under five. His hair is floppy and he’s sweating profusely; we are in the middle of a heatwave. “I tried to block the bedroom out, so it wasn’t so creepy that you can see my bed in the background,” says Ings, “but I’ve resolutely failed there.”

With his classic good looks and slightly self-deprecating humour, it’s easy to see why the actor is often cast as the lothario. “As a posh white guy working in an industry that is massively overpopulated with posh white guys, I’m hesitant to complain about my own experiences with these roles,” says Ings, who went to a private co-ed school in Wiltshire, before attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and the National Youth Theatre. “But I’ve worked in a lot of sitcoms playing really posh stereotypes and it’s sort of boring. I prefer comedies now we are not dealing in stock characters and are mixing things up a bit more.”

One of the things Ings finds difficult about many of his caddish roles is that “you are what you eat”. “Often if you play those roles, it can be seen that you are endorsing that character,” he says. “I’m aware I sound posh, but that’s not an identity that I choose to wear in my life. I think that is one of the reasons I’ve had fun playing those roles because I guess I’m trying to send them up.”

But is it possible to choose not to identify as posh? “I don’t mean to sound glib, like I’m trying to pretend I’m working class,” says Ings. “I don’t mean to say that. I’m aware of the privilege I’ve had in my life – but I don’t identify with it politically. I don’t want to be part of the posh white dominance of everything – it feels like a club.”

I Hate Suzie gives Ings the more emotionally rounded role he’s been looking for. It was the toughest thing he’s ever had to do. “There are more layers to this character and more to explore than I’ve often had in the past,” he says. “It was very intense, [with] emotionally charged sex scenes.” The dark, comically edgy Sky drama by British playwright and screenwriter Prebble was co-created with Piper, who gives an electrifying, giddy performance and has been close friends with Prebble since they met on the set of ITV’s Secret Diary of Call Girl in 2007. Ings had never met either of them before, but he slotted in perfectly. Discoveries they made during the audition process soon found their way into rehearsals. Ings says it was a “triumph” to even be in an audition with Piper – “one of our greatest actors”. Just being in the same room with her made him feel like he had to up his game.

The eight-episode series follows the various stages of grief – shock, denial, fear, shame, bargaining, guilt, anger, and acceptance – as Suzie, the kooky former child star turned actor, tries to process the catastrophic invasion of her privacy. Ings is handsome and a great dad, but there is more going on underneath; he is threatened by his wife’s success.

“I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but definitely as it goes on, I think you see that he’s in a battle for the emotional control of the house,” says Ings. “He’s not as genuine as it seems early on. There’s a tussle going on there – as he starts to lose his grip and he starts to lose that battle, he starts to lash out more.”

Ings might have never had his phone hacked, but he identified with what Cob and Suzie go through in a different way. “Sadly, I could relate to the pain of two people trying to keep together when events are pulling them apart,” he says. “My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. That was a pretty painful time.”

Ings, who was raised in Wiltshire and gets confused with the famous English footballer Danny Ings, served as Benedict Cumberbatch’s understudy in Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein at the National Theatre in 2011. On one occasion, having been called in to perform in front of an audience who had paid to see Cumberbatch, he got a standing ovation.

A few years later, he landed a supporting role in the BBC2 sitcom W1A, as the shameless head of generic comedy drama/head of output Matt Taverner, a man who never bothers to read the scripts he’s discussing.

But still, it seemed that he was lacking any meaningful lead roles. In 2018, he was cast as Andy, the younger husband of Alan Cumming’s Dylan, on CBS police procedural drama Instinct. The show was groundbreaking for featuring the first openly gay American network lead. “I was proud to be part of it,” he says, but even that experience turned out to lack depth. “There are limitations in network television of how deep people are willing to go with it. I remember there being a few times in a couple of episodes where Alan and I felt we would probably kiss at that moment. But there would be a bit of tepidity about whether or not that would be a good idea. I think as it went on, people were more relaxed and recognised that if you are going to do it, just do it and kiss.”

Having spent much of the year in lockdown – “we got the virus early on, and it was on and off for about three months” – Ings initially spent his days doing Joe Wicks workouts with his family, before swapping that for “beers and snacking”. He was supposed to be in a rom-com this year, but it got scrapped due to the pandemic. He will star in an animated film, though, based on Julia Donaldson’s children’s book Zog and the Flying Doctor. Ings lights up talking about it.

“I’m the voice of Sir Gadabout,” he says, virtually cheering. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done.” Maybe he’s excited because he’s got children and it’s a regular bedtime book. Or maybe he’s just feeling liberated not to be playing the posh shagger anymore.

Sky original ‘I Hate Suzie’ is coming to Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on 27 August