What Inspires Peter Capaldi: Vermeer, ‘Demon Copperhead,’ ‘The Wire’

Sometimes it pays to stick close to home.

The more Peter Capaldi heard as his wife, the producer Elaine Collins, and the writer Paul Rutman hashed out the story line for the new Apple TV+ thriller “Criminal Record,” the more he hinted that he was their man.

They cast him as Daniel Hegarty, a veteran detective on the police force, who has a murky past. As Rutman wrote the script, Capaldi’s voice and face were front and center.

“That’s the first time that has really happened to me,” said Capaldi, whose adversary, June Lenker — a younger detective contending with misogyny and racism within the force — is played by Cush Jumbo. “I know that that’s who they’re visualizing, so I was able to respond to the material from quite an early date.”

Capaldi also had to veil his emotions, a rather tall order for an actor who starred as the 12th Doctor in “Doctor Who.”

“I had to hide what was really going on, but at the same time, you still have to have something going on,” he said in a video interview from London, before chatting about the Scottish artist John Byrne and walking in the footsteps of the Romans. “You can’t just sit there.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

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Vermeer’s ‘A Maid Asleep’

Without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with. I was in New York doing a show and perhaps going through some melancholic times and carousing too much and enjoying Broadway, but not really that happy myself. So I would often go to the Met and sit and look at that picture if I was feeling anxious. There was a spirit of wisdom and calmness that reached out.