Anson Boon on That Steamy ‘MobLand’ Scene and What’s Next (Exclusive)

Things got steamy on the latest episode of MobLand, but it was way twistier than anyone could’ve predicted. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for MobLand Season 2 Episode 8, “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” 

Friday’s (November 6) new episode begins with Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) confronting Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) over whose idea it was to make him public enemy number one for Medusa’s son, Mad Dog (Colin Morgan). Conrad doesn’t typically take kindly to being accosted by anyone, but his reaction is a bit more tender than anyone, even Eddie, might’ve expected. Not only does he call him his son for the first time, but he also offers some slight encouragement about his, erm, untraditional origin story, saying, “It’s not how you get here, it’s what you do next.”

Elsewhere, Michael, the son of Frankie Cooper (Johnny Flynn), is found dead in his cell, and his father comes to identify the body. His calmness in the moment is eerie, to say the least. And Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) puts Paul (Emmett J. Scanlan) on the unfortunate duty of dissecting the dead body of our dearly departed Donnie, while Harry and Kevin (Paddy Considine) have lunch and talk about how he got to Michael inside.

During the conversation, Kevin reveals his true disdain for Eddie, whom he once raised as his own son, and it’s not the last time he’ll share that thought this episode, either.

Then comes the weirdest scene in a series full of them: Eddie confronts Maeve (Helen Mirren), once considered his grandmother, in the steam room about her setting him up with Mad Dog, and the conversation devolves into a showdown over whether Maeve has romantic feelings for Eddie or not. Not only does she deny as much, but she forces him to literally get on his knees and apologize to her on camera, lest she tell Conrad he came onto her (which he didn’t). Maeve has done some very wicked things in the past, but this might just take the cake.

Conrad has his own demons to deal with — almost literally speaking — as he’s being haunted by visions of his murder victims’ past, and after he confides as much to Kevin, who, in turn, shares with his father just how much he hates his brother from another mother. Conrad later proceeds to point a gun at his head in a moment of confusion, but somehow, Conrad regains the mental clarity not to shoot and instead sends him away.

Jan (Joanne Froggatt) and Harry have a heart-to-heart about what she’s done, and he kindly offers to help her and Gina (Teddie Allen) escape to a new life without him; whether she takes him up on that offer remains to be seen, but she might want to because the episode ends with Mad Dog laying eyes on the video footage of the inevitable objects of his vengeance: Eddie and Gina.

To break down all of the major moments with Eddie in this episode, TV Insider caught up with Anson Boon.

This season, Eddie knows the truth of his parentage, and it’s been fun to see his relationship with Kevin fall completely apart this season. Why do you think he’s so quick to abandon him? And then, in this episode, we get to hear what Kevin thinks of him, too. What do you think of that?

Anson Boon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think that revelation at the end of Season 1, it’s definitely what inspired my performance to show Eddie is more of a lost soul in Season 2, and I think it informs all of the decisions he’s making.

I think throughout Season 2, he’s not been able to look any of his previous male role models in the eye. There’s a scene in Episode 4, I think, where Conrad turns up at the flat that Gina and Eddie are living in, and it’s like Eddie’s totally frozen. You don’t normally see Eddie Harrigan lost for words, but he doesn’t know what to say. And then again, when he goes again in Episode 4 to Kevin and Bella’s house to get his passport, and he addresses Kevin, but he can’t even look him in the eye. I think that this family, they’re probably not very good at talking about their feelings. The Harrigans are used to just resorting to violence rather than talking things out, so I think that it’s really tough for him to address the elephant in the room. And then finally, in Episode 8, you see him do that with Conrad, and he asks him to explain the decision behind lying to him his whole life.

And I think when Kevin talks about Eddie, the thing that really interests me is, so I don’t know if this is obvious to the viewer, but as someone that walks around in that set a lot, I can tell you that the room that Conrad and Kevin have that conversation in is directly below Eddie’s bedroom, and it’s a big open hallway in that Cotswolds house. So halfway through Kevin describing Eddie to Conrad, all those awful things he says about him, you see Eddie come out of his bedroom, and he walks around the landing, and he looks at Gina, and Gina rejects him, and she shoves the door in his face.

You saw Gina and Eddie get pretty close throughout this season. He really relied on her, and he trusted her where he perhaps couldn’t trust Maeve. And it was big for Eddie to let his guard down like that, so for her to reject him like that, that really hurts him. And then we don’t quite know, but did Eddie hear everything? The door is open to the living room, so did Eddie hear everything Kevin said about him? Because you see the aftermath where he goes down to the lake, and he’s in tears. We’ve never seen Eddie like this, and he’s just left with his thoughts, and I think that in that moment, you’ve seen him at his very lowest point. So I’m interested for you guys to see where he goes next.

One of the things you talked about there is the conversation with Conrad. Two points stuck out to me: One was when he says, “You’ve never called me ‘son’ before,” and then the next is when Conrad tells him, “It’s not about how you get here; it’s what you do next.” I feel like that was an oddly poignant and emotional exchange between the two. So I wonder if there wasn’t some positivity coming out in that exchange.

I think so. I mean, OK, I have this thing as an actor that I really root for my characters, right? And it can be sometimes tough with a character like Eddie Harrigan because he does so many bad things, and sometimes he presents as such a bad person. But I’m really rooting for this young man to find his way, and you see these scenes with Maeve where she’s just chipping away at him, and it’s like bullying. She sent him to Ireland as a test, and he doesn’t know anything about it until he’s there. And, well, he fails the test, and he nearly dies at the hands of this gangster, Medusa, only to find out afterwards that the woman that he trusts most, Maeve … she sent him there because he’s the hardest gangster in all of Ireland. What does that say about Eddie’s relationship with her and how much he can really trust her?

So he really doesn’t know where to turn. And I felt quite proud of Eddie for plucking up the courage to speak to Conrad so candidly in the living room in that scene early on in Episode 8. It is a moment of being gentle and humility. And I agree that that last line, “It’s not about where you come from; it’s about what you do next,” that is really poignant. And I think that you are about to see in the last two episodes where Eddie thinks he needs to go next as a result of all the secret abuse going on, and I’m excited to see it.

Going deeper into Maeve, I love the scene in the steam room. It seems like such a culmination of their odd dynamic. Do you think he was sincere in thinking they were gonna have some kind of sexual connection, or was he just that naive and easily manipulated by her?

Oh well, let’s look at the facts. So, first of all, that was my second time being very proud of Eddie for standing up to this woman who is abusing him in secret. What I love about that is it’s something that only the audience and Eddie know about. None of the other characters in the show know that this is going on. And she started doing it with Gina now as well. Whenever everyone’s left the Cotswolds house, and she’s left there alone with these two very impressionable, very vulnerable young people, she lets herself into their room, and she twists the knife and stirs the pot. So I was proud of Eddie for standing up to her in that sauna.

But let’s look at the facts. Season 1, Episode 2, I want to say the first time we see these two cags together, she grabs his head and rests it on her chest and caresses him like a baby, and he’s a grown young man, right? And then later on in the series, you see her putting her hand on his leg underneath the table and rubbing his thigh. And then throughout Season 2, we’ve seen the waterbed scene, and we have seen when she puts him up against the wall in Episode 7 and tells him to stick out his tongue, and she gets this close to his face. And then, now, she’s in a steam room with a sauna with him, which is kind of a vulnerable situation, and she says, “All of this weeping and wailing; it sure isn’t turning this girl on.”

So I think what we can get from that is that she is slightly more than inferring that perhaps they are supposed to be more than just friends or twisted family. I think this is on her. Maybe I’m biased towards my character, but I’m proud of him that he had the courage to say, “Look, whatever you think this is, it isn’t that.” But then, in true Maeve form, she’s one step ahead, and like that [snaps], she twists it around, and Eddie’s left more vulnerable than ever. She videoed him doing an apology, making it look like it was all his fault. And no one has seen, apart from Eddie and the audience, no one knows all of those things that I just listed that she’s done to him across two seasons of TV.

I love that you’re like an encyclopedia of scenes. That’s amazing.

Well, I hope I got all those things right. I feel like I missed one thing. It’s quite twisted what she did to him, but I’m sure the audience will remember.

Oh, it’s definitely been building. About that last little scene where we see Mad Dog looking at the footage of Eddie and Gina, you’ve teased a lot about what’s ahead. What can you tease about the coming inevitable conflict with him?

Well, I wouldn’t want to ruin anything for the audience, but what I can say is, I think when you look at Mad Dog’s face, and you see how angry he is and how hell-bent on vengeance he is, surely things are going to come to a head in true MobLand style. So I’m really excited for audiences to see what happens.

MobLand, Fridays, Paramount+