Luke Roberts learns from crisis negotiation master for new TV series ‘Ransom’

Even actors who play negotiators sometimes feel like they’re the ones being held hostage.

Just ask Luke Roberts, star of the Canada-France co-production “Ransom,” which debuts on Global on Sunday.

On the day of a recent shoot, Roberts was stuck for hours in a stuffy, makeshift studio — formerly a slaughter house — in Toronto’s west-end. The scene called for Roberts, who plays crisis and hostage negotiator Eric Beaumont, to save the lives of dozens of hostages trapped in a locked room.

“Yeah, we spent a lot of hours on that abattoir floor, not particularly a place where you want to find yourself,” says Roberts, who played Ser Arthur Dayne on the sixth season of “Game of Thrones.”

The series was created by David Vainola (“Combat Hospital”) and another Canadian, Jennifer Kawaja (“New Waterford Girl”), is also an executive producer.

Eight of the 13 episodes were shot in Toronto. At one point, the crew even shut down a busy intersection on King Street West to shoot an explosive scene at a real downtown bank.

As Canada and France enjoy co-production treaties, the shoot later shifted to the south of France for scenes where Beaumont is called upon to work his negotiating magic in Europe.

“I think all the borders have gone down in television because there’s such a huge demand for television,” says executive producer Frank Spotnitz — revered in genre circles as a longtime writer-producer-showrunner on “The X-Files” — who also maintains offices in France and England.

“We’re at the point in Europe where we need more people to come into the business, I actually think there’s more demand than we can meet.”

Roberts’s character is loosely based on real-life professional crisis negotiator Laurent Combalbert. Formerly part of the French police tactical unit RAID, Combalbert — who is a consultant on the series — is still involved in up to 50 kidnapping cases a year.

Spotnitz says what Combalbert goes through in crisis situations is incredible.

“His understanding of human behaviour is so profound,” says Roberts. “I do feel a little naked in front of him. I feel he’s reading me a lot better than I want to be read.”

While having dinner together in France, Roberts noticed Combalbert did not touch a drop of wine. Staying clear-headed helps when you have to excuse yourself during a meal, as Combalbert did, to take a call from Mexico to help sort out a kidnapping.

“I mined him for all he was worth,” says Roberts. “He was really forthcoming, an interesting guy. I tried to get as much insider intel as possible.”

The UK native has played real-life characters before. Some, however, “have been dead for a good few centuries so I wasn’t able to get in touch with them.”

Those characters include Sir Henry Norris, a courtier and close friend of King Henry VIII on the BBC miniseries “Wolf Hall”, as well as Woodes Rogers, an 18th century English sea captain and Bahamian governor on the cable drama “Black Sails.”

Roberts’s very first professional job, fresh out of acting school, was on the 2001 war drama “Band of Brothers,” with Tom Hanks among the executive producers.

“My first day of filming, Tom and his team very kindly put me in touch with the real soldier I was playing,” he recalls, noting it was Herbert J. Suerth, who lost both legs fighting in the Second World War.

Roberts says he really enjoyed the past few years working on period pieces but he’s happy now to take on a contemporary role.

“Definitely, it’s fun to get out of britches and those long, long, long waistcoats and high boots and to be in a sharp suit with a cellphone in your hand, solving the world’s problems.”

After “Ransom”‘s Sunday debut the show moves into a Wednesday/Saturday schedule.

— Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.