Breaking Bad star Laura Fraser on finding her niche in gritty crime drama

Fraser, 41, also has a starring role in BBC drama The Missing, which returns for a much-anticipated second series later this year and she is currently on location filming ITV murder mystery, Loch Ness, where the monster lurking in the shadows isn’t that typically found on souvenir shortbread tins.

Two is coincidence, three is a trend. By this stage, Fraser must be getting confused about what her day job is: actor or police detective?

“I’m on a roll with detectives,” she says, laughing. “It is really hard because they are all melding into one, these dark, psychological dramas. I’m attracted to the detective role. I like to have something going on at the same time as the emotional turmoil. It makes it a wee bit more interesting.”

When we last saw her, Fraser was dabbling on the wrong side of the law in cult television series Breaking Bad as the calculating and ruthless Lydia Rodarte-Quayle who faced a grisly end after becoming in embroiled in Walter White’s infamous meth empire.

She may be walking the other side of the thin blue line, but One of Us – written by brothers Jack and Harry Williams, who also penned The Missing – has its share of blurred boundaries.

The storyline centres on a remote Scottish village where the brutal double murder of newly-wed childhood sweethearts shatters a seemingly idyllic existence.

Yet, when the killer’s car comes off the road in a fierce storm and the families of the victims find him, badly injured, they face a murky dilemma. Fraser’s role as police detective Juliet provides plenty of meaty material.

“She is investigating this double murder and struggling to reconcile her own illegal actions with her long-standing moral code. She has had to choose whether to take illicit steps that she would never have considered in a million years because she feels desperate.

“Towards the end, she is more and more remote, blinkered and reckless as she tries to salvage the mess she has created. That is all going on in her little solitary journey while investigating these murders. The two families are battling for justice on this epic scale while she is in her own little private hell trying to keep it contained and carry on the investigation.”

One of Us, Fraser promises, is packed with twists and turns that will keep viewers guessing to the end. “Even when I was reading the script I would be convinced ‘That’s who did it’, but it would change with each episode,” she says. “I love it when you know the killer is in plain sight.

“I’m totally s*** at guessing, though. It takes me until five minutes before it is revealed and then I’m like, ‘Oh! I know! I know!’ It is definitely one of those.”

As One of Us airs Fraser has already made the quantum leap from Juliet to Annie, her latest TV detective alter-ego in Loch Ness which is currently being shot across Scotland.

“We are filming in Loch Ness and Glencoe, but at the moment we’re in Glasgow doing some interiors,” she says. “We are going to be using a studio near Kilmarnock for a couple of weeks as well.”

When we speak she is giddy with delight. After a stint of gruelling night shoots, Fraser has a rare morning off to spend with her Dublin-born husband Karl, 43, and daughter Lila, 10, and is excitedly mulling over whether to have Thai or Indian food for lunch near their Glasgow home.

“I was supposed to be on set earlier but then they changed my call time,” she says. “I’m so happy. It’s something I’ve not been able to do for months.” The family returned to Glasgow in 2015 after four years in the US.

“It has been lovely,” says Fraser. “When we moved back last summer I thought: ‘Oh, it’ll be hard with work. I wonder how that will go?’ We knew it was the right thing and wanted to be home. It has been the best of both worlds because I’ve got the work as well.”

It is an altogether different pace of life from her time in New York. “I wasn’t living full time in LA – I did a TV show there for a couple of months,” she says. “The first year we were in Brooklyn and then moved upstate to the woods about three hours north of Manhattan.

“It was quite remote where we were and there was herds of deer that would come through our garden as well as the occasional black bear, wild turkeys and chipmunks. It was mad. And beautiful.

“It was hard, though, because we missed our families so much. The winters were long with lots of deep snow and we felt a bit cut off. I was back and forth to different states across America for work. Sometimes we would think: ‘What are we doing here?’ because it was so remote.

“When we moved back to Glasgow it was such a lovely feeling and just felt right,” she continues. “We are able to see friends and family. Everything is so easy – I love Glasgow. I enjoyed living here before we went to America, but sometimes you feel a bit unsettled and want to try things. I feel settled now. I think I will be here until I die.”

When I interviewed Fraser a few years ago ahead of BBC Three drama series Lip Service airing, she joked about being fearful her daughter would pick up a Lulu-style mid-Atlantic accent. How did that pan out? She giggles at the memory.

“It was so funny,” says Fraser. “When we arrived in America, Lila thought that as soon as we stepped off the plane she would be ‘struck American’ and then when that didn’t happen she was like: ‘Seriously, why am I not American?’

“We thought that it would seep in and gradually she would get an American accent but that never happened. Not even one word. She became like one of those expats where her accent was more exaggerated Scottish. It was hysterical.”

Two decades have passed since Fraser burst into public consciousness in Gillies MacKinnon’s Glasgow gangster flick Small Faces, co-starring Iain Robertson, Joe McFadden and Kevin McKidd.

There’s an intake of breath followed by a hearty laugh when asked whether she can believe it’s been that long since the acclaimed film was released.

“No – it feels longer actually,” she says, chuckling. “I feel so far away from it now. When I look at old photos from the time I think: ‘Who is that?’ I can’t believe it was the same body of molecular cells. It feels like maybe 30 years rather than 20.”

Her other early roles included alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask, with the late Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale and then Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky before landing parts in the Richard Jobson-directed 16 Years Of Alcohol and Graeme Obree biopic The Flying Scotsman.

Fraser went on to star in BBC dramas including Casanova, Single Father and Lip Service. In more recent years, there was a short-lived turn in hit TV series Homeland (more of that in a moment) before landing the gig of a lifetime in cult favourite Breaking Bad.

She was 19 when Small Faces was shot. What advice would Fraser go back and give her younger self? “I don’t think there would be any point in giving me advice at that age because I wouldn’t have listened,” she asserts. “I was very remote and cut-off and on a destructive path.

“There is no point because I wouldn’t have listened. It is a wee shame because you want to help your younger imaginary self, but I would be wasting my breath.”

It is a candid nod to a time in Fraser’s life when she was saddled with a wild-child tag, playing her life out in the public eye and talking openly about her love of partying, alcohol and drugs.

Although it perhaps would have been nice to know how well things would turn out when it came to the more tumultuous moments in her career. Five years ago Fraser faced the disappointment of being unceremoniously dropped from Homeland after the pilot episode.

Deadpool star Morena Baccarin replaced her as the wife of Sergeant Nicholas Brody opposite Damian Lewis in the hit US political thriller. At the time Fraser said she was “dying of humiliation”. How does it feel to reflect on that period now?

“It makes me laugh when I think about it because I couldn’t have got Breaking Bad if I had been in Homeland,” she says. “The part in Breaking Bad was just such a great role. If I had known that when I was so embarrassed and humiliated for being kicked off a show for internal political reasons.

“You do feel like a piece of crap. Then to have such jubilant happiness at getting such a good role in Breaking Bad. I feel a lot stronger because I had always worried thinking: ‘Imagine if I got fired …’ and it’s really not that bad. It makes you stronger and I feel more grateful than I would have done.”

Fraser comes across as thoroughly content with her lot in life. “I appreciate things,” she says. “It’s knowing that when you are on a roll it doesn’t mean anything. It comes in waves and I try to enjoy it while it lasts. But, at the same, you can fall into a trap. When you are on a roll and offered lots of jobs, you feel like you have to take everything so your life balance goes to s***.

“I promised my daughter that after this one not to take any more until next year because I’ve just not being seeing enough of her and my husband. We’ve been like ships in the night.” Once filming wraps on Loch Ness at the end of next month, Fraser plans to take a well-earned hiatus.

“I have October, November and December off,” she says. “I’m going to take my kid to school and to her many after-school activities. This is the last year I will be able to walk her to school. She’s told me: ‘You can’t walk me in primary seven – that’s way too embarrassing.’ So I have to make the most of it.”

Other projects in the pipeline include the soon-to-be-released film I Am Not a Serial Killer which is set in a small town in midwest America. There may be dead bodies, but on this occasion Fraser plays a funeral director rather a police detective.

“It was really interesting,” she enthuses. “We shot it in Minnesota in a working funeral home with Christopher Lloyd who played Doc in Back to the Future. I was so starstruck to work with him. I love Doc – I think everyone loves Doc.

“We had scenes where he would be on the slab and I would be pretending to cut his arteries. It was so surreal. He is such a quiet man, which was unexpected, and really lovely. He liked to ride his bike everywhere.”

Her husband Karl, an actor and bar owner, has a role in the film playing a doctor. Most recently, he’s been putting the finishing touches to his debut novel, due to be published by Penguin early next year. “I would say it’s a love story – hopefully he won’t mind me calling it that,” muses Fraser.

When it comes to her own tastes, darker roles have the biggest lure. “I certainly like to watch that kind of stuff,” she says. “I probably watch too much and give myself nightmares from all these violent images I’m watching all the time. It gets a bit much when you are filming it in the day and then watching other people’s dark crime dramas at night. That can get a bit overwhelming.

“It is interesting to look at that ugly part of yourself and think: ‘What am I capable of?’ At the same time, it is probably not good for me to be doing it as much. I think I need to take a break from watching things such as The Bridge and The Killing. I watch all those and can’t get enough of them.”

Fraser confesses to enjoying a good old box-set binge, although admits to struggling to fit it in many marathon viewing sessions around her work commitments. “Even with Game of Thrones, which I have been dying to watch, I’ve had to watch it in pieces with an episode here and an episode there,” she sighs.

Any spare time is typically spent doing yoga or striding the great outdoors. “When we lived upstate we were really into archery for a while and playing that in our back garden,” she says. “It was constant bows and arrows – we were total hillbillies. Since we came back to Scotland, we have started hiking and did a couple of Munros. My daughter is getting into it as well.”

Fraser can’t wait to dust off the family tent and enjoyed some much needed R&R amid the dramatic Highland landscapes where she has spent much of recent months working. She plans to continue Munrobagging and on the bucket list is walking the West Highland Way.

“We got all the camping gear a few years ago when we were in America but we’ve not camped here yet,” she says. “We keep trying to but it always falls through. The midges will be gone by October but it will be f****** freezing.”

She is sanguine when asked about dream roles. “I feel fairly satisfied and there is nothing I’m dying to play,” says Fraser. “At the moment all I can think about is spending time with my family and having a holiday. We have booked a couple of holidays in the last few years and had to cancel them.

“I’m really grateful for work, but my family are getting like, ‘C’mon!’ Instead of roles I’m thinking about normal things like taking Lila to school. That is what is appealing to me most at the moment.”

One of Us starts on BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm