Steve Coogan asked to change morgue scene in Jimmy Savile drama because he was ‘uncomfortable’ performing it

Steve Coogan has revealed there was a necrophilia scene in new Jimmy Savile drama The Reckoning that he was “uncomfortable” with and asked to be changed.

The actor, who plays the disgraced TV star in the BBC series, has shared his discomfort with the scene, explaining that it was altered after he had a conversation with director Sandra Goldbacher.

Savile was exposed as a paedophile in 2012, roughly one year after his death, with his decades-long history of child sexual abuse coming to light.

Speaking at a press event for the show on Thursday (5 October), Coogan said of one scene featured in the four-part drama: “It was really disturbing, what can you say? It’s as disturbing as it looks.”

The disturbing scene in question is set in a mortuary at Leeds hospital, which Savile visited so regularly that he had a bedroom there. It sees Savile place his hand under a sheet covering a corpse of a woman in her seventies. At the launch, Coogan said that the original plan was to feature a shot that the actor “didn’t want to do”.

“In that morgue scene, there was a certain shot they wanted to do that I didn’t want to do,” he said. “It was just a detail that I was uncomfortable with, so I had a conversation with the director and we came to an agreement on what was the most appropriate way to depict it.”

He said that the series has been two years in the making due to “dilligent forensic application about trying to make sure all the right decisions are made”.

While acknowledging that “there’s no right or wrong answer”, Coogan said he felt a responsbility to share his “opinion about what the right thing to do is”, adding: ”There’s a tension between showing too much of Savile’s offences, and it being grotesque, or sugar-coating them, which is also wrong [as we won’t] see the horror of what he did.

“So you have to strike that balance – you don’t want to upset survivors and you don’t want to anesthetise the full effect.”

Writer Neil McKay said he had “excellent sources” for the scene, stating: “You don’t want to cause distress or show something that’s grim. So it’s a decision and, you know, the way it’s been edited and put together, we think we found right balance.”

He added: “I think it would have been wrong and untrue to not show it.”

Coogan went on: “Personally, my involvement – because I’m not a producer, I’m just the actor hired to play this role – I’m really comfortable [with how the drama turned out] from my point of view because I’m associated with this and I have to put my name to it that all decisions were the best ones that could be made.”

The Reckoning airs on BBC One from Monday 9 October.