Marton Csokas plays Francis Carver in The Luminaries.

Who is Francis Carver and where do we meet him in the story?.
Francis Carver is the son of a military man and a naval commander. He was brought up in Hong Kong, so he’s the son of an expat.

The father was very overruling in a very severe naval way, so they’ve fallen out. He’s been in prison on Cockatoo Island for 10 or 11 years, and when we meet him he’s three months out.

His love affair with Lydia began before before all that, and that’s probably what held him together while he’s been in prison, and now he’s come out. Because of his prison record, although he’s paid his dues, he’s still very much labelled as a convict, which is frustrating for him. He’s had to beg, borrow and steal.

He’s staying in New Zealand for Lydia primarily and the first time we meet him, he suggests they should go away and start again. But Lydia has other ideas which, probably against his better instincts, he agrees to. They have something of a Macbethian relationship in that she spurs him on.

For me, the inner life of Francis Carver has been about wanting to honour that love that he has for her, whilst also, to a large extent, betraying his own instincts.

How would you describe The Luminaries?.
I think it’s a metaphor for existence. Everyone has arrived from somewhere else, they’re trying to leave their pasts behind and to build their futures with great dreams and expectations. From the moment they set foot on the shore of this new land they are met with things that they probably hadn’t imagined and their metal is tested, their ethics are tested, their morality is tested. Some of them strike gold and they wrestle with it. You see some of the worst aspects of humanity, and some of the best.

What does gold mean within this story?.
Gold represents hopes, dreams, aspirations but also greed, doom and death. The alchemical story of turning lead into gold is quite a good one. The gold that people find ultimately is not the external one but the internal one. That's the journey that interests me, the psychological journey that is more indicative of the human experience. If you earn it quickly, you lose it just as fast.

It’s not very often we see a period drama set in New Zealand.
It’s a pleasure to tell a story that is born in New Zealand, because of the beautiful landscape obviously, and it’s fascinating to see people arriving in Aotearoa (New Zealand) from all over the world. The Māori element meets with a very western greed, that’s not to say that greed doesn’t exist in every culture, because of course it does, but the opportunity for Tauwhare (played by Richard Te Are) is a beautiful juxtaposition for what capitalism really is in the gold rush, and how it defies the goodness of human nature. To see that story against the canvas of New Zealand makes it unique and special.