Matthew Goode is both good and bad cop in Netflix's 'Dept. Q'

LONDON (AP) — Being a leading man? Matthew Goode quite likes it.

He’s the star of “Dept. Q,” based on the books by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and set in the cold case division of an Edinburgh police station. From “The Queen’s Gambit” showrunner Scott Frank, the nine-part miniseries launches Thursday and sees Goode playing a one-man combination of good cop/bad cop. While Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck is a brilliant investigator, he is equally successful at annoying people — even begrudging respect for his talent quickly turns into intense dislike.

It’s not that Goode hasn’t been No. 1 on the call sheet before, it’s just that he didn’t enjoy it.

“It’s something I shied away from after the beginning of my career where I was there for a bit and then I had some sort of bad things … things weren’t necessarily positive at that point, after that. And I just went, I just want to be, you know, not the lead anymore,” he says.

Goode also acknowledges that actors don’t get to choose if a main part is “bestowed” on them and notes that Frank fought to cast him in “Dept. Q.” The pair first worked together on “The Lookout” (2007) with the English actor portraying an American thief, a long way from the period dramas Goode has been recently known for, playing suave Brits in “The Crown,” “Downton Abbey” and “Freud’s Last Session.”

Goode and Frank talked and teased each other in an interview with The Associated Press about working together, cast bonding and breaking Goode out of his period drama groove. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

GOODE: Father and son.

FRANK: Taxing, toxic, troubling.

GOODE: Well, he’s the genius and I just do what he says, basically.

FRANK: I wish. We go way back. We made a film together, the first film I ever directed, in fact. And I was lucky that I had Matthew because he was outstanding and made it easier for me at that point. And I think we both just really know one another and I love this man — I would work with him in everything I ever did, but he’s a pain in the ass.

GOODE: Well, you know. There has to be some cost!

FRANK: He is Carl Morck, in many ways. To know him is to want to strangle him. Does that sum it up?

GOODE: OK, so now you see what I’m working with. This is the second time he’s given me a character that I genuinely don’t think that many other people would have taken that chance, because I don’t really scream Kansas City bank robber (in “The Lookout”). And I think this is a part that some people would have kind of gone, it’s a bit more sort of Tom Hardy-ish, perhaps. But that’s what we are, we’re actors, but you don’t necessarily get to be versatile a lot of the time, so I feel very indebted to you.

FRANK: I had always thought he would be terrific for this, and I didn’t know if we would end up doing it together, but from the minute I started thinking about it, doing it here, I really thought, oh, and I knew he would love it.

I think a lot of times people only see actors in one way or a particular way, is because they don’t really see them, they just see the roles they’ve already played, they’re not really paying attention to what else is happening.

GOODE: There you go, that’s a prime example, yeah.

GOODE: I mean a career is, for want of a better way of explaining it, is a bit like a river where essentially you can go, there’s the main channel in it, but there’s eddies and you get caught in certain things and you get cast in certain ways. So you’re not really ever particularly in control of it. Certainly unless you have your own production company or you become a massive star where you actually sort of have the keys to Hollywood and then you have a bit more of a sphere of influence and you can dip your toes in different waters. And he had to fight for me a little bit for this one. He had to go bat for me to actually do the part.

GOODE: No, this is my first time, I think. I’ve got a memory like a sieve now; I’ve got three kids, that’s the only thing I really think about. But no, I think this is my first time.

FRANK: I don’t think you have.

GOODE: Only with my wife with some dress up, but that’s about it.

FRANK: A lot of people he winds up are people you want him to wind up and then a lot of times he’s shooting down. But then, the people he’s shooting down at surprise you by coming straight back at him. They don’t necessarily let him get away with Carl being Carl.

GOODE: No because (Frank) transposed it from the original Danish setting, Copenhagen, and it works brilliantly, obviously, in Edinburgh, and it becomes this amazing character. But he made the character English. But we haven’t given too much detail yet as to as to his past, which I love the fact, because we’re aiming to be able to keep doing this because there’s 10 books.

FRANK: We all need reassurance. Including me.

GOODE: Every actor I’ve ever met.

FRANK: Your first day is really scary. There are all these people ... and acting, as I like to say, is the most difficult job in all of this because you’re making yourself so vulnerable in front of a hundred strangers. So Day 1 is even worse.

GOODE: I know it sounds a bit unprofessional, but actually, it’s really, for me, that’s the way that I like to work is to give myself to the other people that I’ve got major relationships in the show with, because I’m not competitive as an actor. I really want to share the screen. I find it weird when it doesn’t happen the other way toward me. And so that’s a really important relationship ... and I wanted us to have a great friendship.

FRANK: The one thing you can’t fix in post-production is casting if you’ve not cast well. And there were a lot of different relationships happening here, so they all had to work together. And they were all terrific. I would be surprised every day by something one of these actors would do. And, what was really fun for me too, is how much Matthew appreciated the skill on the other side. He was never like threatened or felt he was being shown up, it was like this delight.

GOODE: Probably was being shown up.

FRANK: Oh, you were, trust me, they all steal it from you.

Chloe Pirrie poses for portrait photographs to promote the television series "Dept. Q" on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Leah Byrne poses for portrait photographs to promote the television series "Dept. Q" on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Alexej Manvelov poses for portrait photographs to promote the television series "Dept. Q" on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Alexej Manvelov, from left, Leah Byrne and Matthew Goode pose for portrait photographs to promote the television series "Dept. Q" on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Director Scott Frank poses for portrait photographs to promote the television series "Dept. Q" on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Union Pacific hopes regulators will be convinced this time that its $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern that it detailed for the second time Thursday will be good for the country.

The U.S. Surface Transportation Board rejected Union Pacific's initial application because regulators wanted more details about how the deal would affect the competitive balance between the five remaining major freight railroads and the impact on customers.

Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena said the new application makes an even stronger case for the benefits of the merger that he believes would shave a day or two off the delivery time for many shipments because they would no longer have to be handed off between two railroads in the middle of the country. The Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad projects that the merger could lead to shifting 2.1 million truckloads off the highway onto trains.

Vena said CSX and BNSF are already improving their operations to ensure they can compete ,and shippers will benefit from that if the deal is approved. Plus, he pointed out that since BNSF is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway it has the financial resources to do whatever is needed because Berkshire is sitting on nearly $400 billion cash.

“The first few years after this, it’s gonna be like one of those old 15-round boxing fights. Prices are gonna be used, the service is going to be used, everything. And I think the customer’s going to be the winner in all this while we knock down, drag it out, to see who can win and grow their market share,” Vena said.

But the STB established a high bar for major railroad mergers like this one around the turn of the century after past rail mergers snarled freight and led to prolonged disruptions while two railroads worked to integrate their networks. Now Union Pacific has to demonstrate that this deal will enhance competition.

Vena said he's confident the railroads can avoid the integration problems of past mergers because they will take it slow while listening to a new board of customers about the impact. Plus this would be a combination of two successful railroads instead of many deals of the past where one thriving railroad took over another nearly bankrupt one in disrepair.

The deal includes a provision that if the STB requires more than $750 million in concessions Union Pacific can consider walking away, but it won't automatically doom the deal, the railroads disclosed Thursday as they submitted a copy of their merger agreement. Norfolk Southern would be entitled to a $2.5 billion breakup fee if the deal falls apart.

Currently, Norfolk Southern and CSX serve the eastern U.S. while Union Pacific and BNSF serve the west, and the two major Canadian rails compete where they can with their tracks crossing Canada and extending into the United States and Mexico.

A merged Union Pacific would likely control nearly 40% of the nation’s freight, but the railroad said that currently BNSF delivers that much of the nation's freight. So the railroads said the deal would shift which railroad dominates the market but wouldn't dramatically change the competitive balance.

But competitors BNSF and CPKC railroads joined a new coalition Wednesday to highlight concerns that the deal could hurt shippers and eventually consumers if it leads to higher rates for companies that have few options besides rail to get their raw materials and deliver their products. The coalition also includes trade groups for chemical and agricultural shippers and the unions that represent engineers and track maintenance workers.

“This did not begin with a customer asking for a UP-NS merger to happen,” BNSF CEO Katie Farmer said. “It’s driven by Wall Street on the promise of a big shareholder payout. It will eliminate competition, raise costs for consumers, and destabilize the supply chain that powers the American economy.”

But the biggest rail union and hundreds of shippers have backed the deal that would cut the number of major freight railroads across America down to five.

Union Pacific has promised that every union employee who has a job with either railroad at the time of the merger will have a job for life although the workforce could still shrink through attrition if the number of shipments slows down. But UP sounded an optimistic note Thursday and predicted that more than 1,200 new jobs will be created by the third year after the deal to handle the increased freight.

Previously, the railroads predicted 900 new jobs. But the new traffic data the railroads analyzed from all the major freight railroads convinced executives that more job growth is likely.

If the STB accepts this new application, regulators will likely spend more than a year analyzing every aspect of the deal.

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FILE - A Norfolk Southern freight train rolls past the U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, in Clairton, Pa., Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

FILE - A Union Pacific worker walks between two locomotives that are being serviced in a railyard in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Dec. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)