Love/Hate’s Tom Vaughan Lawlor has revealed he knew the public was going to hate last season’s ending before it was even aired.
And the London-based actor – who plays Nidge – admits it’s because people were too stupid to understand what was happening in the scenes.
Fans were outraged by the ending of season four, which saw Nidge going mad inside a jail cell.
But Tom said people had an “inability” to understand what creator Stuart Carolan was trying for and “missed” the “subtlety” of the show.
Ending: Fans hated how Stuart finished last season | RTE
He said: “I remember this time last year after watching the fourth season before it aired and I said to Peter Coonan, ‘I bet you anything there’s going to be a backlash to this’.
“We’d gone so high, so fast and it was such a force of nature that I think it’s human nature for people to start to examine things more closely and poke holes in it.
“A lot of the things I read, and people’s inability to see what Stuart was trying to do with season four surprised me. There’s so much heat and hype coming off the show that sometimes the subtlety is missed.”
Meanwhile, Tom has hinted that there will be a massive power struggle to come between him and Fran in the new series.
He said: “In one way they’re very different, and in another way they’re cut from the same cloth. There’s tension there and there’s an underlying niggle in terms of who has the higher status.”
Fighting back: Tom says Nidge will be back with a bang
But Tom told the RTE Guide that we should expect Nidge to come back from the brink on Sunday.
He will be seen hooking up with a Spanish drug dealer in a bid to rejuvenate his gang with outside money.
And Tom said: “This year there’s a reawakening and rebirth in Nidge and he’s kick-started into the Spain thing with the renewed appetite for dining at the top table of European drug dealing.
“His ambition is back, but there are ghosts that are still haunting him and he can’t deal with them – he doesn’t have the tools to understand his inner feelings.
“That’s why this character is so rich to play, there’s such depth to him.”
