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NEW YORK, Jan. 2 (UPI) -- Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth says he felt an incredible sense of responsibility after meeting the real-life hero he was to play in Peacock's limited series, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. Premiering Thursday, Lockerbie is based on the real-life terrorist attack that caused Pan Am Flight 103 to explode over Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 people on the ground.
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Firth plays Dr. Jim Swire (Firth), a doctor who becomes the spokesman for the U.K. victims' families.
He and his wife, Jane (Catherine McCormack), have spent decades trying to find out who was responsible for their loved ones' deaths and then bring them to justice.
"Jim and Jane hosted me at their home," Firth said during a recent virtual press conference in which the Swires were sitting in the audience.
"That wasn't really a research meeting for me. That was just getting to know each other, to see trust, hopefully, build a little bit," he said.
"You can't meet them without feeling a warmth and respect and then realizing what a huge thing to live up to this was going to be. You always feel a bit out of your depth when you start a job, but this really felt way out of my depth."
The actor said he admired Jim Swire's courage, integrity, dedication to the truth and willingness to accept new information, even if it conflicted with what he had previously understood.
"It's very tempting when you feel passionate about something to want to stay the course, to have this cherished belief maintained," he added.
"He didn't do that. He let evidence and facts speak to him, even if that meant profoundly changing course. That really, really struck me."
Firth said he had a lot of help portraying this man over the course of decades, largely because of the period-accurate surroundings, makeup and costumes that were furnished.
"I walked onto a set and saw what they created and had to gather myself because it had so much impact on me," he recalled.
"It wasn't really some sort of job of work for me to do this huge leap of the imagination. It hit me and that's not necessarily the high-impact things. That could just be the way my office was -- the way the technology was," he added.
Well-written scripts and meticulous direction helped him keep track of where he was in the story, which was filmed out of sequence.
"If I wasn't sure how old I was this year, and this morning, I count the wrinkles they put on me or had taken off me," Firth quipped, referring to his makeup.
"What I'm saying is that collaboration really does sort of about 80% of it."
Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning executive producer Gareth Neame -- who is best known for his work on Downton Abbey -- said he was immediately intrigued when he read Jim Swire's book, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice.
"I remember that night vividly, although thank God, I am not connected directly in any way, but I remember listening to the midnight news," Neame recalled about the real-life bombing.
"I heard it, and I thought, 'This is going to change everything.' It didn't occur to me then, of course, that decades later, we would have the opportunity to tell the story."
Neame acknowledged the tragedy has been thoroughly covered through journalism, books and documentaries, but he said he thinks a dramatic retelling of the events will offer a fresh perspective to which viewers will respond.
"There are 270 individuals, 270 families. They're all individual stories, and there has to be one route into this," he added. "This is Jim's story, but it's not the only story."
Neame also said he hopes TV audiences will be captivated by the way the series blends narrative genres -- starting out as a shocking portrait of family grief and then morphing into an investigative thriller and ultimately becoming a courtroom drama.
"We would like to feel that, as a drama, we have shone a light on this murky, murky subject," he said. "Hopefully, we're in a slot in the time of year where people have some space to look at this drama and reconsider the story and the facts quite deeply."
