Aimee Lou Wood as Tracey Taylor
Tracey Taylor is another real Corby resident whose family was seriously affected by the toxins carried by dust from the reclaimed steelworks site. Her husband Mark is played by Matthew Durkan.
Tracey is played by Aimee Lou Wood, who established her name alongside fellow stars Ncuti Gatwa and Emma Mackey in Netflix’s teen comedy-drama Sex Education, and has been booked and busy ever since. Wood is filming a second series of BBC comedy Daddy Issues with David Morrissey, starred with Bill Nighy in feature film Living, and is currently appearing in season three of the hottest show around, HBO’s The White Lotus opposite Walton Goggins.
Rory Kinnear as Des Collins
Des Collins is the real solicitor who led the negligence claim against Corby Borough Council alongside 18 of the mothers whose pregnancies were affected by the toxins. As mentioned in the drama, he and his firm also represented train crash victims of the Southall and Paddington rail disasters.
He’s played by Rory Kinnear, a much-loved British screen and stage actor (and incidentally, the son of another well-loved actor: Roy Kinnear) seen recently in the role of Dave “Bank of Dave” Fishwick in Netflix’s follow-up film to the first. He’s been in Bond films, played John Clare in Penny Dreadful (and came back for sequel City of Angels), recently starred in The Diplomat and played Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Brendan Coyle as Roy Thomas
Corby Borough Council Labour deputy leader and then leader Roy Thomas is a fictionalised character based, as it says in Toxic Town‘s closing credits, “…on a number of men, none of whom lived to see their plans for Corby fully realised.”
He’s played by Brendan Coyle, who’s well known for playing the Earl of Grantham’s valet Mr Bates in the Downton Abbey TV series and feature film spin-offs. In between playing Bates, he slotted in a role in BBC crime drama Requiem and film Mary Queen of Scots, and before that, he played Robert in Lark Rise to Candleford and appeared in a huge range of TV dramas from Prime Suspect to literary adaptation North and South to Dangerfield and many more.
