The star of a new TV drama tells Steve Pratt about her amazing trip to India

MAKING the two-part ITV1 drama Losing Gemma in India meant the cast went on a real journey together. The thriller - about two ordinary young women, Esther and Gemma, thrown together on an extraordinary trip to India - was filmed entirely on location in Delhi, Agra, Gurgaon and Goa.

"The people in India were fantastic," says one of its stars, Alice Eve, actress daughter of Waking The Dead's Trevor Eve and Holby City's Sharon Maughan. "They move to a different clock and that's a wonderful thing to learn, how starved of time we are in the West."

She also had lots of fun with the cast, which includes ex-Holby City actress Rachel Leskovac, as her travelling companion Gemma, and Jonas Armstrong, the BBC's Robin Hood.

Making the drama wasn't without incident. Eve recalls a serious scene between her and Armstrong in which they were sitting on a wall with the Taj Mahal behind them. "The art department had built a tree for the scene. We were halfway through the dialogue when it fell down on my head. I'm hoping that won't crop up on an out-takes show at some point.

"Another time, we were eating lunch in a train station in Delhi and this bird flew out of the roof into a fan. Its wing got chopped off and the whole thing landed all over mine and Rachel's food."

Making Losing Gemma was certainly different to the usual job, with the cast becoming very close as they went through their journey, says Eve. "We really supported each other through that I think. It wasn't just a jolly old time because it was tough. The story of Losing Gemma is about being tested, going through testing times.

"We didn't go to the extremes the characters go through, but there was a journey that we all went on and came out of with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I think everybody grew quite a lot."

In Losing Gemma, her character Esther is brought together with Gemma after a mutual friend has to drop out of a trip to India at the last moment.

By the end of the plane journey, Esther wants to go it alone but is persuaded by Gemma to socialise with an exotic couple (played by Jason Flemying and Koel Purie) that she's befriended. It all leads to some very unpleasant happenings.

The actress says Esther is very different to her. "She's quite uptight and pretentious," she says. "She's very vulnerable and tested in this story. She's had a traumatic life, so she's lost and quite bruised. I think she's lovely. There's a real tenderness to her."

Eve first caught the eye in the BBC2 series The Rotters Club before going on to star in two recent movies, Starter For Ten with James McAvoy and Big Nothing, with Friends star David Schwimmer. She's just finished a stage run in Tom Stoppard's new play Rock And Roll, putting her high on the list of rising British talent. She says everything's fantastic at the moment. "You're thrilled you've got a job and you do the work, and then the aftermath gets a bit mad."

* Losing Gemma is on ITV1 on December 18 and 19 at 9pm.