Nesbitt had been approached at a British Academy Television Awards ceremony by director Paul Greengrass, who wanted him to star in a television drama he was making about the 1972 "Bloody Sunday" shootings in Derry. Nesbitt was only seven years old when the shootings happened and was ignorant of its cause; he believed that there was "no smoke without fire" and that the Catholic marchers must have done something to provoke the British Army. He was filming "Cold Feet" in Manchester when he received the script. He read it and found that had "an extraordinary effect" on him. Nesbitt played Ivan Cooper in "Bloody Sunday", the man who pressed for the march to go ahead. To prepare for the role, Nesbitt met with Cooper and spent many hours talking to him about his motives on that day. He met with relatives of the victims and watched the televised Bloody Sunday Inquiry with them, and also read Don Mullan's "Eyewitness Bloody Sunday" and Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson's "Those Are Real Bullets, Aren't They?". Greengrass compared Nesbitt's preparation to an athlete preparing for a race, and told "The Observer", "For an Irish actor, doing the Troubles is like doing "Lear"." Nesbitt had questioned whether he was a good enough actor to effectively portray Cooper and was worried what Derry Catholics would think of a Protestant playing the lead, although Ivan Cooper himself is a Protestant.