In the 1971 novel “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth and the 1973 film adaptation by Fred Zinnemann, there was not much of a question about who the Jackal was: a remorseless assassin who had been hired to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. Either he was going to die or de Gaulle was.
But Peacock’s new TV version, created by Ronan Bennett, is different — partly because it’s a continuing series, so you expect its title character to survive, and partly because the Jackal is played by Eddie Redmayne, whose innate likability means that we’re bound to root for him at least some of the time.
Redmayne’s Jackal is meticulous and relentless, but one of the conceits of the show is that the British detective who’s out to get him, played by Lashana Lynch, is as remorseless as her target, and almost as willing to bend the rules. Between that dynamic and the Jackal’s increasingly conflicted personal life, the series weaves a tangled web, morally and legally.
The last time we spoke, it was for the movie “The Good Nurse,” where you played Charlie Cullen, a real-life nurse who was responsible for a string of deaths. Both that project and this one play off your nice-guy persona. We just tend to be on your side.
It’s interesting that you say that, because I think the reason I got cast is that Brian Kirk, our director, had seen “The Good Nurse.” I don’t want to relate fiction to reality, but the thing I found in (director) Tobias Lindholm’s take on that piece is that it never gave you an easy reason as to why Charlie Cullen did these things. I think as human beings, to feel comfort we need to know, “Oh, this person had a trauma, and that’s why he did it.” But that lets us off the hook somehow. And I find qualities of sociopathy in the Jackal and in Charlie that somehow connect these two polar-opposite lives.
There is a moment late in “Jackal” when your character meets up with an elderly couple who help him out. As we were watching it, I turned to my wife and said — and this was just a guess — “I think he’s going to kill those nice people, but I’m still rooting for that guy.”
I didn’t know the extremity of what he was going to do when I signed on. They sent me the first three episodes, and the targets in those first couple of episodes were people that you didn’t necessarily have empathy for. But that was the threading of the needle: How do you do such appalling things and yet still keep people engaged?
I found that there was space to find this inner life in him that remains while he’s being pulled apart. And he’s also someone who is so meticulous. I think we all relate to that moment when a curveball is thrown and your plan is completely dismantled, seeing how you try to survive.
What was it about those three episodes that interested you?
They arrived in my inbox and “The Day of the Jackal” was the title. That was one of my dad’s favorite movies, and one of three or four VHS movies in our house when I was growing up. As those scripts arrived, there was a moment of trepidation, because you don’t want to butcher something you adore, but what I read was so different. It was contemporized, but it had the qualities I loved in the original movie.
It was a ’70s thriller, so it was kind of analog rather than from the digitized age that we’re in. I loved the feeling of those earlier Bond movies where you would set things up and then watch the dominoes fall. Also, there were so many challenges in those episodes. It was like an actor’s playground: languages, disguises, physicality, action. So I jumped right in and signed on as a producer.
When you had three scripts, did you know where the story was going?
I asked not to know because I was so excited by the scripts coming in. But also, when I signed on, I joined as a producer. And this whole experience has been a massive learning curve for me. For years I’ve worked quite intimately with directors and producers I’ve worked with. I’ve always been allowed a kind of input, I suppose. But this was really seeing behind the curtain in an intriguing way. It was a rigorous process but a rewarding one.
I always wonder about actors who get involved in TV shows on the basis of a couple episodes. When you get a script for Episode 6, do you ever think, I wish I had known that about this guy in Episode 1?
Yeah. I mean, I did ask what the general arc was. But the truth was that I assumed the next seven scripts were arriving in the next two weeks. And that was not the case. (Laughs)
It’s not specific to television. I’ve worked on films where there is a release date and the script’s not ready, and you go in not knowing the entire arc of something. What I found complex about this one was that I could do all this prep for the first three, and then suddenly things were arriving: different prosthetics, different languages, and now you’re shooting and you’re on the hoof. So I had to juggle prepping with shooting.
You talked about how meticulous the character is. And it’s fun to watch it a year after seeing the David Fincher film “The Killer,” where Michael Fassbender plays a very different but equally meticulous assassin.
It was really funny, that. We were already shooting when that film came out, and I remember the original opening was the Jackal doing a plank (setting up a shot at his target). He checks his Apple watch. And my initial instinct was, it can’t be an Apple watch. This guy is an analog guy in everything. I find that intriguing, because in this world that we’re living in now, when it is all online, the way to disappear is to be completely analog.
And I remember that when I saw the trailer for “The Killer,” it was Michael doing a plank and looking at his Apple watch, checking his pulse. I was like, “OK, thank God we made that change.” But I’ve also found it interesting that there seems to be a revival in this type of genre, whether it’s “Jackal” or “Black Doves” or “The Agency.”
But again, one of the things that appeals to me about playing Jackal is that as a British kid growing up, I always loved these sorts of characters. And yet the Jackal, because there being something specifically old-school about him, I felt this might be something I could do. Whereas I don’t necessarily have the physical heft to play the butch-er spies. (Laughs)
The character is living a double life that his family does not know about. Do you feel like he really does love his wife and son and is committed to them?
On one hand, there is a ruthlessness and a lack of morals and a kind of refined, terrifying elegance. And then there’s this family man, and I believe both of those things are true. In some ways, I saw him as an addict. I think he believes it when he’s saying that this is his last job. But the idea of him just sitting there in his beautiful house with his beautiful wife and child reading a book for the rest of his life, I just don’t see it happening. (Laughs) There is a pull, and also his virtuosity. I relate to the addiction of doing something you love. It’s very rare to find a job that fulfills you and is more than a job. So I was trying to draw on my own passion for acting, I suppose.
At the end of Season 1, the character comes right out and says what his two goals are going forward. I assume that’s where we’re going in Season 2?
Those are the initial aspirations. I’ve just seen the first script, and what I love is that it’s staying true to the character, but the ambition seems to have inflated. The second I read it, I thought, “When can we start?” But we’ve got a few more to write.
So are there still things for you and the audience to learn about the Jackal?
Oh, I think there’s a s–tload. (Laughs) I think we’ve only scratched the surface of him.
A version of this story first appeared in the Drama Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazines. Read more from the issue here.
