Disclaimer: The following story contains spoilers for “Slow Horses” Season 5, Episode 1.
Watch out, “Slow Horses” fans. Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) has a girlfriend.
Of all the surprises packed into the “Slow Horses” Season 5 premiere, which debuted Wednesday on Apple TV+, perhaps none is as shocking as the discovery that Slough House’s fan-favorite, narcissistic hacker is officially off the market. It is a development that puzzles Roddy’s co-workers, including River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), the latter of whom spends much of the “Slow Horses” premiere convinced that someone is trying to kill Roddy.
When she catches him on a dancefloor with a beautiful woman, Tara (Hiba Bennani), her suspicions only increase. If Tara’s ominous text message at the end of the “Slow Horses” season premiere is any indication, it seems that Shirley was right to be nervous about Roddy’s safety, too.
For “Slow Horses” creator Will Smith, who has announced that the Apple TV+ series’ new season will be his last, it was Roddy’s increased role that made him so excited to adapt “London Rules,” author Mick Herron’s fifth Slough House book. “Chris has been amazing in that part, but he has spent a lot of time just typing on computers,” Smith told TheWrap with a laugh, noting that Chung’s Roddy did get to ram a bus through a house in “Slow Horses” Season 3.
“With Roddy at the center, it just felt like it would be different this time,” Smith explained. “One of the things that I’m proudest of about the show — and it comes from the books — is that Mick sets up a different time of year each time, different villains, different themes. There’s new Slow Horses coming in, old Slow Horses going out. It always feels like it’s being refreshed, so you can do these tonal shifts each time.”
If the Apple TV+ series’ first season was, as Smith puts it, a “kidnapping, race-against-time thriller” and its fourth was a “really dark, more personal tale,” the creator says “Slow Horses” Season 5 is something new and, most importantly, “different again.”
Of course, it would not be a new “Slow Horses” season without at least one noteworthy exit. In the case of the series’ Season 5 premiere, that honor goes to Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), who makes it clear to Lowden’s River that she has no plan of returning to Slough House after all the trauma she has experienced. “Slow Horses” says goodbye to Louisa first with a lackluster going away party and then with an even more awkward parting conversation with River, who completely misreads her emotional cues and tries to kiss her at the worst possible moment.
“That is one of my favorite scenes that we’ve ever done, and those two have done some amazing scenes together,” Smith told TheWrap of Louisa and River’s tense conversation in the “Slow Horses” premiere. “I knew we had those scenes, so I figured, ‘OK, we’re going to give [Rosalind] some good stuff to go out with.’ I also thought that she and Jack would just fly with those scenes, and they did.”
Below, Smith further unpacks Louisa’s shock exit, offers some insight into the “off-balanced” state viewers find River and Shirley in at the start of “Slow Horses” Season 5 and teases what fans can expect from the series’ coming episodes.
TheWrap: With Roddy at the center of this year’s mystery, do you consider this season lighter than the others?
Smith: I still feel it’s dealing with heavy topics, but you know, obviously a season where Roddy gets a girlfriend is going to be a funnier season than when David Cartwright [Jonathan Pryce] falls victim to dementia and people are trying to kill him. You go with the story, and you have to tell the story with the tone that it suggests. Within that, this season is still talking about the legacy of colonialism, the perils of interventionism, the rise of right-wing populism. There’s also a focus on toxic masculinity with Ho.
There’s a lot going on! People are saying it’s the funniest season, but it’s not flippant. It’s not light. It’s still, hopefully, engaging with contemporary issues in meaningful ways. But it was all Ho. His story this season was one of the things we were right away like, “Oh, brilliant,” about.
This episode says goodbye to Louisa. The show is no stranger to cast turnover, but most of the time, characters only leave because they die. In this case, Louisa decides to step away. What was it like giving her an uncharacteristically non-violent exit?
Smith: Like you say, it’s a surprising moment. Mick is brilliant at getting rid of characters in unexpected ways. It’s never predictable. It’s never by the numbers. Because there was so much loss in Season 4, at the start of Season 5 you’re on edge because you think anyone could go at any point. So even if you don’t kill anyone off, you’ve still got the tension of that. With Louisa, we knew we weren’t going to have her much this season, but we still felt like we could make these amazing scenes with her.
That party scene is brilliant and awful, and when River asks Shirley, “Are you trying to keep us alive or are you just trying to bring Marcus back?,” I think that’s as chilling as any act of violence we’ve put on screen. It’s shocking, and then we have the scene by the river bank between Louisa and River where they have a kind of break up, but they’ve never been together and then there’s that awkward kiss.
It just felt very raw and real and very “Slow Horses.” And Rosalind and Jack have such an amazing chemistry and naturalism together.
Shirley is really at the center of this premiere. She’s the only one who realizes something is going on, but she’s also very clearly unbalanced. How would you describe her state in this premiere?
Smith: Shirley is in bits. She is really suffering from losing Marcus. She’s coming to work every day to the same place where he was shot up. We actually had a scene that we cut in the editing process where she stops by the banister where he died and she sees some blood mixed in with the tinsel. In the end, it felt like we didn’t need that, but it was beautifully shot and Aimee is just incredible. For me, that scene she has in the nightclub toilet with River is brilliant. She kind of spills her guts in that scene, and Aimee had a note when we were shooting it.
She asked, “Can I spill my guts and then catch myself and realize I shouldn’t have spilled my guts and cover it up and pretend that I was just playing at it?” Her final performance is just wonderful. You really feel the raw emotions under these characters and that is, again, one of the strengths of the books. It’s never a reset. Both Mick’s books and the show are building up these emotional journeys over time and our characters are always wearing the scars of previous seasons. The actors love that. It’s all an ongoing journey, and that’s why their performances are so amazing. They’re just alive in those parts.
As off as Shirley seems, River’s behavior in the premiere comes as even more of a shock.
Smith: Louisa knows she’s off-balanced and she’s going to deal with it. River just won’t accept that. Everyone in Slough House is damaged, and that’s what’s brilliant about the show. That’s what was brilliant about the premise from the beginning, which is that everybody here has messed up in some way, so everyone’s immediately got a backstory and everyone’s looking for redemption. That’s just a great place to start from. For River, his place at the start of Season 5 really came from talking with Jack during the filming of Season 4. At the time, he was like, “This is such an intense season. What else is there?” Basically, he was saying, “Give me something to play.”
I said to him, “Well, there’s still the fallout [to come]. Your grandfather’s halo has been knocked off. This person you’ve idealized all your life is losing his mind and has fallen down in your estimation by both finding out what you have about his past and by meeting your father, who’s a psychopath.” I told Jack, “You’re going to try to move forward without actually stopping to deal with any of that. You’re going to be leaner. You’re not gonna be eating. You’re going to feel different, feel off, and you’re going to be snapping at people.” All of that plays out across these first couple episodes. River kicks in a bit more when he’s got something to do, but he’s definitely not himself [right now].
Every season of “Slow Horses” stands on its own and yet you find subtle ways each year to progress the show’s ongoing storylines. How did you find that balance again this time around?
Smith: That’s kind of what Mick does. He doesn’t come up with a plot and then fit the characters into it. He’s always thinking about where the characters are. When I’m putting it together, if I get stuck, I just go, “OK, well, what does Shirley want at this point? What’s on her mind? What’s her primary goal? What’s underneath here?” You just try to remind yourself of where your characters are at, and the actors are brilliant at tracking that and helping me and the other writers. We’re really just following Mick’s lead. A lot of the time, plot will come from the character. Roddy Ho getting a girlfriend is hilarious and a mystery and you just know bad things are gonna come from that, right? So you’ve got your hook and you’re intrigue and it’s coming from the characters.
In this case, it’s really coming from her because, obviously, he’s not actually managed to get himself a girlfriend. Nobody except Roddy thinks this is a real thing, so you just start to think, “Where’s River? He’s not gonna think any of this is real because he thinks Shirley’s mad and there’s already tension between them because his half-brother killed Marcus.” That’s weird and hard to resolve and, at the same time, he’s got his own issues. They’re all in weird places right now, and you just try to play those notes.
“Slow Horses” Season 5 releases new episodes Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
