Note: This story contains spoilers from “Slow Horses” Season 5, Episode 6.
Many things may change over time in “Slow Horses,” but one constant remains. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) always comes out on top. That is a lesson unsuspecting MI5 head Claude Whelan (James Callis) learns, much to his embarrassment, in the climactic scene of the “Slow Horses” Season 5 finale.
When Lamb walks into his Slough House office near the end of the episode, he finds Whelan waiting there for him. The MI5 boss, whose life is saved in the finale by Lamb and River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), has a plan in mind. He explains his intent to pin all of the season’s terrorist attacks on Lamb and Slough House, scrap the entire outcast division and erase the “stain” its members have left on the service’s reputation. For a few brief seconds, Claude actually believes he has gotten away with it. But he, like so many before him, makes the unfortunate mistake of underestimating Oldman’s grumpy, sweaty MI5 veteran.
“Claude isn’t one for knowing much about subtext. What is presented on the page is what Claude understands,” Callis told TheWrap with a laugh, as he reflected on his unlucky “Slow Horses” character’s mistaken impression of the show’s most formidable spy. “When Claude looks at Jackson Lamb, he sees a dinosaur. Claude sees an anachronism. Claude sees something that was tolerated in the service in the ’80s but is way past its sell-by date now.”
“He’s not how we do things anymore. You don’t have whiskey at 10 a.m. in your office with a cigarette. ‘If this is the example you’re setting forth, this is a bad example,’” Callis explained. “Claude is way more about optics, about the way things look. He’s heard about all these things Lamb has done, but he sees all that as ancient history. In Claude’s mind, what he’s doing is thinking about today.”
In the end, it is Claude who ends up forced out of MI5, not Jackson. The latter uses his recording of Claude’s midseason blackmail session with the late Denis Gimball (Christopher Villiers) to threaten him into leaving Slough House alone, reinstating Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) and taking the career-ending fall for the season’s terror attacks. It is a triumphant victory for Oldman’s Lamb, one made all the more satisfying by the stuttering mess Callis turns into in his final “Slow Horses” Season 5 scene.
“All those little hesitations and the nuances, that’s all [James]. I can’t script that,” creator Will Smith told TheWrap, praising Callis’ performance in the climactic scene. “I know Gary was really corpsing at points on set with him, and Gary just loved James. It was so fun watching those two play.”
Below, Callis defends Claude Whelan’s behavior throughout part of “Slow Horses” Season 5 and dives deeper into his character’s unlucky humiliation at the hands of Oldman’s Jackson Lamb. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
TheWrap: We get to see some of Claude’s darker sides this season, particularly through his personal uses of MI5’s resources. What was that like to play?
Callis: It’s pretty much self preservation. Obviously, this is going to sound like, ‘Here comes the Claude Whelan apologist,’ but there’s plenty worse at sea, in my opinion, than trying to cover up an extramarital rendezvous. Like, when you say ‘dark side,’ the wanting to suppress this material in my mind is so that his wife doesn’t find out. He’s not sufficiently good at controlling his own narrative, at least not enough to stay in his position. That’s not as important to him.
He’s a mess, but he has integrity. You might ask, “What are his allegiances?” Well, he’s for king and country, like anybody who’s in MI5 because, to a large degree, that has to be why you are doing what you are doing there. You might be very brilliant. They might have tapped you on the shoulder and said, “Hey, come have a meeting,” and that was exciting, but you’re doing it because you want to protect and serve the country that you love.
There is certainly a bit of flexing your muscles coming from Claude this season, but it’s really interesting if you look at the way he flexes his muscles and what he flexes his muscles about. In the grand scheme of things, it’s like having a car with all this power and he’s decided to stick it in second gear. There’s other ways that stuff could be handled. It’s really emblematic of Claude.
It’s like, “You’ve only looked at the small picture, not the big picture.” One of the problems with acting like that is, no matter how much he thinks he’s sewn up all the edges and seen all the angles, he hasn’t. When River or Shirley go rogue, they usually end up relying on teamwork to get them through, and when they get together and share their intel, the Slow Horses are actually unstoppable.
Obviously, Claude’s attempt to get one over on Jackson fails spectacularly. Do you think there’s a part of him that feels indebted to Lamb, given that he’s the one who tells River that Whelan is the terrorists’ next target?
Callis: To an absolute degree, Claude is only alive at the end because Lamb works something out. But Whelan’s looking at this like, “My life’s been endangered. The whole country’s gone to flipping pop. Who is at the center of this thing? Oh, some guy named Roddy Ho? Bloody Hell! And, wait for it, who is Roddy’s boss? Bloody Hell!” If you really look at it, the whole thing is a flaming disaster. It’s colossal. So, you know, when we talk about this show we’re talking about a show that we love, right? And the audience is watching it like, “Yay, Jackson!,” and the show is called “Slow Horses,” so fair enough.
But there’s also the reality of thing, and it is all a huge f—k up, right? And Lamb’s in charge of it. So, to Whelan, it’s not personal, it’s protocol. If I think about it now, it’s actually very lucky for Lamb that he has that dictaphone, isn’t it? That’s incredibly lucky! [Laughs] That’s another reason he’s got to keep River and Coe on, because, actually, them taking that thing is what saves all of them.
What was it like getting to spar 1-on-1 with Gary in that last scene?
I’ve been working as an actor for 30+ years, and that was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, and that’s mostly down to Gary. The energy when you’re with him, you just feel totally supported. Gary’s nothing like Jackson Lamb, apart from maybe being just as smart as him, so we’d hug each other at the end of takes. That scene could have been very, very confrontational the whole way through it, and it was really Gary who was like, “No, we’re not going to go there. That’s not who Jackson is.”
There are so many brilliant things he does in that scene, it’s kind of hard to explain it. But a huge part of it is that you don’t realize that he’s engineering everything throughout it. That can be an uncomfortable thing. A two-handed scene, I was always told, is a bit like being on stage and somebody comes out of the blue corner and somebody comes out of the red corner and it can be like prize fighting. But in this case, the way it was done was with a huge level of humanity and civility, and that’s part of the charm of it. What’s really going on throughout it is that Lamb’s watching this thing happening, and he’s just like, “Carry on.” He’s just reeling Whelan in ever so slowly, and Whelan’s got no idea. [Laughs]
I think we knew while we were doing it that we had something really fun and quite special. I can’t totally put my finger on what that is. But it really comes down to Gary and another thing he asked for, which was that he told the crew, “We want to be in concert with each other, James and I. Can we film our sides at the same time, so that I really am reacting to James and James really is reacting to me?” We shot that scene a lot of ways, but that was definitely one of the ways that helped us get it right. It wasn’t like, “Oh, we’re cutting to you here and then cutting to him.” It was a bit like being on stage.
It was an absolute highlight for me, and one of the things about Will Smith’s writing is that I really did want to do it like a play. If we could do that scene several days in a row, we’d never get tired of it. You’d find so many ways to do it, and every scene that I’ve had in “Slow Horses” is like that. I’d always say to Will, “Could we do another take?” and the answer was always, “Yes. Let’s have the opportunity to do this again,” because the writing is just so great.
The confrontation between you two is a real highlight.
Thank you. This season really rocks, doesn’t it? Every episode has something in it which is just phenomenal. Don’t you just have to applaud it? This show is something I think a lot of people want to try to do but can’t. That’s definitely true of the writing and direction. There’s this particular tone that is struck in it that I don’t think any other show has, and it’s one which you and I obviously enjoy.
“Slow Horses” Seasons 1-5 are streaming now on Apple TV.
