Actor welcomes change of pace
THE NIGHT MANAGER Debuts Tuesday, AMC
From Marvel Comics villain to John le Carré hero, Tom Hiddleston — who plays Loki, the baddie fans love to love in the Avengers films — is debuting on North American TV screens Tuesday in AMC’s British-American co-production The Night Manager.
Tense, timely and lushly filmed (the show had a £20-million budget), The Night Manager is based on le Carré’s like-named 1993 novel. Hiddleston stars as former British soldier Jonathan Pine, who’s working nights in a Cairo hotel during the Arab Spring.
He’s soon recruited by an intelligence operative (Olivia Colman) to infiltrate the inner circle of international arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). The six-part miniseries is already a critical and ratings success in the U.K., where it aired on the BBC.
Hiddleston spoke about The Night Manager, his real-life aptitude for spyhood and the public push for him to become the next James Bond.
Q Does The Night Manager’s success in the U.K. bring more of a relief or a sense of pressure for you going into the North American debut?
A It’s of course wonderful to know that it’s done so well in the U.K. I’ve been filming Kong: Skull Island in Vietnam, and every Monday morning I would get a lovely email from the producers saying the episode went well, and then I’d have to disappear into a swamp in Vietnam to chase a great ape. So it’s a bit strange, and
I feel like I slightly missed it. Q The novel came out more than 20 years ago. How does the miniseries stand up in modern times?
A The novel spoke very much to the political climate of the time in which it was written. Pine’s military service was amid the conflict in Ireland in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and Richard Roper was exchanging arms for drugs with the Colombian drug cartels, which was very much an issue of the time.
I think producers Simon and Stephen Cornwell, who are le Carré’s sons, believed it was important for The Night Manager to speak to our time. So Roper’s arms trade is now in the Middle East and he’s selling chemical weapons to the highest bidder. Pine’s military service has been
updated to the Iraq war of 2003. Q How would you personally do as undercover operative?
A A good spy has to surrender the things many of us take for granted, that give our lives meaning. It takes huge psychological strength, and those tests of one’s mettle, you don’t easily volunteer for that.
But even where acting comes into play, the part I enjoy is the exploration of identity. I think someone like Jonathan Pine is doing the same thing by taking on different personas — Jonathan Pine, Jack Lindon, Thomas
Quince and Andrew Birch.
And le Carré himself talks about espionage as acting, essentially. There’s something disingenuous about it, and therein lies the hypocrisy of the job description — one is required to do bad things for the greater good.
Q There’s been a fan campaign to get you to play James Bond in the next movie — what’s your reaction to that?
A It’s flattering and amusing, but there’s really no grounding to it.
I’m fairly certain that Daniel Craig is still James Bond and will continue to be. And I’m an enormous admirer of his portrayal. So it’s very flattering and I will continue to smile about it, but there’s nothing for me to add to it. That’s my two cents — besides which, everyone wants Olivia Colman to be Bond as well, which is a great idea.