INTERROGATOR-IN-CHIEF
Anna Maxwell Martin loved grilling British agents in her new role – just don’t ask her to keep a secret…
In A Spy among Friends, you play MI6 officer Mrs Lily Thomas, who interrogates Nick Elliott over his Beirut meeting with Kim Philby — is she a real person?
No, she’s a figment of [writer] Alexander Cary’s imagination. She’s female in that very male establishment, working-class, so we have the juxtaposition between Damian’s character, Nick Elliott, and her own. They come to this with prejudices and misconceptions. Their relationship isn’t romantic, but it blossoms as a meeting of minds.
With your role of DCS Carmichael in Line of Duty and now this, you’ve become queen of the inquisition. Is that in your rider? I
am a good interrogator – my children must be terrified of me! But the truth is, apart from the interrogative aspect, those characters are very different. I loved playing Patricia Carmichael. She was the most passive-aggressive sort of person – what the hell is going on in her home life? I deliberately made her a bit comical and cartoonish, plus Jed [Mercurio, writer] is the master, the king of procedural drama. So it was amazing to be part of it. Lily Thomas is nothing like that. There is no game-playing with her.
Playing Lily meant being part of one of the most supportive productions I’ve ever known, something I needed at that time in my life. [The father of Maxwell Martin’s children, film director Roger Michell, died in September 2021, 18 months after the couple’s separation.] I don’t want to speak for Damian but I think he did, too. Everybody was brilliant at their job and kind as well.
Does Mrs Thomas ever get to meet Kim Philby? In other words, did you get to hang out with Guy Pearce?
Only in the trailer park! Only there did I jump on Guy Pearce, and probably he felt more pounced on than Mr Philby ever did.
Philby’s story has been explored before. How is this version new?
There was Cambridge Spies [BBC2 2003] but that was an earlier story. I don’t think we’ve gone into this specific relationship before, and what it meant for Nick Elliott. It’s a spy drama, but good drama can’t live or die on the fact it’s about espionage.
The reason the latest James Bond is so good is because it’s so heavily invested in relationships, and this show is [similarly] about Philby and Elliott – their lifelong [platonic] love affair, and the horror of finding out your friend’s not who they say they are. Then there’s this relationship between Lily and Elliott, how that develops and what that means for both of them.
You’re an award-winning actress, but would you make a good spy?
I’d be terrible! I’m a terrible chatterbox. I’d be saying, “I heard this…”
Will we be seeing more of DCS Carmichael?
I wouldn’t know. I’d be the last to be told. If I were drugged, put on a plane and woke up in a Belfast studio, I still wouldn’t know.
Besides the next series of Motherland, what’s next? I’m doing a bit more “me” stuff – like Have I Got News for You, which I love. Plus… there may be something I can’t talk about, which we’ve already talked about. CAROLINE FROST