Tom Hiddleston Ushers in a New Era for ‘The Night Manager’: “I’m 10 Years Older, and I Love That I’ve Lived More Life”
It was a star-spangled affair at the BFI Southbank Wednesday night as Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie ushered in a new era for The Night Manager.
The British actors were in attendance at the London venue for the season two premiere of the hit BBC show, arriving nearly 10 years after it’s Emmy-winning predecessor.
New cast members Camila Morrone, Diego Calva, Indira Varma, Paul Chahidi and director Georgi Banks-Davies took to the carpet, as did Hiddleston, who made a point of shaking each photographer’s hand before the flashes went wild.
“I’m 10 years older, [I’ve got] a few more scars on the inside, a few more scars on the outside,” Hiddleston told The Hollywood Reporter about returning to the Bond-esque role of Jonathan Pine. “I love the fact that I feel I’ve lived more life, and I encouraged everyone I came into contact with to lean into that. I’ve more life experience and more of my own curiosity about the world and the way it is, and I want it to be more courageous, actually, [and] about investigating the soul of this man.”
In a departure from John le Carré’s work, creator-writer David Farr reinvents the espionage thriller with Pine now living as Alex Goodwin, a low-level MI6 officer running a quiet surveillance unit in London. But one night a chance sighting of an old Roper mercenary prompts a call to action and leads him to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos (Calva).
On this perilous new journey, Pine meets Roxana Bolaños (Morrone) a businesswoman who reluctantly helps him infiltrate Teddy’s Colombian arms operation. Once in Colombia, Pine is plunged deep into a deadly plot involving arms and the training of a guerrilla army.
“He fascinates me,” Hiddleston continues about the character. “That extraordinary courage and conviction, which is a kind of moral clarity that he simply believes in, resisting corruption and the people [who] might be wrestling control of this country and where it’s going. That’s what the first series was about. That’s what Roper was, you know? Roper was a British man selling illegal weapons under the counter to the highest bidder. And [Pine] doesn’t want that version of Britain to flourish. I don’t think Le Carré wants that version of Britain to flourish — that kind of cynicism, that corruption — but also I think Pine’s got this extraordinary capacity for sacrifice and an extraordinary capacity for risk, and his determination not to get lost in the maze is one I find extraordinary, because I need my real life. I need my people. I love my attachments and my relationships. I’m really happy being me. As a field agent for MI6, you have to live almost at the fringes of our society and in the shadows, and it takes a courage that I find immensely inspiring.”
He jokingly adds, “I would also say at 44, it’s definitely different sprinting down the Southbank to how it was at 34, but I did it!”
Olivia Colman, Alistair Petrie and Noah Jupe all reprise their roles in the show. Executive producer Stephen Garret told THR it’s a “very different series” to the first. Discussing how to honor the first installment while acknowledging how the world has changed over the last decade, he said: “When [Hiddleston] made the first season, that was kind of the boy Tom Hiddleston, and the boy has become a man and it’s 10 years on. We’ve all changed. That’s fine for me. I’m behind the camera, but everyone’s grown up, and the world is so different. On the U.K. terms, it was pre-Brexit, pre-Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. So we just have to, in a way, mature with it. So I think it’s a much more emotional show. Hopefully it’s just as tense and terrifying and riveting.”
“It’s terrifying,” Garrett continued, “because here’s the thing: You obviously set out to make something good, and when we made the first season, we were reasonably confident it was good. But that weird thing that happens, where it captures everyone’s imagination… It’s like magic, and the magic did happen, so it was great, and we take huge pride and pleasure in that. But it’s terrifying to have the second one coming out, because you set a high bar, and we didn’t go into it cynically, which is partly also why it took so long. You want to be sure that it’s at least as good, and ideally better.” Is it better? “I don’t know. It’s different. I think it might be.”
Calva said about joining The Night Manager crew: “I watched the first season before getting the casting, and [it was] a total ‘Yes.’ I mean working with [Hiddleston] and Olivia [Colman] and this is just an amazing franchise. I think it’s pretty unusual to have a second season after almost 10 years, right? So that, for me, was also really exciting — to bring it back. And I know it was a big show over here [in the U.K.]”
Morrone added about her character: “Roxana is a really tough, resilient, stoic woman. She’s carries herself in a very mature and sophisticated way, and she’s a woman operating in a man’s world, and she’s very much an equal to the men that she works with and that she surrounds herself with and she does business with.” Three words to describe the new season is a tougher ask: “There’s adrenaline. There’s a lot of unexpected twists and turns… And sexy. We’re in Colombia, we’re arms dealers, it gets quite messy and sexy.”
The Night Manager returns on Jan. 11 on the BBC and Amazon Prime Video.
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