Nick Blood

When I first started acting professionally I had a compulsion to get it right, as if there was some correct way of playing a particular role. At the drama group I went to as a kid we predominantly focused on improvising so when I got to drama school I was intimidated by all the scripts of famous plays I’d never read. I treated them a bit like an instruction manual and searched for the right way to play the role. I’ve learned over time to rely more on my own instincts and imagination. Sometimes the most fun I have with a role is when I’m doing a self tape — I can do whatever the fuck I like and make my own little play of it. If they like it they like it, if they don’t well it’s on to the next one, at least it’s on my terms. It’s important to have some freedom to explore and not get too hung up on perfection. We’re not saving lives here. The filming process taught me this — things get cut, and takes you might have hated, get selected over the takes you loved, as little accidents can end up offering a moment of [on screen] magic.

It’s impossible to pin down one thing or one person. It’s a multitude of influences, as different directors offer you different insight and inspiration. Watching friends perform or working on auditions with them can unlock something — being around people and observing them experiencing life can ignite you. There’s no single actor, director or performance that I could narrow it down to, it’s a concoction of influences.

I’m sure many other actors will agree when I say this — the lack of control is tough. You have so little control over what is being made and when, even down to what take a director might choose to use out of the six you did on the day. It's  important to use the audition process to counter this as you can make your own choices in your performance, making peace with the fact it might not be what someone is looking for that day, as I’d rather fail on my own terms than trying to guess what someone wants from me. The uncertainty of this job is both a blessing and a curse, but I’d go crazy doing a 9 to 5. I try to remind myself how lucky I am that my career is my passion, though it can be hard when things don’t go your way or when you miss out on big life events because you’re in another country and the schedule can’t be shifted.

Day of the Jackal has been a blast. It’s such an iconic movie with a huge following — you can see people’s eyes light up when they hear what you’re doing, there’s already quite a buzz about it. I feel very fortunate to have been amongst a brilliant cast and crew, the whole experience felt very collaborative and I’m extremely grateful for that. To tell this story with all the modern advances of technology is very exciting, and of course, Eddie is such perfect casting for the Jackal.

From day one I wanted to make sure that Vince [the character Nick Blood plays in Day of the Jackal] felt real. There can be a tendency to slip into generic spy-mode and a character can lose its humanity and depth. While Vince is a professional — and an exceptional one at that — he’s also a person with a life and a family and a history. I wanted to make sure that in amongst the high stakes drama he remained real, despite being very different to the previous role I played before we started shooting.

The best thing about a job is the people you work with. Eddie is a gentleman and extremely supportive, on my first day we had a chat about Vince and both our instincts to ensure we kept him human and grounded. I’m very grateful to Eddie for his collaboration, he’s such a pro and makes the set a really pleasurable experience. And that jawline. Obviously Lashana and I spent a huge amount of time together so thank God we got on! We had many many laughs in between takes. There’s a whole bunch of outtakes of us just messing around and making each other laugh — which suited our character's relationship perfectly. Again, I have a lot of gratitude to Lashana for her collaborative instinct on scenes. We would often get together to discuss a scene well in advance of shooting, playing with it, seeing what we could infuse it with. I’m proud of how we worked together, with no ego, and how we contributed to some pivotal scenes in the best way we could tell a specific story on the given day. She was so supportive of ideas I had and really helped me build Vince’s character through joint exploration.

At its core it’s still a gripping spy thriller whichever way you skin that cat, which is what makes it such a compelling piece of TV. I think what the creative team — and Eddie — brought to the central character was a level of humanity that you don’t see as much of in the original. There’s a deeper conflict which I think reflects a modern sensibility and adds layers to the story. The technological developments play a huge part [in the remake], for every advantage they might offer the Jackal, well, MI6 have something to combat that, and vice versa. It’s a technological arms race.

Running through fields in the middle of summer in full tactical gear can have its challenges, that's for sure. Some of the action sequences were incredible to witness and be a part of but often the most enjoyable part of my job is watching others perform. All of a sudden you’d be in a room with actors who have been shooting for the past few weeks or months but you haven’t had a chance to work with yet. I have to take my hat off to Nina Gold and her team — there’s some perfect casting in this show. I wish I could go into more detail about some of the big set pieces but I don’t want to spoil it for audiences. All I’ll say is, you’ll want to keep watching til the end — the finale is spectacular.

Gary is an extremely unpleasant man, and they are often the most fun to play. Instinctively I saw him as this tightly coiled ball of aggression, the type of man that if he’s not cut down in a fight then he’d probably die of a heart attack before his time due to the sheer tension he holds within himself. It’s not a role I think people would immediately put me in and Richard Laxton [the director] has to take credit for this. It’s the third time I’ve worked with him and thankfully he has the imagination to consider me for such a part. As far as preparing for the role, I watched a lot of footage from the era about football hooliganism, trying to tap into that anger and frustration at the world, a specifically masculine rage that is worn as a badge of honour and is intrinsic to someone’s identity which influenced the voice and body language. I was quite specific about his look too and how that informs who he is and what he shows to the world. Gary lives life teetering on the edge of danger which means it’s both very exciting for him but very stressful, that adds to his volatility.

There’s a balance to be found here. Of course I want to honour the truth of the story but, in regards to Gary, very little is known about what became of him so there was licence to use my imagination. This is Joan Hannington’s story but it’s also Anna Symon [screenwriter], Richard Laxton, Sophie Turner and all of our stories, we have to make it our own. It was great to meet Joan herself — what a woman — and Sophie was very helpful in offering me insights the real Joan had given her. All I say is, the real Gary was probably even worse than what we saw in Joan.

I loved both of them. Frank is a good laugh, intelligent and genuine. We spent a lot of time chatting about life and our jobs and this and that and the other. Sophie is brilliant — what a genuine and lovely person. She was very easy to work with and get along with, and is truly a down to earth and all-round good person. We had some quite tricky scenes physically and it is important for you to be able to trust each other, and she was very open from day one which made the job so much easier.

Because it’s fucking exciting! Who doesn’t want to see this gutsy, determined and charismatic woman put two fingers up to convention and do what we all wish we could do sometimes — whatever the hell we like. Life can beat you down and some people get beat down way worse than others. We love an underdog and Joan has it all against her. Despite the ethics of what she’s doing, we all want her to succeed. To get one over on the man (and often a man). It’s not necessarily a career path I’d recommend, but it’s exciting to watch someone else take all those risks.

The whole look of it is stunning, the sets and costumes have the era spot on capturing the 80’s obsession with wealth and status which of course we can all see reflections of today in our culture with social media, and trying to attain a life that is out of reach, or to appear rich and glamorous while everyone is struggling to be comfortable in their own skin.

It’s all about the script and the story. I’ve never seen myself as an actor that should have a prefix to that job title — comedy-actor, character-actor, theatre-actor. I don’t think many of us want to be seen that way. If I’m lucky I’ll keep getting the chance to explore different styles and tones. In all honesty, it’s a difficult question to answer, as I don’t pick up a script and go ‘‘oh this is a horror, I must do horror acting”.You explore the story and the character and motivations, playing around and seeing what comes up. 

Evolving is the important word there. It’s constantly changing so you have to roll with it. We can all get paranoid about algorithms dictating what is and isn’t commissioned, what actors are cast etc. But then something will always break the mould. You just hope the powers that be can see that. For a while it felt like there was a huge power shift to a couple of big streamers, then multiple streamers popped up. Some will die or merge and in a few years time we’ll probably be talking about a different landscape entirely. What streamers have been great for is diversifying the work — an international platform means that more niche tastes can be catered for, and then hopefully they can break out on a huge scale. The streamers have also helped finance movies that otherwise would never exist because they have the money to take risks. Creativity flourished in the early days. I now hear that there is a shift back toward linear programming — weekly drops instead of binge watching is coming back, Ad breaks are coming back, like you say, it’s evolving. By the time someone has read this it will have probably changed again. As long as there’s still good entertainment for people to watch, that’s all I care about.

Oh man, who knows. Just to be engrossed in the story is enough for me.

Only roles that haven’t been written yet. Something I never could expect or imagine is always going to be the most thrilling.