Interview with Sir , Writer/Director of The Worricker Trilogy: Turks & Caicos and Sundays, November 9 & 16, 2014 on MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY

One of England’s foremost playwrights, screenwriters, and film directors, Sir David Hare completes his Worricker Trilogy on MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY with two more gripping charting the exploits of spy-on-the-run Johnny Worricker, played by . Turks & Caicos and Salting the Battlefield marvelously thicken the plot started by , which first aired on MASTERPIECE in 2011. The two films bring Johnny together with fellow spook Margot Tyrrell () and lead them to a heart-stopping denouement. It’s all in a day’s work for Hare, Academy Award® screenwriting nominee for and . Actually, the writing and directing were “completely exhausting,” he says in this interview with MASTERPIECE, in which he discusses his inspiration for the trilogy, the amazing cast, the spy genre, and much else.

What is the genesis of the Worricker trilogy?

When I wrote the first one Page[ Eight], the producer at the BBC said, “We can either make a feature film, in which case it will take three years to put the money and cast together. Or we can be filming in six months if you agree that it’s television.” And I said, “Okay, let’s do it on television.” Then the BBC immediately said, “Can we please have six?”—because quantity is something television understands. And I said, “No! It takes me a year to write one of these.” In the end, we all enjoyed ourselves so much on the first one that I agreed to do two more.

Was it tricky to continue the story?

Well, I’ve done a trilogy before, so I knew that the second one [Turks & Caicos] would be the hardest. The one where you’re setting out is easy. And the one where you’re bringing things to a conclusion is easy. But the middle one is always difficult. And Turks & Caicos was a very hard film to write, partly because the subject is so difficult—about theAmerican government having been ripped off in the War on Terror and now trying to get some of its money back. That’s not easy to write about.

What was your inspiration for the films?

Everything has changed in British intelligence since the declaration of the War on Terror in 2001. Unfortunately, as part of an alliance, we have had to use intelligence gained by torture, which has been illegal in Britain for 400 years. So this has led to tremendous arguments within MI5 about the ethics of the new way of doing things—namely, surveillance, detention, rendition, torture. I had the idea of this heroic guy in MI5 who does things the old way and therefore is a little bit of a fish out of water. -more- Interview with Sir David Hare, Page 2

That would be Johnny Worricker. Is he a throwback—an homage to a John le Carré type of spy figure?

Oh, I don’t think so. John le Carré did the Cold War absolutely brilliantly, but this is a completely new situation. In a way, the message of le Carré is always, “Oh my God, in fighting the bad people we’re turning into people just as bad.”The arguments now are a little more sophisticated than in the days when we were shocked to discover that Americans and Brits behaved just as badly as the enemy. Now people are concerned with what ’s character says in the first film—when he wonders whether it’s possible to do dishonorable work in an honorable way. That’s Johnny’s dilemma.

What kind of insight do you have into what’s going on inside MI5?

Mostly a lot of people in MI5 talking to me. I was invited into MI5 to give a talk just at the turn of the century, before all of this happened. They sometimes invite outsiders in to talk about things that they’re interested in. And so I met people who have been happy to tell me what’s going on—but obviously deeply off the record.

Did you invent the Johnny Worricker role with Bill Nighy in mind?

No, I was thirty pages in before it became apparent to me that he would be perfect. Bill says that when he got the script, which begins, “A man in a blue overcoat steps onto a pavement and lights a cigarette and crosses the road,” he said, “I’m in!” There’s a wonderful phrase somebody used about him “moving like a pencil-thin shadow through the dark streets.” He just embodies the character most beautifully.

He’s amazing, but so is the rest of the cast. How did you assemble such a team?

I just go to them. The second and third films are very rare in that absolutely everybody who was offered anything accepted. I think it’s because most of the people coming on board had seen the first one. It’s also a mark of Bill’s popularity. I don’t know an actor in English-speaking cinema who doesn’t want to work with Bill Nighy. One of the wonderful things about him is that he’s not a screen-hogging actor. He’s an incredibly generous performer, and he also creates a wonderful atmosphere on set because he’s so pleasant. Winona Ryder, for one, was just in heaven to be acting with Bill.

Christopher Walken as Curtis is a perfect foil for Bill Nighy in the second film. Was that your plan?

It wasn’t inevitable. But on the other hand, Chris Walken is an actor who Bill admires very much and always wanted to work with. When they met, Chris actually said to Bill, “I’ve always thought of you as my twin.” Meaning, their approach to work is very similar. They’re both very practical, very down to Earth, very laconic, very humorous. They’re almost transatlantic cousins, the two of them. So putting the bar scenes together where they just riff together is just heaven for me as a director.

That’s when “The Great Pretender” comes on the jukebox.

Pretty obvious, yes! That's what he is. At the end of the film, we actually never know who Chris Walken is. The one thing we know is his name isn’t Curtis Pelissier! But who the hell he is, we never know, from beginning to end.

I assume the title of the third film,Salting the Battlefield, alludes to ancient Rome’s treatment of Carthage?

You’re absolutely correct. After the Romans came and wiped you out and destroyed you and killed all your young men, they then threw salt on the battlefield so that your crops would never grow. So salting the battlefield means destroying utterly, which is what current Anglo-American policy is toward Islamic terrorism. They’re trying to salt the battlefield—but not very successfully, because look at what’s happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.

-more- Interview with Sir David Hare, Page 3

What was your original vision for the films?

My original vision was that very heavy subject matter should be presented very lightly. I wanted to talk about complicated and profound moral problems—about intelligence and the way societies organize themselves to fight threats. But I wanted to do it in a way that was completely lighthearted and easy to digest—that was fun, really, and had a humorous tone to it.

But to make a rather profound point…

To make a series of points about the way the intelligence services are running the country at the moment. In both of our countries, there’s a strong feeling that the intelligence services are out of control, and that there’s no longer any democratic oversight. In a way, the real business of government has moved from government to intelligence. That’s why it’s such an exciting subject to write about. Look at the obvious point: Obama came in making various promises about intelligence malpractice, which he’s been unable to do a single thing about. Here we are six years into his presidency and there’s been absolutely no change whatsoever. That tells you where the power is nowadays.

Do you think spying has achieved a bad name since the Cold War?

It depends on your view of the Cold War, doesn’t it? Look, be clear: I do believe that there is a danger to civilians, and there clearly is a threat against Western societies from Islamic terrorism. It happens to be nothing like the scale of threat that we faced in Britain in the 1970s from Irish terrorism. We are fighting a much, much smaller threat with a much, much larger apparatus. Somehow things have gotten totally out of proportion. I don’t remember in the 1970s it being necessary to curtail our liberties to the degree that they’re now curtailed. However, I don’t deny that there is a threat, and I don’t deny that I feel grateful that there are people watching out for that threat on my behalf.

In the third film, you make the point that there is ubiquitous video surveillance in Britain, while that’s not the case in Germany.

It’s absolutely true. The people in Germany lived first of all through the Nazis and secondly through the Stasi—the East German secret service. So at this point in German history, they have rather strong views about individual rights, which would be wonderful if we had in England, but we don’t.

There are no explosions or notable weapons in these films, which must be unusual in the spy genre.

Hitchcock said that suspense is the bomb not going off, because once the bomb’s gone off, the tension’s gone. The point I wanted to make is that I don’t believe British citizens are killed by the British intelligence services. So if I wanted Johnny to be at risk, what was the risk? The risk is that his life will be made unlivable: no bank account, impossible to get a job, rejected from society. As ’s character says in the third film, “You’ve done it to others. Now we’ll do it to you.” That’s the threat, not a slug of metal in the stomach. What I was trying to do was create suspense and tension when the threat was not that someone would burst into the room with a machine gun, because when people burst into the room with a machine gun, I cease to be interested. But that’s just me.

How do you pick your projects?

I had moved between television and the theater for a long time. Then there was a certain point in the early nineties when it was possible for me to either go to or to continue in the theater, just because I wrote a that was popular.

-more- Interview with Sir David Hare, Page 4

Which one was that?

Damage was the screenplay that sort of opened up Hollywood to me. At that point, I decided that I wanted to work principally in the theater and as a playwright. But in the last few years I’ve returned to filmmaking. It’s been fabulous for me, because I’ve enjoyed directing on film much more than I enjoyed it twenty years ago.

Are there film directors that you admire and try to emulate?

Oh, yeah!

Who would they be?

I’ve already said that Hitchcock understood suspense much better than some modern directors. So obviously Hitchcock is lurking behind these three films.

These films also hark back to French films from the fifties and sixties.

Absolutely. That’s my cinema. That’s the cinema I grew up with and adored: Louis Malle, obviously, with whom I made Damage and whom I had adored from when I was a student, and Costa-Gavras when he was making those political thrillers very early on. I adored those films.

So are you trying to recreate the films you loved when you were growing up?

Yes, that’s what says. When she walked onto the set in Wetherby, she said, “Oh, my God! This is like thirty years ago, David. Is your entire purpose in working in the cinema to recreate the atmosphere of your childhood?” And I said, “Vanessa, I’m afraid it is.”

Will there be more films in the Johnny Worricker series?

I don’t think so. A lot of people are very keen there should be more. I think the reason that these films hit a nerve and have the success they do is that they restore some of the old pleasures of cinema. They’re attractively shot, and they’re about something— which is rare. But also they’re humorous, and they’re full of completely wonderful actors. So not surprisingly, there are a lot of people asking me to do more. But they’re completely exhausting. I’m shattered!

I especially enjoy the many small touches—like the particular books that Johnny and Margot are reading, their aliases, the music.

There’s nothing in the films that isn’t meant to be there. There is a huge amount of thought and preparation and work going into them. That’s what I mean about them being exhausting. I really wanted to put as much effort into writing three television films as I have in the past into writing three stage plays, and do television the honor of taking it one hundred percent seriously.

Can you compare how your film work is different from your theater work?

The only thing I would say is that movies have to move. At the end of the fifty-day shoot for the last two films, the producer added up the number of locations and it came to ninety. In other words, we’d been on ninety locations in fifty days. This puts us all under almost impossible pressure. But, you know, my movies do move! They’re like a feature film in the sense that you don’t go back to the same location to have long conversations in the same old place, which you do on television. They are made like movies and cut like movies and acted like movies. If you’re on tiny budgets, as we are, this means you have to be fantastically well prepared and you have to work with very professional actors and a very professional crew.

-more- Interview with Sir David Hare, Page 5

What are you working on at the moment?

We’re doing a stage adaptation of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which is a book by Katherine Boo who spent three years in a slum in India. It’s about the life of the poor in a slum and how the poor actually survive day to day. , who has just taken over as Director at the National Theater, is going to do it at the National Theater in November. It’ll be an all-Asian company.

What would you like audiences to take away from the Worricker trilogy?

Oh, pleasure, really! I want to restore the pleasures of cinema. You know, cinema has lost a lot of its pleasures, because it’s so overly sensational. I am trying to recapture how incredibly delicious narrative cinema used to be when I was young. I hope they will take pleasure away from these films. All the people who contact me use that word. They say, “It’s just such a pleasure to watch these actors.” I hope it’s also a pleasure to try to puzzle out these complicated plots. I personally don’t find what’s called entertainment very entertaining. I find it quite depressing. This is meant to give pleasure back.

Nicely put. Thank you!

Worricker is a , , BeaglePug, MASTERPIECE co-production in association with NBCUniversal for BBC. It is written and directed by David Hare. The Executive Producers are Gareth Neame, Bill Nighy, Christine Langan, Ed Wethered, and Nigel Marchant. The Executive Producer for MASTERPIECE is Rebecca Eaton. The producers are Celia Duval, , and David Barron.

MASTERPIECE is presented on PBS by WGBH Boston. Rebecca Eaton is Executive Producer. Funding for the series is provided by Viking River Cruises and Ralph Lauren Corporation with additional support from public television viewers and contributors to The MASTERPIECE Trust, created to help ensure the series' future. pbs.org/masterpiece

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