Original-Cin Q&A: Eddie Redmayne on Bringing 'The Day of the Jackal' to TV

Oscar and Tony Award winning actor Eddie Redmayne takes to the small screen in the new thriller series, The Day of the Jackal.

The 10-part adaptation is based on the seminal novel by Frederick Forsyth and subsequent award-winning 1973 film of the same name.

In The Day of the Jackal, the cunning and elusive hitman known as The Jackal will meet his match when his character comes up against Bond star Lashana Lynch as MI6 agent Bianca. Redmayne stars as The Jackal, an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin who makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee.

Bonnie Laufer spoke to Redmayne via ZOOM from London about working on the series.

The Day of the Jackal begins airing in Canada on Showcase and Stack TV on November 14th.

Eddie Redmayne in one of his guises in The Day of the Jackal

ORIGINAL-CIN:   Not that you shy away from tackling difficult roles, but this is a very ambitious undertaking. Plus, you also came on as Executive Producer.  Did this one scare you in any way?

EDDIE REDMAYNE:  They all scare me, Bonnie, to be honest. (Laughs).  But I've realized with me that that is quite a galvanizing force.

The original movie of The Day of the Jackal. was one of my favorite films growing up. It was one of those battered VHS tapes that my family  watched on repeat and I don't know what it was about it, but I found it so compelling.  This idea of a kind of chameleon, actor, assassin, and how he manages to always be one step ahead. So when these scripts for the series  arrived in my inbox, there was obviously great trepidation, because you don't want to butcher these things you hold in such high esteem.

What I read was something that was so contemporary and yet retained all of those old-school qualities of the original that I immediately warmed to, that I thought it was the sort of television that I would love to watch. I felt kind of compelled to do it, and came on as a producer to help guide it into the world in a way that kind of married with my instincts, I suppose.

O-C: How refreshing is it for you to be able to take a guy like this and flesh him out over 10 episodes, as opposed to just doing a film?

REDMAYNE:  One of the reasons that it appealed to me so much was that when you watched the 1970s movie, for those who haven't seen it, Edward Fox who plays The Jackal, is so charismatic and so enigmatic that you don't get a sense of what's going on internally.

That works beautifully in a two hour film, but obviously you can't sustain that for 10 hours. What I love about this exploration is you get to see this man who, on the one hand, is a ferocious, talented and sort of casually ruthless assassin, but he is also trying to marry that with being a dad and a loving husband.

Of course, those things are complex to meld, and yet he somehow believes, or has the arrogance to believe that he can. I love television. I love when I fall in love with characters. I love getting to sit with them for hours on end. And so, when I read the first three episodes of this I thought, “God, this is a character which I could really sink my teeth into.”

I was also excited about the mimicry that disguises the sort of old school spy craft, which was the stuff that I used to love in movies from the ‘70s. It was great to be able to pull all that in as well.

O-C: When you take on a role, you completely transform. With playing the jackal you get so many opportunities to lose yourself in so many different looks and personalities.  Was there one in particular that maybe challenged you the most, or that you were really looking forward to tackling?

REDMAYNE:  I don't want to give away too many spoilers for those who haven't seen it. But the when I read the first episode, there's a kind of an acting challenge in those first 25 minutes that Ronan Bennett, the writer, had put in, in which I had to play a different nationality, a different age, a totally different physicality that involved, like, some quite intense mimicry and physical work.

And it's worked so beautifully in the script, but it felt like this very aggressive challenge as an actor. And I love that feeling of feeling outside your comfort zone and being pushed to things.

I don't speak a word of German. So I got to work with a brilliant language coach who had to teach me phonetically the kind of music of these lines. But then also you had to shift your voice down a couple of octaves, so, you know, to make him 75 years old and a chain smoker and all of that stuff. This whole series felt like an actor's playground for me.

O-C: Wearing those prosthetics couldn’t have been all that glamorous.

REDMAYNE:  Oh, they were far from glamorous.  Shooting in prosthetics in the summer in Hungary,  was a challenge because it was so hot.  Not to be too gross, but there's nowhere for the sweat to go under because it's glued onto your face. So they have to come and then prick the prosthetic with pins and then all of this disgusting sweat kind of oozes out.

O-C: I understand that you brought some very trustworthy people to help you prepare for this grueling and complicated role.

REDMAYNE:  Yes,  only the best for this shoot. (Laughs).  My movement coach, Alexandra Reynolds, from The Theory of Everything came on board as well as Gladiator II military advisor Paul Bidiss to help me with the weapons training.  There were so many talented people who helped make this happen from the  prosthetics department, costume designer, and dialect coach — to nail down the Jackal's many personas. The most important element for me was bringing everyone together to make sure those things cohere properly.

O-C: Lashana Lynch not only stars as your adversary Bianca, but she also took on a producing role. You don’t have scenes together, because she is trying to hunt you down. But what in your opinion does she bring to the series?

REDMAYNE:  Lashana is just so wonderful and what I love most about her character is that she brings some vulnerability to her. I adore Lashana and I think she's formidable, not only as an actor, but as a producer. 

What I love about this series is you have these two characters, both of whom are extraordinarily talented, passionate and meticulous, but who will stop at nothing to get their jobs done.

What comes with that is great moral ambiguity, and one of the things that appealed to Lashana - who's played characters in MI6 before - is that this character was different. 

I don't think she was particularly keen to come back until she found a character that was naughty and complicated and messy and could show all of the spectrum of trying to navigate obsession with your work, whilst trying to sort of marry that with being a mother and a wife.

She enjoyed the spectrum of qualities in Bianca. She's also a formidable producer. She has instincts that are not only for the words and the work and the cuts, but she's also incredibly musical. So things like, when we were trying to work out our title sequence, it was Lashana who suggested a singer named Celeste, who is the artist that sings the opening track for the series.