What I knew immediately was that I wanted to have another perspective through which we could examine the story, this relationship, and this friendship. How were you able to “figure it out?”Ĭary: I think I had to find an opinion about Philby and about Elliott and the world that they inhabited. Let’s talk more about the adaptive process since you mentioned it, Alexander. Occasionally stuff comes along that sits up here that is just mind blowing and really inspiring, exciting and brilliantly realized. And of course to play Philby, such an interesting character, was a dream come true. There was a lot about it that I just went: This is a big. It’s sort of boiling down to the connection between these two men and this sort of fracture between them. Then of course I read it, and just found Alex’s work on the page to be so compelling and beautiful and tender and fascinating and tragic and just-epic. And so when he came to me with this, I immediately wanted to work with him again, so that was the kickoff I really just found him utterly inspiring. I’d worked with Nick before and I was most impressed with him when we did ‘A Christmas Carol’, I think in 2019. An obvious one for me in the very beginning was that Nick (Murphy) was directing it. Pearce: This was one of those ones where just everything attracted me, no question. Guy, same question for you-what attracted you to this project? He was thrilled, and he’s been a brilliant advocate of this adaptation all the way through. And I also wanted Ben’s approval-Ĭary: Yeah, I did. I wanted to add and expand on the book a bit. So then I went away and figured out how to do it-but it was hard, it’s not an easy adaptation to do because I didn’t want to regurgitate the book.

I was enamored-and then somebody did approach me to do it, and I had already read it…So, of course I said I would love to do it, not knowing how to adapt it. When we were doing ‘Homeland’, the book was something that we talked about a lot in the writers’ room and what it must have been like in that room in Beirut.

A spy among friends by ben macintyre