How ‘The Day of the Jackal' producers unlocked their contemporary adaptation of the spy thriller

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2 days ago

Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant had long wanted to adapt Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, which had already been turned into a 1973 film directed by Fred Zinneman and starring Edward Fox. But they had always tabled the discussion because "I don't think think the film can be bettered," Neame tells Gold Derby.
"Several rounds we just said, 'No, we're not gonna do anything with this. We're not gonna pursue it,'" he continues.
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But the producing duo could never forget about it and eventually found a way to put their own spin on the spy thriller: by bringing the cat-and-mouse chase into the 21st century as a 10-episode TV series to delve deeper into the psyche of the titular assassin.
And it worked. The Day of the Jackal has been a hit for Peacock and Sky and was renewed for a second season before the first one ended. Eddie Redmayne stars as the Jackal, who's being pursued by MI6 agent Bianca Lawson (Lashana Lynch). As part of their update, the show flips the ending of the film, in which the Jackal is killed. Redmayne's Jackal survives, kills Bianca, and the season ends with him in pursuit of an unpaid debt for his last kill, and his wife Nuria (Úrsula Corberó) and their son, who had just left him.
Below, Neame and Marchant explain their creative breakthrough, casting Redmayne, and if there was ever a thought of having a new Jackal every season.
Gold Derby: I know you guys have wanted to adapt the book for a while and you finally landed on this iteration, which includes changing parts of the ending. How did you guys get to this place?
Gareth Neame: We were aware that we had access to this property because we're Universal and they made the Zinneman movie, but we weren't really very interested in a remake because I don't think the film can be bettered. We loved the the original. We also really admired the Frederick Forsyth novel. So we did spend quite a lot of time thinking about it actually. Several rounds we just said, "No, we're not gonna do anything with this. We're not gonna pursue it." But we couldn't stop thinking about it. And then we thought, "Well, OK, we're not gonna remake it, but why don't let's contemporize it."
Then we thought about the dramatic differences between a book and a standalone movie, and of course all the strengths of episodic television and how that is such a different dramatic form, and it would allow us to tell actually quite a different story, but using the major kind of foundations of it. So the English assassin, the cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, the high-profile target, and a lot of other sort of specific elements within the book which we were able to take. But of course, a huge amount of it was new invention by our writer Ronan Bennett, and there's a whole swath of of new material in, in our version. And then things like the ending we wanted to change obviously. We're making an episodic show here, so that that dictated for practical reasons a different ending, but also we just wanted to do something differently. We changed the gender of the of the pursuer, which makes the makes the show feel much more balanced and more contemporary.
Was your your intention when you decided to turn it into a show to always have it run multiple seasons because it could have been a limited series, just one and done?
Nigel Marchant: Yeah, we could have done it that way, but I think again, leaning into long-form television and the opportunity that that presents itself, is really painting a story on a bigger canvas. The Jackal couldn't be a ghost over long-form. In a two-hour movie, he can be. So we had to show another side to him, and that's why we brought out his family and his home life and the balancing acts he tries to do. So I think it's really just leaning into long-form television that that makes it an exciting proposition to us and to an audience hopefully.
I love that he survived because I think over the course of the season, everyone just kind of fell in love with him, even though they shouldn't.
Neame: That just the appeal, isn't it, of storytelling when you have these antiheroes that you don't quite understand what it is about their makeup that that you actually find attractive. And it's a really curious thing what this kind of storytelling can do with our own moral compass.
Marchant: I think that's the joy of the the original movie and book that you're sat there rooting for the Jackal. And then it's a slap in the face every now and then when you you realize he is an assassin, or what he does and, and it brings you up with a short jolt that you're, in effect, rooting for the wrong person.
SEE How Eddie Redmayne crafted his 'deeply unflappable' assassin on The Day of the Jackal
Was there a thought of killing him and but just having a new Jackal in Season 2? The renewal was announced before the finale aired, and I think some people's thinking was like, "Oh, they'll kill off the Jackal and there'll be a new Jackal in Season 2."
Neame: It would have been a way to go, but I think what we're trying to do is to say, "This really is the best person in the world of what he does." And so the idea that somebody else would be introduced who would be as good, I think, as Nigel says, with series television that you want to root for that actor in that role. The ending in the movie is a full closure. It's a movie, and we're making series television. The appeal of series television is more and more episodes, and ideally, I think character is actually more important than plot. So knowing that character and the actor who plays him, I think, is an important thing to take us forward into the next season.
Marchant: Yeah, and Eddie being so good in that role as well. Why would you not carry on? And there felt plenty more we could explore with that character and his journey.
Eddie is incredible in this, and I think his performance has surprised a lot of people, even though we've been watching him for so long. I think people are not used to seeing this play this cool, steely assassin.
Neame: He was, a couple years ago, in The Good Nurse, where he played a very sinister character, and we were definitely watching that at the around the time that we offered him this part. It wasn't really that [film], but the reason why we were interested in him is we definitely wanted to lean into the Englishness. We wanted to honor the original Edward Fox performance in the original movie, and kind of think, "Who is this subsequent generation that people who revere the original film would sort of feel that our Jackal was a sort of descendant of the original?" So we wanted a very English actor, but obviously we wanted a star who had very big profile. And Eddie does that. He's also wears the clothes well, which is what Edward Fox did as well at that time, very suave, very Savile Row, public school English.
We didn't know Eddie, but obviously we've seen all his performances, and the thing that they all seem to have in common is this kind of meticulous preparation physicality. You know, they're all all the roles look like. They're very chewy, roles that he's that he's attracted to, do things that he has to prepare for. And we knew that was the case here because it involved all the prosthetic work, the disguises, the new languages, he had to learn the action movement, you know, we thought, and and, of course, learning all the trade craft with the guns and this kind of we thought we didn't know him, but we, you know, he thought, I suspect he's going to find this really intriguing. And he responded to us very, very quickly when we sent the script. So we have a hunch he was probably been contemplating, because he obviously hasn't been in a TV series.
And he responded to us very, very quickly when we sent the script. So we have a hunch he was probably been contemplating — because he obviously hasn't been in a TV series. He did some limited series kind of near the start of his career, but he's been otherwise exclusively a features actor. So I think, like many film actors in the last decade, they're increasingly thinking about television, and I think he probably has been looking for the right project. And then he read this, and thought, "This could be it." We discovered was a big fan of the original film.
Yeah, and it's his dad's favorite. So much of his performance and the show is about stillness and patience. I talked to Eddie and he said you all really wanted the show to be about the craft work and weren't worried about drawing out long scenes. What were those discussions like?
Neame: Yeah, absolutely right. Because the book, it's very technical. They're a whole chapter. They're not very long chapters. But there's a whole chapter about forging a passport, and there's a whole chapter about him saying what sort of gun he needs. We couldn't do a hit of the week. There's a target right at the beginning, which is kind of the old job that he doesn't get paid for. And then there's a new job, and that's got to span the 10 hours. We did not want to do [a hit] every week. That sound that feels a bit kind of 1980s, you need it needed to have a certain kind of rhythm if there was going to just be this one hit across the [season]. I mean, obviously there's a lot of collateral damage in the show beyond the the target, but you're right about that stillness. That's why Ronan introduced — not in the book — the idea of the birdwatcher, and that somebody who was able to and enjoyed sitting there for five hours waiting to find this one bird that he's looking for would have that sense of patience.
Speaking of collateral damage, in the finale, he kills this elderly couple, Trevor (Philip Jackson) and Liz (Michelle Newell), and I feel like he regrets that kill the most. He had promised them he wasn't going to kill them, and he also said they remind him of his parents. Between this and the Nuria plotline, do you think the Jackal is just a family guy at heart, or at least is envious of a normal life?
Neame: I think what you see is his meticulous planning in the early episodes starts to become, obviously, more and more frayed. I think it's only when he kills this old couple that, you know, he says, before he kills them, "Why?" When she stabs him, he says, "Why did you have to do that? The two of you were going to walk away from here with your lives." I think he kind of breaks down at that moment because he realizes he's a professional, and he kills people, but he does not want to randomly kill innocent people. And although there is collateral damage, there are other moments where, across the show, you see where he avoids killing people.
Marchant: I think also there's that kind of misconception at the beginning with the Jackal that he thinks he can keep these two different parts of his life completely separate. And I think throughout the show, we see how they merge on each other. So by the end, the wheels have really come off, as Gareth said. It's just he's having to do things he wouldn't want to do in a normal world. The meticulous planning that has gone on before, now he can't do, and he just needs to escape. [With Nuria] I think we kind of wanted, always, for the audience to be on the fence, "Was this just a cover for him? Does he really love her?" And that's part of the journey that we go on in that first season. And then at the end of the season, we're left asking the question, "Would she ever go back to him, even if he found her and and again? That's what we can look to explore in future seasons.
Marcell Piti/Carnival Film & Television Limited
She doesn't leave him until the very end, and it feels like she she only made the decision to leave him because she felt like she and their kid were in danger.
Marchant: I think that's absolutely right.
I love the shot of the Jackal and Bianca in the two-way mirror in the finale. They are the mirror image of each other. How did that come about?
Marchant: That really Anu [Menon], who was our director on that last block and wanted that shot. And I think again, we kind of tempted the audience for such a while of these two different characters coming together and the near-misses. And so finally, when we get there, they are two faces of the same coin. They've got so much more in common than you think. And both have done some terrible things along our journey of the first season, sometimes in the pursuit of good, but they are that kind of mirror image of each other. And she brought that visual visually alive for us.
At the end, we learn that Bianca had texted Halcrow (Chukwudi Iwuji) that Isabel (Lia Williams) had sent her after the Jackal. What do you think it says about her that she's willing to go even when she suspects something might be amiss with Isabel?
Neame: She knows she's been on this pursuit, but she cannot stop herself from trying to her target. It's beautifully, sort of morally complex that she's been sent there by Isabel and given the OK to go ahead with that mission that she knows she's in danger. But I think she feels that they are equally matched, and that she will get him.
Marchant: I absolutely think [Bianca suspects Isabel], and that's why she sends the text that there's a kind of level of insurance there, or certainly lead somebody else to look at what had gone on.
What can you share about Season 2?
Marchant: We leave [Season 1] with two big kind of questions in terms of tracking Nuria and seeking revenge. So that's the starting point, I would say, of the next season.
Neame: He's lost everything. He's lost her, but he's also lost not only a home, but in his home, he's got a whole kind of headquarters of his tools of his trade. He's lost everything, so we're going to have to think see him kind of rebuild from where we left him.
In Season 1, we got the Afghanistan flashback. Will you tease out more of his backstory in Season 2?
Neame: It's a very incomplete story. What we do know is how he moved from serving as military soldier in the armed forces with a particular expertise [and] got drawn into this kind of starting to become commercial assassins and not just military snipers. But that's really the only bit, and I suppose a bit of the backstory of how he and Nuria get together, but I think there's still a lot more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to reveal.
Season 1 of The Day of the Jackal is streaming on Peacock.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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