EXCLUSIVE: Gemma Arterton has revealed to Deadline that she will star in the five-part ITV adaptation of Tom Bradby’s ITV spy thriller Secret Service.
She’ll play a senior UK intelligence officer who goes rogue in order to uncover a Russian mole embedded in the highest echelons of the British government. “It’s so timely,” Arteton tells me during an exclusive interview in which she notes that Russian influence is everywhere.
“Just look at what’s happening in America,” she adds ruefully, referencing President Trump’s ever growing bromance with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Bradby, whose day job is ITV News anchor, penned his page-turning novel in 2019. However, he and co-screenwriter Jemma Kennedy (Captain Webb) have shifted the book’s gripping storyline to 2026, which is when the Potboiler Productions series, directed by feature filmmaker James Marsh, will premiere on ITV1, STV, ITVX and STV Player.
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Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained Arterton takes on the role of Kate Henderson, head of the Russia desk at the British Secret Service Intelligence, commonly known as MI6, the nation’s foreign espionage service.
It’s a world that’s not alien to the actress who starred with Daniel Craig in Bond film Quantum of Solace and Matthew Vaughn’s The King’s Man where she played a pioneering MI6 operative. She also starred with James Norton in Netflix spy drama Rogue Agent.
But, Arterton explains that Marsh, who directed Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning performance in The Theory of Everything, is a stickler for authenticity “and he wants it to be rooted in reality.”
Arterton stresses that she’s not knocking Bond movies. “We love them because they’re a heightened idea of what it’s like to be a spy,” she says.
Conversely, she says, “What I love about this Secret Service story is, it’s not James Bond. It’s not glamorous. It’s very domestic – we go back into Kate’s house, we meet her family, her husband, her two teenage children. She’s very competent at work and then she’s completely a mess when she goes home. This is what it’s really like to be a field agent. I love that we get to see all different sides of all of the actors in the show.”
Potboiler producers Gail Egan and Andrea Calderwood have helped gather a top notch ensemble that includes Rafe Spall (The English, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) as Stuart, Kate’s political advisor husband; Mark Stanley (Adolescence, Happy Valley) as the ambitious foreign secretary; Alex Kingston (Douglas Is Cancelled, Blue Bloods) as an MI6 finance guru; Roger Allam (Endeavour) as C, the be-knighted head of MI6; Amaka Okafor (Bodies, The Responder) as the Education secretary, and Khalid Abdalla (The Crown,The Day of the Jackal) who plays another central character.
Avi Nash (Black Mirror,Silo) has been cast as Rev, Kate’s savvy,hard-working deputy.
In the novel, Rev,admiringly calls Kate “a ruthless bitch.”
Arterton,rightly takes issue with that pejorative term and points out that the story in the novel has “changed quite a bit.”
She agrees,however, that Kate’s “ruthless,” adding that “she’s a maverick,which I think a lot of people in MI6 are.”
Arterton continues: “She’s very driven, she’s a truth seeker and she’ll stop at nothing to expose the truth which doesn’t necessarily go with what her job description is as a civil servant, she’s supposed to answer to people in her job.
“But, actually she goes beyond that and she defies people-her superiors- and goes rogue basically.”
However, one reason she’s so good at her job, is that she’s “hugely compassionate and cares very deeply for the regular,everyday people she recruits as spies, she really feels responsible for these people.”
Having spoken to people within MI6, Arterton wryly notes that compassion is an attribute “you’re not really supposed to have, you’re supposed to be quite cold and detached, she has that, but she also has this huge empathetic side to her.”
Arterton, who worked with Egan and Calderwood on tv comedy series Funny Woman– a favourite of mine- set in the 1960s, says that “It’s exciting to do something really relevent and contemporary, because for a very long time I haven’t, because I tend to do period stuff.”
The actress particularly enjoyed her shadowy background meetings with MI6 operatives “because they’re not supposed to speak to us”. Nonetheless, they spoke of how they’re recruited,what it’s like day-to-day and “even things like what it’s like to recruit an asset…and what sort of qualities you need to be a person who works in that way.”
Such hush-hush briefings were invaluable,she says.
“We’re trying to be super accurate,” she adds.
For example, she tells me,” you can’t just suddenly get on a plane with a gun and go to another country to go on a mission. You have to clear it with an official, that sort of stuff’s really important.”
What is it that thespians like about the spy world and why is it so alluring to them, I ask her. “I wonder myself, I think there’s always something interesting that’s similar in being an actor in that, I think to be in that world you have to be really good at lying,” she says laughing.
“It’s a kind of double life thing, it’s quite alluring this double world and it’s always nice to play people that are keeping something from someone else,” she reasons
“There’s so much more to explore,“ says Arterton hinting of ,perhaps, returning in further Secret Service exploits.
For starters, Bradby created a trilogy involving the Kate Henderson character. “MI6 have just announced that they’re getting their first female chief, ever, and that would be something cool to echo. And the world is always changing and there’s always something else to investigate… it’s definitely got legs, we’ll see how this one goes,I guess.”
I mention that Barbara Broccoli always ruled that there shouldn’t be a female James Bond.
“I felt the same,” Arterton responds. “James Bond should be its own thing. If they want there to be a female version of it, then just make something new and fresh and not trying to be something that already exists.”
When I caught up with Potboiler’s Egan, she echoed Arterton’s view that “we’re just trying to make Secret Service feel really modern. There have been changes made from the novel and Tom wants it to feel as up to date and as current as he possibly can.”
Egan, who has been involved with several John le Carré screen adaptations, including, A Most Wanted Man, and is a spy thriller buff, as am I, had early access to Bradby’s tale. It has all the elements of a really potent thriller and has the backdrop of the current political situation in Britain- and America. “It’s exciting to be doing something that has its feet in the real world,” Egan says.
And, she notes, Marsh was perfect for the task of pulling the series together, the added bonus being that he and Bradby had worked together on the feature adaptation of the writer’s Shadow Dancer novel.
The ensemble cast also includes, Aoife Hinds, Rochenda Sandall, Alma Prelec, Galaxie Clear, Harley Barton, Michael Tcherepashenets, Petar Zakavica, Miglen Mirtchev, Juris Zagars and Lana Vlady.
Marsh will direct the first three episodes, with Farren Blackburn (Gangs of London, The Winter King, A Discovery of Witches) joining to direct episodes four and five.
The production will be overseen by ITV drama commissioners, Helen Ziegler and Huw Kennair Jones. All3Media International will be responsible for the international distribution of the drama, as yet Secret Service has no U.S. partner. Filming starts soon on locations in London and Malta.
The post Breaking Baz: Gemma Arterton Arms Herself To Thwart A Russian Mole In Timely ITV Adaptation Of Tom Bradby Thriller ‘Secret Service’ appeared first on Deadline.
