Note: This story contains spoilers from “Slow Horses” Season 6, Episode 3.
Olivia Cooke did not know if she was ever going to return to “Slow Horses,” but she hoped she would.
The actress made an immediate impression as Sidonie “Sid” Baker, a fellow MI5 agent who was introduced in “Slow Horses” Season 1 as River Cartwright’s (Jack Lowden) only real friend in Slough House. Their sarcasm-laced banter did wonders to help establish the show’s cutting sense of humor. And then, just as soon as she had been introduced, Sid sustained a bullet wound to the head at the end of the show’s second episode and was not seen again. Later, it was revealed that she had actually been sent to Slough House by MI5 higher-up Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) to spy on River.
Cooke shot all of her scenes for “Slow Horses” Season 1 back in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, “Slow Horses” author Mick Herron had not yet published his 2021 novel “Slough House,” in which Sid unexpectedly resurfaces. Her return was not, therefore, a predetermined eventuality when Cooke signed on to star in the Apple TV series. At the time, that did not matter to her. She just wanted to be a part of it.
“It was something that I hadn’t read or seen before. Usually, British spy crime thrillers, they’re just so slick. This was the antithesis of that,” Cooke told TheWrap in a recent interview, reflecting on what drew her to the series that has since emerged as a popular hit and a perennial Emmys darling for Apple TV. During the filming of Season 1, Cooke said there were merely “murmurings” that her character might return someday.
“It felt like the rumor mill was abuzz and [there was] a lot of wink, wink, nudge, nudge going on of, ‘We’ll see you later down the line.’ But I didn’t know if they were going to make good on that offer,” the actress explained. “I mean, I was hoping and praying because I just had the best time.” When she found out that Herron had brought Sid back in one of his books, she found herself hoping, “Please, be faithful to these books!”
“It’s unlike any job I’ve had before, and I think you can tell on the screen,” Cooke said. “Everyone’s just having so much fun.”
She got her wish in 2024 when work began on “Slow Horses” Season 6, which adapts the plot of Herron’s “Slough House” and, consequently, features Sid’s long-awaited return. The character appeared briefly at the end of last week’s episode, but it is in this week’s aptly titled “Resurrection” that Sid gets her turn in the spotlight again. Reuniting with Lowden’s River Cartwright, she explains with her trademark sarcasm that she did not, in fact, die from the gunshot wound she sustained back in “Slow Horses” Season 1.
Instead, she was quietly relocated to a remote village by MI5 and her survival was kept a secret. She was forced to go on the run by the two Russian assassins (Kyle Soller and MyAnna Buring) that have been hunting the slow horses all season. Sid and River spend much of “Resurrection” trying to elude those same assassins, all while deducing that they were likely sent after Sid because of a mysterious assassination on Russian soil.
In between her and River’s multiple, desperate escapes from their gun-toting pursuers are combative, sometimes flirtatious conversations between the two characters that demand the same chemistry from Cooke and Lowden that they demonstrated in Season 1. Fortunately, Cooke said it felt like “no time had passed” when she arrived on the “Slow Horses” Season 6 set.
“It was bizarre. We all picked up where we left off,” Cooke told TheWrap. “The added bonus was getting to come into a production that was so well-oiled, so sort of colloquial at that point. They have their own language, so for me it was just a joy to slip into it without the trial-and-error of having to figure out how each other’s chemistry works and what version of yourself to have to be around everyone. It was really seamless. I felt very lucky to have been able to slip into that so effortlessly.”
Cooke said the same was true for her and Lowden’s on-set chemistry. Relearning the rhythms of their characters’ sarcastic banter was surprisingly easy for the two actors, thanks in no small part to what they’d learned about each other on the set of “Slow Horses” Season 1.
“I feel like that’s what Jack and I discovered when we first worked together — that really easy chemistry and a real urge to take the piss out of one another and to poke each other,” Cooke said with a laugh. “It came right back. It’s sort of the insult Olympics, seeing which one will sting the most.”
Looking back on it now, Cooke said the shooting of “Slow Horses” Season 6 felt “a bit like we were making our own independent film,” one starring her and Lowden as its leads. According to Cooke, that was due partly to the atmosphere created on the show’s set by “Slow Horses” Season 6 director Adam Randall, who wants every scene — whether it be a tense chase through a cattle-filled barn or a simple conversation around a dinner table — to feel “as fresh and immediate as possible.”
“It is crazy because a lot of that stuff is really well-planned and the set pieces are huge, but it does always just feel really immediate as well,” Cooke said. “That’s how Adam Randall, who I adore, loves to work. [He has this] guerilla style where he doesn’t want to plan everything to a T. He does want to leave a lot of room for us to discover it in the moment as well, discover it on the day.”
The actress compared the immediacy of the “Slow Horses” set to the slower pace of “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” spin-off she is a principal cast member of. That HBO show premiered in 2022, the same year as “Slow Horses,” and yet it has produced to date half the number of seasons.
“I’m on a show where there’s one series every two years [and] every eye is dotted and every T is crossed because the show is so gargantuan. That is just the case with period drama in general because everything needs to be built and made from scratch,” Cooke said. “When you are making more of a modern thriller [like ‘Slow Horses’], you’ve got more at your disposal, and that is just the culture of the show. It feels fast paced on the screen, but it also has this momentum when you’re filming it as well.”
“Slow Horses” Season 6 releases new episodes Wednesdays on Apple TV.
The post ‘Slow Horses’ Star Olivia Cooke Breaks Down Sid and River’s Action-Packed Reunion: ‘Unlike Any Job I’ve Had Before’ appeared first on TheWrap.
