#The night manager series#

John le Carré himself (or David Cornwell, as he's otherwise known) offered his own opinion on Olivia during a script meeting in March last year. She has appeared to be the underdog for so long, but appearances can be deceiving. Contrast this slippery Machiavellian character, opaque in all his dealings, with Burr – direct, clear, clean. In that moment they are so opposite: on the one hand, here's a sophisticated man in a cream linen suit, who seems to have the world at his feet, who never breaks a sweat and on the other, there's Angela Burr, heavily pregnant, who has him cornered. There's something really wonderful about the way she plays that.Ī confrontation between Roper and Burr – Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman – towards the end is thrilling. At first, her appearance makes her seem vulnerable, in a traditionally male-dominated world – but she stands up to them, uncowed by their bullish threats. She's surrounded by men in pinstripe suits, and you can sense a nasty, latent misogyny. There are some great scenes in The Night Manager where she gets ambushed by the higher-ups, the Whitehall mandarins of the intelligence services. She's no-nonsense, and has very little vanity. She is instinctively warm, but in her work she has shown how powerful she can be – take a film like Tyrannosaur, in which she has such depth and breadth.

Olivia is a good person and she is absolutely no pushover. When people say that someone is a good person, it sometimes suggests they might be a pushover. Burr continues her work and pursuit of Roper with a total selflessness and an unwavering strength, without any regard for her own safety, security or health. Thus Angela Burr was born, and the part was rewritten to incorporate Olivia's pregnancy, which I believe adds to the story because it makes her courage even more extraordinary. But all she wanted to do was to be on her feet.

It was going to be a gruelling shoot, spanning four locations – Switzerland, London, Morocco and Majorca – cramming six hours of story into 75 days. Still more incredible that Olivia was not only willing, but keen to do this during her second trimester. 'The only thing is, Olivia is pregnant.' It was an incredible idea. 'I think it should be Olivia Colman,' she said. But the first thing Susanne said to me was: 'I think Burr should be a woman.' 'That changes things,' I thought (rather obviously). Burr is a kind of barrel-chested Yorkshireman – very funny, practical, unimpeachably decent, a moral crusader, a man you'd want to have a pint with. In Le Carré's novel, Leonard Burr is an intelligence operative working on the fringes of MI6who recruits Jonathan Pine. That November, I met Susanne in London for the first time. Sometimes the best interpreters of the British experience are not British, and we all thought Susanne would find both the human and universal truths within the drama. The producer Stephen Garrett suggested the Oscar winning Danish director Susanne Bier to direct.

#The night manager series#

In the autumn of 2014, Hugh and I signed up to join the six-part television series for the BBC and AMC: Hugh would play the arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, described by Le Carré as 'the worst man in the world', with myself as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier, the night manager of the title, who is sent to infiltrate Roper's crew.

His 1993 novel The Night Manager has long been among the favourites of Hugh Laurie, who had been trying to get involved in an adaptation for years. He's a great analyst of our national psyche, as much as a master storyteller of espionage thrillers. There's something in John le Carré's writing and the world he creates that is intrinsically British.