Eddie Redmayne might best be known as the wand-waving magizoologist who perfected the art of the full-body crab, but that doesn’t mean he’s the only one capable of stealing a scene.
As one might expect, Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal does, in fact, feature Redmayne committing artistic theft. The modern-day adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s novel (and the 1973 film of the same name) finds him playing the titular Jackal, a ruthless assassin being pursued by Lashana Lynch’s MI6 agent Bianca following a series of high-profile hits. Both actors churn out impressive, vulnerable performances alongside a stellar supporting cast, but it’s the character hiding in plain sight ⏤ not unlike a master marksman ⏤ who gives them a run for their scene-stealing money.
That character is Jackal’s geography, and as Redmayne and Lynch pointed out during a recent press junket, this was no accident. “It was a long shoot,” Redmayne said when I asked how long it took to film a series of such a vast scope and scale. “Eight months,” Lynch confirmed, “out of Budapest in Hungary. But then Croatia…and a couple of weeks in London.” Lynch then went on to describe what it was like not solely working on sound stages for Jackal, but rather the world stage.
“When you get to play with locations, I think we both worked on sound stages and green screen and blue screen and those things bring – you really have to tap into imagination for those things. Here you have the beauty of your environment, and really utilizing that as a character in the piece. And it’s – that character is so important throughout these 10 episodes, you get to really live with each of these characters’ experience within those places. And it just really raises the sophistication and the scope of the show.”
Lynch’s green screen and sound stage experience includes, but is certainly not limited to, her work in Marvel’s Captain Marvel, in which she played fighter pilot Maria Rambeau (before surprising us with a few unexpected cameos in future MCU projects). Redmayne had similar imaginative responsibilities when he thrice played Newt Scamander in the Wizarding World’s Fantastic Beasts series. While locales in these kinds of universes (multiverses?) can be memorable, they often play second fiddle to CGI and epic battle sequences, putting them in more of a set-dressing role than a full-blown supporting character.
The realistic nature of Jackal, on the other hand, required a much more grounded approach, including believable backdrops as Bianca pursues the Jackal across multiple European countries. If the plot sounds like something out of a fresh 007 entry — a character Lynch is no stranger to — rest assured: Jackal’s 10-episode arc is not all car chases and explosions. While there’s no shortage of thrilling elements and eye-popping surprises, the series is more of a slow, suspenseful burn than the typical two-hour spy thriller. The luxury of episodic storytelling also allowed both Lynch and Redmayne room to blossom in their characters’ complexities, something Jackal’s vast and breathtaking geography only amplified.
“You live in the beauty of it, and you live also in the darkness of some of these locations that weren’t originally dark,” Lynch explained. “But through the show, we’ve made them quite, like, eerie and like, sometimes not grotesque, but just a little gray. And I think color was something that we spoke about quite a lot, especially, you Eddie, when we were having our conversations as execs.” As Lynch pointed out, in addition to starring in Jackal, both she and Redmayne acted as producers, with Redmayne executive-producing and Lynch co-executive producing.
“It’s like, how do we bring the lightness and the darkness? How do we celebrate, you know, locations like Spain, or the architecture of some of these places, like Budapest has wonderful architecture and it was a character. I find that really, really helpful to balance the sound stages and location, because it just helps, it just brings out different parts of you as you’re characterizing.”
Despite playing a cold-blooded killer, Redmayne had positive thoughts to share regarding the bright side of such a rigorous shoot. “I just love that — that the fantasy of when you’re sitting in your living room and being taken to extraordinary places in the world, and that was something that was intrinsic to the original book and movie, was that escapism. And I’ve always also gone, ‘I want to be in White Lotus,’ I want to be in one of those shows where they get to travel to beautiful hotels. And we got it, yeah.”
They certainly did, and when this author noted how one prominent location featured throughout Jackal was particularly stunning, Redmayne and Lynch shared an amused reaction. “We’re not gonna deconstruct whether that is, whether [it] really looks like that, or whether it may be several cobbled together,” he teased. “I’m sure you can Airbnb it.” And, if you want to know which locale he’s referring to, head on over to Peacock, where you can now stream The Day of the Jackal’s first five episodes.
Published: Nov 15, 2024 09:50 am