SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD – Jennifer Ehle Q&A

28th September 2015

SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD IS AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 14^th SEPTEMBER AND AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY™ AND DVD FROM 28^TH SEPTEMBER, COURTESY OF ENTERTAINMENT ONE

Jennifer Ehle Q&A

On her character

Geraldine is very patriotic; she believes in her country, she believes in maintaining the safety of her country at all costs. She’s in between the old guard and the new guard, she’s the middle guard and she’s trying to figure out how to guarantee the future of the security of the country. I admire Geraldine a lot, she’s a lot of fun to play and her objectives are so clear, the fact that she’s female is actually completely irrelevant to her function in the story and that’s a very rare thing to find.

There’s more back story with Geraldine than I’ve done for other characters but back stories are fun, I’m not sure if any of it ever bleeds through but I think it’s impossible as an actor to not have your imagination start embellishing and building something to support the characters function. She doesn’t have children; she has a niece that she’s very closed to.

About the story and politics

What is it about spy movies? We all love them, when I read the script I felt like I had just watched a really good thriller and I was so excited that I was going to be a part of that. I don’t know loads about the genre and what’s happening with it as such but I know with this movie it is not black and white at all, there’s lots of hazy grey areas and if you look, the other day when I was on the set and I looked up and saw this massive picture of Elyes who plays Quasim and there was Kit who plays Will and they look so similar and it depends on where you’re born. I mean so much of what is right and what is wrong is to do with how you’ve been raised and what your life experiences have been and here are these two sides of this coin that in another part of the world they could be different. There’s a lot of things that Quasim says that show he’s a bit of a Robin Hood, but there’s a lot of similarities between him and Kit but for all of us know there’s grey areas about how we feel about government.

Part of entertainment / art is that it’s easy to engage people with what they experience everyday and we like that, we like the fantasy idea of you like to experience something that you know is out there and you kind of trust that as it’s a movie it’s going to end up ok. I think with this one it’s a little bit more complicated, it’s not quite black and white.

I think in past generations it was quite cut and dry your loyalty to your country and your government and you were behind them at all costs, I think a lot of us now are more suspicious about the people making decisions for us and what they’re objectives are and not always convinced that our well being is taken into consideration in the decisions they make. Has this been eye opening? Yes it has, and Zero Dark Thirty also was, but it’s now interesting to be learning something about the British secret service.

On working with Bharat Nalluri and MI5

I loved working with Bharat, he’s a lovely man and he’s a great pleasure to be near. His notes are rare but they’re very spot on. I didn’t see the series but I’m tempted now. I think everybody is approaching this as fresh but I think absolutely the starting place is the world created by Spooks and there is great respect for everything that is built through the series being done. Everybody involved who was also a part of the TV series loves the show so there is nothing being thrown out from the world, but we are starting with this stand alone story. No one is safe and I think that’s a great part of the spy genre is that you don’t really know what’s going to happen or who is really on the right side, or if there is one. One thing that Bharat told us is that the money they are paid in MI5, there is a very low ceiling on it, I don’t know how it works when you get up to Deputy Director / Director but within the main body there is a really low ceiling on how much you’re paid because it has to be your life and you have to be that driven and committed doing it for ideological reasons. I think once you get to an executive position, at the time when our story is being told, I think technology and being savvy with it is not as important as if you were entering it now. I don’t know this but I can imagine that’s true. In twenty years the kids now entering that are very tech savvy it might be quite different and crucial for that tech savvy awareness. We’re evolving very fast in some ways.

SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD IS AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FROM 14^th SEPTEMBER AND AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY™ AND DVD FROM 28^TH SEPTEMBER, COURTESY OF ENTERTAINMENT ONE

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