Imagine that your best friend for almost thirty years completely betrayed you and everyone he loved for all your friendship. This is the concept behind MGM+’s latest thriller. Spy among friendsexcept that tensions have reached an all-time high: not only Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) friends, but also intelligence officers of the British MI6, and Philby is one of the most famous double agents in history, supplying the KGB with information.
“A Spy Among Friends” follows two men after Philby is discovered and subsequently pursued by British intelligence in the 1960s, switching between the beginning of Philby and Elliott’s friendship and the present, where Elliot is interrogated about his attempts to take Philby under guards in Beirut, from where he escaped and eventually went over to the side of the Soviet Union. The truth is twisted and obscured as the series follows two men throughout their lives, asking the question of how much we can truly trust those we hold dear.
Collider was happy to meet with Lewis and Pierce to discuss the series and their involvement with it. During this interview, they discussed playing real characters and what it’s like to immerse yourself in the lives of such two-faced people, as well as tell a story of betrayal and deep loss, as well as the risks we take when we love people.
Watch the full interview below or in the player above and broadcast Spy among friends on MGM+.
Obviously the story behind this show, or at least Kim Philby, he’s one of the most infamous double agents in all of history, and as an American I wasn’t completely familiar with the story. So, before you joined this project, were you familiar with any of its details?
GUY PEARCE: Well, I only knew the Cambridge Five. I knew about Kim Philby and I knew some of the other names of these five and I saw a number of shows and films that were made about these five, but I didn’t really know any details about them. as characters and people different from what was presented on the screen.
So I had to dig into it for quite some time and try to understand Philby better. And I certainly didn’t know anything about Nicholas Elliot, so it was a very interesting part of the story to really get a feel for their friendship. Because often in things we’ve seen before, the drama and intrigue is about the spy world and its life and death, and lives are at stake and countries are at war, and that these are all pretty big things, while this there was a wonderful feeling of intimacy and friendship and a betrayal of friendship about it. So it was great to try to get into some of those details and understand these people not just as spies but as people.
And this show is obviously based on the book, and you’re playing real people, but in what sense… how much can you research and rely on it, and at what point do you just have to stop and say, “Now it’s all on me. Research can’t get me that far,” especially when playing real people who are in MI5 or SAS, where obviously some details won’t be made public?
PIERCE: Yes, there comes a point, doesn’t it, when you have to put all your homework away and then get up and do it. So it’s at a different point on every job, I find.
DAMIAN LEWIS: Yes, I think that’s right. After you’ve done all your research and all your reading and you hope somehow you’ve absorbed parts of it, but then it’s very animalistic. It’s very instinctive and responsive once you’re on set. Everything is constantly changing. You have to be willing to just keep moving and changing with everything, with a clear idea of who your character is. And yes, it’s kind of a switching point.
You two play characters that have become so deeply intertwined over such a long period of time. So in terms of working together, Philby and Elliot are on a razor’s edge when they first meet in Beirut and beyond. How did you manage to find that balance together as actors?
PIERCE: Well, it’s just a natural process. I don’t think we had to go out of our way to come up with something to find it. So many things in the script. There are so many discussions that start not only between Damien and me, but obviously with Nick, our director, and Alex, our screenwriter, and questions arise. And I think I go home every night and kind of imagine this and imagine that, and how I could play this, and how I could play this. And we had a little time before we started getting to know each other and just getting to know the part that we were working on. And I think Damian and I hit it off quite easily when we met, so it wasn’t like we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
So it was an experience for me. It developed quite naturally. There was so much dialogue in this for me and for Damien, and I have to spend a lot of time learning the dialogue. That’s what I focused on, and as Damian says, “when you’re on set together, you’re ready for things to change.” And I’m also always ready only for the spontaneity of the energy within the scene, for just living and breathing it right here and now. And you find sweet, delicate moments that can actually be quite meaningful that you weren’t even aware of when you read the scene twelve times before you did it, but they just suddenly come to life in that moment. So that’s what your director is for, and that’s what Alex is for, and that’s what the two of us kind of followed as well, just knowing and feeling that the things we lived in were what we thought when we read the script. .
For some of you, do you think it’s more difficult to play a real person than someone who is completely made up on the page? Or that you’re working with something that’s already made up doesn’t really matter?
LEWIS: I like playing real people. It’s a responsibility… I think there’s an added responsibility to honor them truthfully. But I’ve played real people many times, and that’s history. So it’s actually a fun history lesson. You read them, find out what they do, what they did, why they killed people if they are murderers. And then, of course, you should just — after all, the actors should always just play the script. If you’re struggling with the script, trying to play things that just don’t exist, I think you’re just going to run into conflict. You end up running into all sorts of different things. So in the end, you just have to go back to the script.
PIERSE: Yeah, you’re kind of trying to do… I found myself always saying, “What do you want from me?” And I tell it to the screenwriter, I tell it to the screenwriter, I tell it to the director. “How can I respect what you want? Let me try to understand what you want and see if I can contribute to it.” And obviously a couple of times I say, “Oh, I wouldn’t have thought of that,” and you might have some discussions about things. But yes, in general, I think that our task is to comply with this scenario, as Damian says. So if you kind of go off on a tangent and try to do something else, then there’s a clash of ideas.
This show, at least to me, is intentionally confusing. It pushes you in a bunch of different directions and you get to the point where you almost don’t know where the truth really lies. It’s kind of like a gray area in the middle. So, when it comes to working on a project like this, how do you get things right? Because I know technically you shoot things in a certain order and that might make things a bit easier, but in terms of the emotional lives of these characters, how can you keep it straight when the story doesn’t really give you anything? everything, so to speak?
PIERSE: Well, that kind of work is also difficult because you play two-faced characters who lie and say one thing and mean another. If it had been a different director, I’m not sure I could have taken it, to be honest. But I’ve worked with Nick before and really trusted his way of looking at things and I really relied on him a lot and also relied on Damien and Alex. All three together made a wonderful team of leaders who had a great vision for it all. So I am very dependent on other people.
LEWIS: Yes. It’s the best way to be. Big. Tell me how to do it. I will do it.
Why do you think this story is relevant right now? What drew you to doing this now? Something that… related to current politics or how the world is now, what attracted you to this story?
LEWIS: I think it’s about politics now, but I think what’s more interesting is that right at the center of it is a conversation about faith and love and the risks we take when we love people. You will never know another person. Even in marriage, you never fully get to know the other person, and I think if there’s a big betrayal at the end, maybe just in the romantic relationship that you had, [or] in this case, a 30 year best friend relationship, I think the damage it does to the people they betrayed is enormous. And you ask yourself all kinds of questions about your role in this, your role in this. Did I contribute in any way? How did it happen? And so I think that’s what this series is about, and I think it’s set in a spy world within a thriller, whereas Guy just said that everyone lies to everyone. Is everything always as it seems?
And so the reality immediately intensifies, and this is a very exciting place for the viewer. It’s like, “Oh God, who’s telling the truth? Who is lying? And lives are at stake, and some big intimate personal betrayals, but at the same time there are betrayals of a political, geopolitical, global scale. So everything is already very tense, and in the very center is just this most intimate betrayal. And I think this is where the show is in its sweet spot. Just imagine that you were betrayed or managed to betray everyone for thirty whole years. Incredible. When you see them, work with them every day. This is our history.
Damian, at one point you described Elliot as a peacock or a hawk, and I really see a lot of that in him on this show. So, Guy, if you had to describe Kim Philby with an animal, which one do you think you would choose?
PIERSE: Oh, well, there’s something feline about him. Maybe it’s some kind of streamlined black humor or something. I don’t know. Yes, maybe a cat, but very charming.
LEWIS: Trixie.
PIERSE: Yeah, not crazy.
What do you think people will take away from this story, be it the idea that fact is stranger than fiction, or something else?
PIERCE: Well, I think, as Damian says, it’s kind of a look at love and the idea of what we’re willing to go to to protect each other as friends. And then the fragility of it and how devastating it can be when a friendship is betrayed. Is that what people get out of it… but hopefully that’s what people connect with when they watch it because everyone has friends and everyone has questions about their friends and everyone is probably in what for a moment were betrayed by their friends to some degree, even on some small scale. So I’m sure people will be able to relate to this just because, as Damian says, it takes place in a kind of spy world and doesn’t mean it… and I’m sure it will be intriguing for a lot of people, because it’s not the world many people live in, but it’s very interesting to look at. But the idea of friends working together in this world will probably appeal to people.
Source: Collider
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