{"id":491901,"date":"2026-06-10T05:07:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/491901\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T05:07:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:07:18","slug":"tom-hiddleston-on-why-the-night-manager-season-2-took-a-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/491901\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hiddleston on Why ‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 Took a Decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago<\/a>, the BBC adaptation of John le Carr\u00e9\u2019s 1993 bestseller \u201cThe Night Manager<\/a>\u201d hit big in the UK and North America, scoring 12 Primetime Emmy nominations<\/a> and two wins. Usually such a rousing crowdpleaser swiftly generates a follow-up series<\/a> reuniting many of the surviving players. Not this one. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the first properly cinematic TV<\/a> movie in six parts,\u201d said producer Stephen Garrett. \u201cWe made a six-hour movie.\u201d Because the British mystery novelist, while prolific (35 books), had never written a sequel, and was not keen for a follow-up, the filmmakers killed off several major characters, thinking this was a true limited series. <\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/a> \"'Saturday<\/a> <\/p>\n

That is, until le Carr\u00e9 attended the February 2016 first public screening of the first two episodes of \u201cThe Night Manager\u201d at the Berlin Film Festival. That\u2019s when he turned to star Tom Hiddleston<\/a> and said, \u201cPerhaps we might do some more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did make us all scratch our heads and wonder and dream, which we did alongside him for a while,\u201d said Hiddleston on a Zoom from London between rehearsals for Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing,\u201d which launches on Halloween on Broadway. (He recalled our initial conversation<\/a> about Season 1 of \u201cThe Night Manager\u201d a decade back.)<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until the pandemic that writer David Farr woke up from a dream with a character in his head. It was Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), the estranged Colombian son of ruthless arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), who supposedly died at the end of Season 1.<\/p>\n

Of course he\u2019s back in Season 2. Oddly enough, the original novel was set in Colombia, and Farr saw a way to advance the story in that setting, bringing an older and slightly wiser but still fearless Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) back into the mix. \u201cThe world is older, and I am older by ten years,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cI knew that going in, and I wanted us to lean into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TomTom Hiddleston in \u2018The Night Manager\u2019des willie<\/p>\n

In North London, Hiddleston lived not far from le Carr\u00e9 (nee David Cornwall), and over the years they\u2019d go to dinner and talk about where \u201cThe Night Manager\u201d might go. After the author died in December 2020 at age 89, the team assembled at the memorial service, where his sons Simon and Stephen Cornwall passed on one of his dying wishes: \u201cYou must do more \u2018The Night Manager.’\u201d<\/p>\n

So Farr went ahead with his idea. Given that le Carr\u00e9\u2019s writing, especially \u201cThe Perfect Spy,\u201d often dealt with his unreliable father, Farr pursued that theme in Season 2, teasing Pine\u2019s layered feelings for Roper, and Teddy\u2019s yearning to be accepted and validated by his untrustworthy parent. \u201cMy simple oath to myself was: \u2018I\u2019m going to write a character that at the beginning is so frightening and dangerous, and by the end you\u2019re going to be in love with him,’\u201d said Farr. \u201cAnd you need an actor who can shoulder that comfortably, which Diego totally can.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Pine, he has obviously matured. \u201cThere\u2019s a different quality to him now,\u201d said Farr. \u201cI loved him in the first one because he was so almost puppyish at times, and yet so manipulative [which] Tom was very good at. But this one is much sadder. It\u2019s more melancholic, and there\u2019s way more political depth, because the world\u2019s gotten much nastier since we made the first one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pine has been quietly serving in the intelligence community all this time, in various guises. \u201cHe can\u2019t go back,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cOnce he\u2019s seen behind the curtain, you can\u2019t go back to the other side, a world of illusions, a world of dreams. He needs to be part of the world reality as it really is.\u201d<\/p>\n

And over the past decade, the world has been heading in Roper\u2019s direction. The centerpiece scene in Season 2 is the Episode 5 hilltop meeting between Pine and Roper. They\u2019ve been apart, much like Michael Mann\u2019s \u201cHeat,\u201d for four episodes, and then the two planets finally collide. The two men are mutually obsessed with each other, drawn together by a gravitational force. \u201cThey reflect each other,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cThere\u2019s such mutual affection. They need each other in order to define each other and find their identity. The dragon slayer knows who he is by the presence of the dragon.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at root their differences are profound. They filmed the intense 15-page scene in an hour or so. Pine is reckless but patriotic. He creates chaos. But the former soldier has integrity at his core, said Hiddleston, \u201cLe Carr\u00e9, the man I got to know in the last decade of his life, was a patriot in that sense, and a man or woman who loves his country is allowed to be furious with it, and in fact, it\u2019s an essential part of the dialogue if you feel that the boat is heading in the wrong direction, or that those who are driving the boat don\u2019t have the best intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roper, on the other hand, believes \u201cthat\u2019s all nonsense,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cHe believes the world is rotten, and that becoming a man is actually acknowledging that. And then you learn how to celebrate that rottenness. There\u2019s a cynicism in Roper that Pine feels is anathema to everything he stands for. Roper, someone who\u2019s been a recipient of all the privileges of the accident of his birth, born into a wealthy family with a good education, with so many freedoms that not every human being possesses on this earth, abuses those privileges to make money and profit from the sale of weapons, with no care for who might be affected or killed or whose lives might be taken by those weapons. There\u2019s a profound moral red line between them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TomTom Hiddleston, Camila Morrone, and Diego Calva in \u2018The Night Manager\u2019des willie<\/p>\n

Le Carr\u00e9 poured his \u201crelentless yearning to understand the world into Pine,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cIt rubbed off on me a bit. It\u2019s an Achilles heel for Pine. He\u2019s so desperate to know the truth that sometimes he can get lost in the maze and at great risk to himself and those he loves or cares about. The closer he is to death and risk, the more he feels alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

For le Carr\u00e9, said Hiddleston, \u201cThere is no center to a human being. This is all rooted in an uncertainty about belonging and about trust. Being off-stage is boring and risk is attractive. So this distinction between character and personality, there\u2019s something malleable about the face that one presents to the world, which is always about seduction rather than intimacy, and about performance rather than truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farr thinks Pine is driven by forces of which he is not conscious. \u201cThere\u2019s a slight sense of an erotic pull in him and that makes him intoxicating as a character,\u201d said Farr. \u201cBut also dangerous as a character. This bit of him that can\u2019t quite stop himself looking in someone\u2019s eye and getting them to fall in love with him, which happens with Teddy. That all comes out of a profound loneliness. Pine is a mixture of masculine and feminine. He listens, he\u2019s a good listener, he\u2019s a great listener, which is not true of your more traditional, Bondian hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

And \u201cThe Night Manager\u201d also explores a very British sense of identity. \u201cThere\u2019s so many parallels between being a spy and being an actor, although, of course, the stakes aren\u2019t as high,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cI don\u2019t have to stay in character like a spy does. I lean heavily on the discipline of shedding character and going home at the end of the day to real relationships, which I hold dear, and which keep me tethered to my ordinary reality. This spy doesn\u2019t have that, but his outlook, his sense of duty, his sense of courage I find incredibly inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this season, Pine gets entangled in three deadly relationships, not just Roper but Teddy and alluring Miami broker Roxana (Camila Morrone)<\/a>, with whom there is a magnetic attraction. \u201cShe\u2019s attracted to him,\u201d said Farr, who was inspired by Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cNotorious.\u201d \u201cAnd he\u2019s attracted to her, but they\u2019re both players, they both know they\u2019re playing each other. And that\u2019s what makes it sexy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about seduction, said Hiddleston. \u201cIntimacy is almost an accidental byproduct of the necessary seduction in order to betray an opposing agent. You have to draw someone into your confidence, and that is a process of seduction where lines can get blurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing these layers was not easy. \u201cThere\u2019s something about this character, and there\u2019s something about this material, and this role, and these stories, which is unlike any other that I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he said. \u201cThe stitching of the stories is so intricate. That\u2019s the algebra of the formula of the thriller, and I have to know those beats so well, and then inhabit them in the present tense and inhabit the jeopardy: what if I don\u2019t know the passcode? What if I don\u2019t find anything in the briefcase? And these details have to matter. He is in quite extraordinary danger, risking himself at an almost unfathomable level. The body keeps the score. I\u2019m recreating the adrenaline within myself that he would be feeling. It is a cerebral thing, in terms of making sure that my imagined reality is as detailed as possible, and then it\u2019s a physical thing of trying to recreate that sense of danger within myself. If I say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, I\u2019m a dead man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TomTom Hiddleston in \u2018The Night Manager\u2019Des Willie\/AMC<\/p>\n

As Hiddleston recounts the experience of the shoot, he said it made him feel \u201cincredibly alive because it felt so heightened. I felt those stakes, and those are the stakes you have to play. You want the audience to be on the edge of their seats. I try to quite literally accelerate my heart rate. It might be by just sprinting back and forth before a take or or doing something physical to literally make my heart beat faster, and then walk into a scene and try to hide it from my scene partner, and it creates an extraordinary tension. It makes me feel slightly panicked in the way that Pine would be feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garrett gives Hiddleston credit for somehow revealing what\u2019s inside Pine\u2019s head. \u201cSpies are compelling in novels, because, of course, the novels can go inside their heads and tell us what they\u2019re thinking,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we see them on screens, they\u2019re blank canvases and by definition, they\u2019ve got no friends, no family, they\u2019ve got no one to confide in. If they talk to anybody, they\u2019re lying. \u2018Why is Pine doing this?\u2019 is the question we\u2019re asking over and over again. And how do we communicate that to the audience? And I don\u2019t know an actor other than Tom who can communicate with silence and stillness and those amazing eyes a complexity and a turmoil that is plausible and carries meaning and emotional value.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shooting the series was an ongoing puzzle for the producers and new director Georgi Banks-Davies, replacing Emmy winner Susanne Bier. They shot in four countries across six months completely out of sequence, cross-boarded. \u201cThere\u2019s one sequence when Tom is going to meet the private detective in Medellin,\u201d said Garrett. \u201cThe sequence is put together from footage that we shot in Medellin, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands. It\u2019s a completely seamless minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, said Garrett, \u201clike fine wine, we\u2019ve benefited from the gap. It made it more plausible and real that those people could come together again with all that time having passed. If we\u2019d had it oven-ready and been out again in 18 months, it would have been less potent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up: Season 3 is in the works. It starts where the last season ends, as Pine lies bleeding in the jungle, alone. \u201cIt\u2019s a game that Roper won,\u201d said Hiddleston. \u201cHe has very little in the tank, and nobody to come and rescue him. It\u2019s an exciting place to begin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Night Manager\u201d is streaming on Prime Video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years ago, the BBC adaptation of John le Carr\u00e9\u2019s 1993 bestseller \u201cThe Night Manager\u201d hit big in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6971,321,9960,93,61,1694,60,34633,91716,91715,282],"class_list":["post-491901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-awards","tag-celebrities","tag-emmys","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-john-le-carre","tag-the-night-manager","tag-tom-hiddleston","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}