Michael Kelly had imagined his own Dubai moment ever since he saw Tom Cruise scaling Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible \u2013 Ghost Protocol. <\/p>\n
When the time came while filming Jack Ryan: Ghost War<\/a>, however, he discovered he was not quite as fearless.<\/p>\n He had been standing outside a Dubai skyscraper for two or three minutes, some 40 storeys above the ground, while a stunt co-ordinator talked him through what he would have to do. Beneath his feet was a metal grate through which he could see straight down, with railings running along either side. <\/p>\n Kelly thought he was handling it well until the co-ordinator asked whether he felt comfortable and, satisfied with the answer, told him he could let go. Only then did Kelly realise that he had subconsciously been gripping both railings the entire time.<\/p>\n \u201cConsciously, you know you\u2019re safe. But there\u2019s that moment when you look down and say, ‘that\u2019s death right there,’\u201d Kelly tells The National. \u201cBut then once you get into it, and you\u2019re in character, and you\u2019re filming, and you\u2019re excited, and you\u2019ve got a gun, and you run with it, you forget all about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The visit was a rehearsal for a sequence in which Kelly\u2019s CIA veteran character Mike November would walk out from the building towards a crane. <\/p>\n A few days before filming<\/a>, the crew wanted him to try the crossing without a harness to establish whether he was comfortable. John Krasinski,<\/a> who plays Jack Ryan, had already given him some idea of what awaited, sending Kelly a video from the location in a hard hat before turning the camera towards the drop.<\/p>\n Doing it at night was easier than looking down in daylight, he says. By then, he was enjoying the kind of sequence he had readily agreed to when it was first proposed. \u201cI feel like a little kid sometimes on the set. I get to do some really fun stuff on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n Ghost War, which arrived on Prime Video in May<\/a>, continued the story after four seasons of the television series. It reunited Kelly and Krasinski with Wendell Pierce as James Greer, while Sienna Miller joined as MI6 officer Emma Marlow. An intelligence mission brings the characters to Dubai, where they become embroiled in a confrontation with a rogue operation.<\/p>\n Coming back to Dubai<\/p>\n Kelly has since returned to the city, taking up an invitation that followed the connections he made during filming. He remembers arriving without knowing anyone, meeting a few people and gradually being introduced to others as the shoot progressed.<\/p>\n \u201cThey welcomed us with open arms here to do Jack Ryan, and we felt the love from the minute we got here,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was really easy to fall into it, and the graciousness, the hospitality that everyone showed us was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n Away from the set, he explored the food and took a trip into the desert to ride dune buggies. Working on Jack Ryan has taken him around the world, and the practical experience of living in each location becomes part of the job. In Dubai, he particularly appreciated being able to find his way around with confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cYou hear a common theme here that Dubai is so convenient, and it\u2019s truly what it is. It\u2019s such a convenient place to be,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone is so welcoming and kind, and you can trust people.\u201d<\/p>\n The visit also brought him into contact with people who have made the city their home. He noticed how often a conversation would begin with someone describing a holiday or an exploratory trip, only to reveal that they ended up staying for years.<\/p>\n When an invitation to return came up during a meeting on his earlier visit, he was interested immediately. \u201cThis opportunity came up, and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I\u2019d love to have any excuse to come back.’\u201d<\/p>\n The future of Jack Ryan<\/p>\n On set in Dubai, Kelly was also campaigning for another Jack Ryan outing. It has become a recurring appeal whenever the cast reaches a new location: \u201cCome on, one more.\u201d Miller has begun joining in, and Kelly has suggested taking his own character further.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve pitched a spin-off to them,\u201d he says. He gives no details of the pitch or whether it will progress, but is keen to continue working with the cast.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all very dear friends,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cWhen you find people that you get on with like that, and you get to travel the world and see places on someone else\u2019s dime, it\u2019s just a treat if you enjoy the people you\u2019re around.\u201d<\/p>\n Those friendships have already changed what audiences see on screen. Kelly joined the series in its second season, when November was a CIA station chief. As the character moved outside the agency, Krasinski began drawing on their real-life bond. <\/p>\n \u201cThe way that character was in season two, which was my first season, to the character he became \u2013 that was John writing to our friendship and the way that we interacted,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cOnce I took the suit and tie off and left the CIA to go do what I thought was the right thing, he just wrote more towards that.\u201d<\/p>\n November has given Kelly more room for humour after roles such as political fixer Doug Stamper in House of Cards<\/a>. It has also allowed him to develop a character within the world created by novelist Tom Clancy<\/a>, whose stories have been adapted for the screen by a number of the industry’s biggest names.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s kind of one of the cool things about our show is that we keep the theme of the character of Jack Ryan alive, but we\u2019re telling new stories,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s always the hope, is just to keep telling these stories, because they\u2019re cool, fun stories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Kelly had imagined his own Dubai moment ever since he saw Tom Cruise scaling Burj Khalifa in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[86367,321,200,93,1043,61,60,1284,329,904,3314],"class_list":["post-632255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-arts-culture-team","tag-celebrities","tag-dubai","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-standard","tag-story","tag-television","tag-uae"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632255","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=632255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}