{"id":644851,"date":"2026-10-13T06:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T06:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/644851\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T06:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T06:24:16","slug":"i-knew-i-was-being-followed-keira-knightley-on-her-hacking-nightmare-and-new-stasi-spy-play-the-lives-of-others-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/644851\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I knew I was being followed\u2019: Keira Knightley on her hacking nightmare \u2013 and new Stasi spy play The Lives of Others | Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unpacking assorted tubs of carrot sticks and salad, Keira Knightley winces apologetically. \u201cI just realised I\u2019ve got very crunchy food,\u201d she says. How apropos that she should consider the impact that her lunch might have on my audio recording when we are here to discuss The Lives of Others<\/a>, a new play in which the characters are divided between the spies and the spied-upon.<\/p>\n

Based on the Oscar-winning 2006 film<\/a> and set in East Berlin in 1984, the play stars Knightley as Christa-Maria, a theatre actor in a relationship with a director, Georg, played by Luke Thompson. Earwigging on them is Wiesler (Stephen Dillane), the Stasi officer whose principles are gradually challenged and weakened by his round-the-clock exposure to this cultured couple.<\/p>\n

Paranoia \u2026 Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck in 2006 film The Lives of Others. Photograph: Sony Picture Classics\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck\u2019s original movie opens with an interrogation scene in which a persecuted citizen is grilled relentlessly for 40 hours \u2013 the length of time it takes, according to Wiesler, for a suspect to crack under questioning. I have only been allotted one-fortieth of that time with Knightley and Thompson, who has brought along his own leafy lunch to the north London town hall where rehearsals are under way. But I am still hopeful of extracting a few details about what the play\u2019s visionary writer-director Robert Icke has up his sleeve. This is the man who introduced Sliding Doors-style alternate-reality scenes into Romeo and Juliet<\/a>, put a countdown clock on stage in Oedipus<\/a> (and others), and added the Beach Boys to Oresteia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oresteia by Aeschylus at the Almeida, directed by Robert Icke, in 2015. Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Interrogation techniques turn out not to be necessary today. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a technical show,\u201d volunteers Thompson, the 38-year-old Bridgerton star who worked with Icke previously on Hamlet (with Andrew Scott as the Prince<\/a>) and Oresteia. \u201cRather than different scenes, it\u2019s like one big set-piece with people coming in and passing batons. It\u2019s almost musical.\u201d Which is odd, laughs the 41-year-old Knightley, \u201cbecause Rob hates dancing. He is not a man who dances.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has some beans of her own to spill. \u201cWe\u2019re on a revolving stage,\u201d she says, \u201cso we\u2019re always on the move.\u201d This will enable the audience to see Christa-Maria and Georg at the same time as their Stasi eavesdropper. Thompson believes this lends the stage version an advantage over the movie: \u201cBringing a story about watching into the theatre is maybe even better, because the audience is literally peering in on what\u2019s happening. Whereas in a film, there\u2019s the barrier of the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compromised \u2026 Ulrich M\u00fche as a Stasi operative in the 2006 film. Photograph: Buena Vista<\/p>\n

Only when I ask whether they are using the play\u2019s new Max Richter score during rehearsals does Thompson become remotely tight-lipped: \u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m allowed to say that.\u201d Knightley throws caution to the wind: \u201cWe are using it in rehearsal, yeah. It\u2019s very beautiful. Everyone\u2019s in the room: we\u2019ve got the sound designer, the costume designer, the video designer \u2026\u201d Video, eh? Another hint. Icke used screens in the penetrating version of Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/a> which he co-adapted with Duncan Macmillan; in his Hamlet, the Ghost turned up on CCTV. It\u2019s a convention that risks seeming passe now. \u201cVideo can feel gimmicky,\u201d Thompson concedes. \u201cBut it\u2019s relevant here because it\u2019s all about surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Brother is watching \u2026 Icke\u2019s staging
of 1984. Photograph: Tristram Kenton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The nature of surveillance in society has changed markedly, even in the two decades since the movie opened. \u201cYou want there to be a camera at the bus stop when your bag\u2019s been nicked,\u201d reflects Knightley, displaying a touching faith in police priorities. \u201cYou feel safer because of that surveillance. But then you ask: \u2018Who is surveying me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the same year that The Lives of Others<\/a> was released, she became part of the first wave of public figures to discover that their phone messages had been hacked by tabloids. How far has that helped her understand the sort of paranoia that dominates the play? \u201cI do have a personal experience of what that is. Then again, I knew that my phone was being hacked because I had something tangible to show for it. There were stories. Or for me, it was mostly pictures. I knew I was being followed and then I could see that I was being followed. I didn\u2019t feel like I was going mad. Whereas the characters are in a funny world where they don\u2019t know when or if they\u2019re being monitored.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The best way to create surveillance is for people to do it themselves\u2019 \u2026 Thompson at the rehearsals for The Lives of Others. Photograph: Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n

Modern parallels have been part of the rehearsal room discussions. I mention the likelihood that visitors to the US now have their social media accounts probed at immigration, and Knightley\u2019s eyes light up. \u201cAh, but did that ever happen?\u201d she asks. \u201cOr is it enough that you say it\u2019s going to happen for people to self-censor? You don\u2019t even have to follow through on the threat. You just have to put it out there.\u201d Thompson agrees: \u201cIt\u2019s what\u2019s so clever and efficient about the Stasi. The best way to create surveillance is for people to do it themselves.\u201d And not only through self-censorship: estimates are that there was one informant for every 6.5 citizens<\/a> in East Germany.<\/p>\n

Top of the cast\u2019s reading list for the play is Stasiland, Anna Funder\u2019s 2003 account of life in the GDR. Funder has called Von Donnersmarck\u2019s film \u201csuperb\u201d but also \u201ca fantasy narrative that could not have taken place (and never did) under the GDR dictatorship\u201d. The Lives of Others, she wrote in 2007, \u201cdoesn\u2019t accurately portray the way totalitarian systems work, because it needs to leave room for its hero to act humanely (something such systems are designed to prevent).\u201d Another of her charges is that the movie inadvertently legitimised the ongoing campaign by former Stasi agents to launder their reputation.<\/p>\n

Visionary director \u2026 Robert Icke, who once added the Beach Boys to Oresteia. Photograph: Dim Balsem<\/p>\n

In at least one documented instance, however, the movie has had a real-world benefit. In 2014<\/a>, 43 veterans of an elite, clandestine Israeli military intelligence unit withdrew from participating in \u201cthe state\u2019s actions against Palestinians\u201d, protesting that their government was guilty of \u201cpolitical persecution\u201d in refusing to distinguish \u201cbetween Palestinians who are and are not involved in violence\u201d. One Israeli whistleblower singled out The Lives of Others as the catalyst for his own awakening. He and his colleagues, he realised, \u201cwere similar to the kind of oppressive intelligence in oppressive regimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Not everyone regards von Donnersmarck\u2019s picture as a force for good. When a journalist recommended it to the actor Julie Christie in 2007, she replied: \u201cI\u2019m not sure I can bear to see a film they gave the Oscar to, that tells you what awful people communists are.\u201d Thompson mulls this over. \u201cThere are characters who are mouthpieces for something along those lines,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it\u2019s not just a politics play. Part of the fun, I think, is that the characters are mysterious and you never know quite which way they\u2019re going to go. If what audiences take from the play is \u2018Communists are awful\u2019, then I\u2019d feel like we\u2019d failed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Audiences can take what they like from it \u2013 as long as they don\u2019t take photographs. It was the sight of phone cameras being whipped out for the curtain call at Icke\u2019s Oedipus that sent its star, Lesley Manville, into a huff. (\u201cClap or don\u2019t clap,\u201d she later said, \u201cbut don\u2019t just stick your phone in our face.\u201d) Despite starring on stage in Ivo van Hove\u2019s four-hour adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara\u2019s A Little Life<\/a>, where a phone ban failed to prevent the leaking of nude snaps of his co-star James Norton<\/a>, Thompson trusts the audience. \u201cI think people broadly follow the no-phone rule,\u201d he says. Knightley may not have set foot on stage for 11 years (\u201cSmall children, no sleep\u201d is her pithy explanation for the hiatus) but, as a punter, she notes approvingly the \u201cabsolute fucking fury from everyone if somebody\u2019s phone goes off in the theatre\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018I knew that my phone was being hacked because I had something tangible to show for it\u2019 \u2026 Knightley at the rehearsals. Photograph: Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n

I wonder how they both feel about the standing ovations which have become ubiquitous to the point of meaningless at West End<\/a> productions. Knightley thinks ticket prices might explain it. \u201cI took my kids to see a musical recently and we really did enjoy it, but it cost so much that I was, like, \u2018We are going to love this!\u2019\u201d With tickets for The Lives of Others peaking at \u00a3225, she and Thompson can expect to see audiences springing to their feet every night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a strange way, though, the exchange that happens between actors and an audience during the clapping is the least important or interesting moment of it,\u201d says Thompson. \u201cIf people see something good, it stays with them. Perhaps we\u2019ve been missing that \u2013 and that\u2019s why people get so excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like your optimism,\u201d says Knightley, clearing away the lunchtime detritus. \u201cThere\u2019s me going, \u2018Maybe it\u2019s because the tickets are expensive.\u2019 And you\u2019re like, \u2018It\u2019s because the play transports you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lives of Others is at the Adelphi theatre, London<\/a>, from 14 October until 9 January<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unpacking assorted tubs of carrot sticks and salad, Keira Knightley winces apologetically. \u201cI just realised I\u2019ve got very…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-644851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}