The following article contains major spoilers for The Day of the Jackal, including the finale.
Eddie Redmayne's mammoth ten-part TV adaptation of The Day of the Jackal, written by Ronan Bennett, is over — its first season is, at least. But the news of the show's renewal must've been confusing, at first, to fans of the original Frederick Forsyth novel and Fred Zinnemann film that came out a few years later, because the Jackal dies at the end of them.
So he's, what, making people choke on his abacus beads? Not quite…
Well, it looks like this version is taking a different route to its forebears. Not just because the Jackal lives to see another day at the end of the finale. He also kills Bianca (Lashana Lynch), the MI6 agent and ostensible series protagonist who had been hot on his heels for the last ten hours of TV, after a nail-biting cat-and-mouse sequence set in his Spanish villa. In the originals, it was the detective who won the day; not here, with a second season seemingly set to centre on the Jackal as he tracks down his wife Nuria (Úrsula Corberó) and exacts revenge on the coterie of financiers who double-crossed him after his hit on UDC (Khalid Abdalla).
“I really enjoyed playing this character because of the fact that he was an actor, and the whole thing was sort of a massive actor's playground," Redmayne tells GQ over Zoom. "It was that thing that you do when you're a kid, and you're into acting: playing old men, changing your accent, and the way you look. You never know whether something is going to connect with an audience, and I'm thrilled it has.”
Below, Redmayne talks to GQ about the Day of the Jackal finale, the Jackal's slow unravelling across the series, and shooting Bianca's death scene with Lashana Lynch.
GQ: It seems to me that the Jackal unravels over the last handful of episodes — it's like he loses control. What's your take on that?
Eddie Redmayne: I feel like he's a character like a Swiss watch. He's built with the accuracy and the definition of that, and everything he does is about planning and meticulousness. For me, the journey of the series is the unravelling of that. His Achilles heel is this belief that he had been a lone wolf — that was gonna be his way through the world, there was a nihilism to him, and he was in southern Europe living by himself. But he met this woman, and it was the opening of his heart, that chink in his armour, that made him have a momentary belief that he could perhaps have the best of both worlds. If people have affairs or secrets, there's always a subconscious thing, that maybe this thing will unravel — but I don't think he's ever thought through the reality of it.
Does he feel guilt?
In some of those moments when I was playing [him] – whether it was the death of Rasmus, or even the moment of persuading Nuria to come to Budapest on the phone when he uses emotion to manipulate her — I think he has flickers of guilt, but he has become so numbed.
Does he consider himself a good person?
I don't think he thinks of himself in those terms. I think he can disconnect the work, the job, the employment of it… But again, there's that moment in which the one person he loves calls him out on it, when [the Jackal and Nuria] have that argument in the house, she makes him repeat what he does. She doesn't just make him repeat it, but fucking listen to it. Listen to it. Listen to yourself. The fact that it's this woman he loves that is demanding of him, that's the only way to make those worlds momentarily collide.
The finale opens with this great, frenetic car chase. Talk to me about shooting that.
We had a wonderful director on the last two episodes, Anu Menon, who brought such to the story, and the vibrancy. She was really up for this notion for there to be colour and a kind of momentum. We were shooting the car chase in Croatia; there was a brilliant second unit who helped, and a formidable stunt team. What I love is that they found a village where you could go up and down these cobbled, tiny streets.
You shoot a certain amount of it yourself, and I remember what was complex is that once we'd done the stunt of the guy going through the windshield, we had a smashed windshield, so [I was] then trying to drive with the smashed windshield… [Laughs.] And no wing mirror, with bits dangling down. But to be clear, it was mainly an extraordinary stunt team.
Of all of the Jackal's misdeeds throughout the series, it's the murders of Liz and Trevor that seem to impact him the most. He has that moment where he screams to himself afterwards, but there's also a sense of, “Why have you forced me to do this?”
What I love about the structure of [The Day of the Jackal] is that each character that he interfaces with brings out a different quality in him, and hopefully the audience begins to get this mosaic idea of who he could potentially be. With Liz and Trevor, it was such beautiful actors — Philip Jackson, I had worked with on My Week with Marilyn, and was an old pal, and I just think is one of the greats.
The two of them together had such kindness, and we had such a lovely time making it. It felt like its own movie within the [series]. And it was pretty devastating. I mean, we shot the death scenes in a tiny caravan in the freezing cold in Hungary, and it was kind of ugly and visceral. It takes someone with Phil's genius to land some of those lines when they're smoking outside, and he asks about his parents, and he really cuts through to the core of the Jackal; there are only a couple of moments in the whole ten hours where you see into the soul of him, and [Trevor] holds a mirror up to him in that moment.
It's one of the real moments of vulnerability we see from him.
That is also what interested me in this version of the Jackal. It's like, if you've just got a character who is pure coldness, I think there's only so much intrigue one can have. I don't believe that can cohere with the humanity of being a father, and a husband, who really loves.
The season ends with the Jackal killing Bianca, which is a reversal of the source material. What did you think when you read that twist?
I knew it was coming because I'd been told it was before I read it. It's so shocking in the movie, because the Jackal's killed like that, and he's gone. It's so matter of fact. There was a version of Ronan's original script in which it was that matter of fact with Bianca, but there's a sense when you've spent ten hours with someone… what I think Anu found was that moment that is shocking, but then pays homage to [Bianca's] tenacity and brilliance.
What I find really curious about that moment is, firstly, it was virtually the first time Lashana and I were on set together; secondly, the characters really do not know each other, but through Bianca's relentless pursuit, he has admiration for her. And [there's] that idea of them being two sides of the same coin.
Of course, at the end of the film, Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) is the only person to attend the Jackal's (Edward Fox) funeral, which also comes with a kind of implied respect, or homage.
Absolutely, because I think that's also about obsession, isn't it? It's about two people whose work is more than their work, it's become their existence. Whether Bianca tried to quit, versus the Jackal's saying that “this is the last one,” I think there's a part of him that is desperate for a normality, but he's also an addict.
You can watch The Day of the Jackal on NOW.
.jpg)
