Eddie Redmayne 'didn't want to mess with something brilliant' in new Day of the Jackal

It turns out he’d just returned to his south London home from New York and was beset with jetlag when he decided to go and procure some sharp knives. "I haven’t cooked for ages. I went from making The Day of the Jackal, which was a rigorous eight months in Hungary and Croatia, over to Cabaret in Broadway for eight months.

"Anyway, there’s this brilliant knife shop down the road – I’m weirdly obsessed with kitchen knives, I stand in front of knife shops and gaze through the windows. So last night, I was so excited to use my new knives, was cutting some vegetables and just sliced right through. A little chunk of the tip of my finger came off.

"Funnily enough, my script for the first episode of Jackal was on my desk. I’d written on the top of it, 'A knife through butter.' That was my first description of the Jackal and how he should hold himself in the world – and when I saw that I thought, 'It’s some kind of hideous full circle that’s come around here.'"

This is a lot to take in during the first three minutes of an interview, yet despite his injury and the painkillers, Redmayne communicates it all with a chaotic poise, sheltered under a baseball cap and a casually slung-on Alex Eagle red cricket jumper (a snip at £545).

An Eton and Cambridge scholar, and a relentless high-achiever, Redmayne hasn’t stopped acting since training at the Jackie Palmer Stage School, performing with the National Youth Music Theatre, and appearing in a production of Oliver! in 1994, directed by Sam Mendes. The Day of The Jackal might be Redmayne’s first TV series since 2012’s Birdsong, but he’s been quite busy in between.

From lauded performances in The Good Nurse and The Danish Girl, via a lead role in JK Rowling’s global franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, to the small matter of a turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (for which he became the first millennial to win an Academy Award for acting), this restless soul definitely hasn’t had a quiet 12 years.

Then came Cabaret, a modern reimagining of the Bob Fosse classic, which he also produced. Redmayne sandwiched the shooting of Jackal between the two transatlantic versions of the musical, in which he played the "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!" singing Emcee of the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club.

It was the West End version of the show that Redmayne was juggling when he first signed up to Jackal. Did he enjoy being part of such a raucous, racy production? "It was a pretty thrilling experience but absolutely physically exhausting."

Instead of resting afterwards, however, he signed up – as the lead and as an executive producer – to this updated version of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel, which was adapted for the big screen in 1973 starring Edward Fox. The new version sees a slightly creepy Elon Musk-style tech/philanthropist billionaire as the hired assassin’s target, a far cry from the essentially "good" Charles de Gaulle in the original story, where it was the police versus the bad guys who were trying to kill him.

In this new retelling, there are far more shades of grey. "What’s intriguing about this moment in time is that the second you think you’ve got a grip on what someone’s morality is, it shifts," says Redmayne. "We all have that blurry territory within us in some ways – that idea of the binary of good and evil doesn’t exist so much."

The Jackal’s adversary, Bianca (played by the formidable Lashana Lynch) is a relentless MI6 operative in hot pursuit, another change from the original’s male French inspector, Lebel.

"I grew up watching Jackal. I had a battered old VHS of it. It’s a bit weird, but it was one of those movies that my family would sit and watch together," says the 42 year-old, creating a warm picture of the Redmayne childhood home in central London, a young Eddie resting head-on-hands in front of the TV, while his mother and father – both successful business people – looked on from the sofa, cosily watching a movie about espionage and death.

"When I saw this in my inbox, I was pretty… You don’t want to mess with something as brilliant as this, so I was a bit tentative. The thing I love about the original structure, which Ronan [Bennett, the writer of this new series] has managed to retain, is the odd idea that you have these two protagonists who are deeply morally compromised, making vicious choices, and yet you kind of warm to both of them."

I point out that, in many ways, Redmayne’s job isn’t too different from the Jackal’s – apart from all the murder-y business, of course. He meticulously studies his subjects, he disappears into roles…

"One of the odd things about taking on this part was I’m quite used to playing people that are quite far from me. And I’m not saying I’m an international assassin – I’m not not saying that – but ultimately, he’s a fairly proficient actor, because he can do all these disguises and dialects, and lives a sort of bipolar life. And how one marries that is complex."

There are even, he admits, elements of the character he covets: "I wish I was as refined, impeccably groomed and meticulous. I have none of the grace of the Jackal. I’m s****y in a crisis. He gets cooler in a crisis; I get sweatier."

One famous chapter in the book, and scene in the movie, is devoted entirely to the construction of a specially commissioned sniper’s rifle, which the Jackal has smuggled across international borders. This moment defines both the character and tone of the story, which wasn’t lost on Redmayne.

"I was determined that [assembling the rifle] should be glorious in its grace, but I’m a really shoddy props actor." So, he decided to take the prop back to his hotel to perfect it.

"I would spend days constructing and deconstructing this gun. One evening, I constructed it in my hotel and went down to get some supper. Then, halfway through, I suddenly ran upstairs, having realised that there was a turndown service, and there would be a fully fledged sniper’s rifle on my desk!"

Considering this intense preparation and immersion in a role, once filming finishes, can he leave his alter egos at his front door? "That’s a question for my wife!" laughs Redmayne, who married his childhood sweetheart Hannah Bagshawe in 2014.

They have two children, Iris and Luke, both under 10. "With Jackal, I was doing Cabaret in New York afterwards and also taking Zoom calls on edits and stuff all morning then going to do the show. My family were there for the holidays, but I became quite obsessive."

Family is, in fact, a new addition to this iteration of Jackal. Whereas the original followed both police and assassin at "work", this time personal risk is raised, with the Jackal and Bianca attempting to juggle family with their high-stakes occupations.

"Edward Fox is so relentless in the movie, and for two hours is this vessel of ruthless charisma, but you know nothing about him. With this version, you’re doing 10 hours, and you can’t sustain that, so this idea of family life and seeing the other side of him felt new and interesting and a challenge. How do you marry those two sides?"

Since his last TV role in Birdsong, the landscape has altered, television series almost having replaced movies as the prestige platform for actors to showcase their talents. Has he noticed this change? "Massively. I used to take West Wing DVDs to work with me. I remember it ending and sitting there in a mess going, 'Where are all these characters that have come into my life?' Then I remember a couple of years ago meeting Allison Janney, and it was CJ standing right there!"

He pauses for a moment, becoming more animated as he elaborates. "I love how in TV you can spend years alongside these characters. The faith in the intelligence of an audience has shifted over the past decade – being able to drop things in a series that don’t get resolved till much later – the weaving of that, the novelisation of it."

Since we’ve now decided that Redmayne – who, remember, hasn’t ruled out being an international assassin – and his character are so similar, how does he qualify the nomadic life of an actor with having a young family?

"With Cabaret in New York, we were going to take the family out for the full run, but my daughter has just started at a new school, and taking her out of it… how do you manage with those sorts of things? What the specificity of the job is, and what your family’s needs are, shift each year, but what we’re trying to do is lean into the extraordinary experiences it gives."

Extraordinary experiences, yes, but would he ever consider signing up for something West Wing-length long-term, or would one of his conditions be that the filming would have to be London-based?

"Fifteen years ago, John Logan – the writer of Gladiator – had written this brilliant pilot called The Miraculous Year, and you do that thing of signing up for what could be 10 days or seven years. It was an amazing experience, but it didn’t go to series, so I look back on it now and go, 'Wow – if that had happened, then so many other things in my career or life would be different.' It would have meant living in New York, for one.

"I suppose I do have a fear of [he laughs] long-term commitment! I love the unpredictability of what I do – I have a love/hate relationship with it – but I’d never want to be tied down."

It sounds as if the unpredictable has worked for him thus far, seeing him skip across the globe, assuming numerous identities, then shedding them to return home to his family. Is he sure he isn’t an international assassin?

"I went to Bisley, which is this gigantic rifle range, and I did shoot sniper rifles across 2km. I was surprisingly more adept at that than I thought I would be. But I’m someone in that sort of scenario – and I struggle with this in work generally – where nerves have a physical manifestation. I would not be as calm as you have to be, so no, mate, I wouldn’t be a good sniper."

He’d better stick to the prop rifles, then. And, while he’s at it, stay away from sharp knives.

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The Day of the Jackal premieres on Sky Atlantic and NOW on Thursday 7th November 2024.

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