Lashana Lynch on The Day of the Jackal and how the spy thriller breaks new ground

"With the way that my brain works, the way that I’ve been called a Ninja over the years, and how well I’m able to keep a secret, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some energetic grooming happening, unbeknown to me…"

I proffer that she would say "unbeknown" if she were a MI6 agent… She looks mysteriously from side to side. "Hmmm. Would I?"

Joining me on zoom from New York, the 36-year-old is in the final stages of a very long The Day of the Jackal process, a series on which she is also an co-executive producer. "When they approached me about the role, I said I’d like to be part of the project, but I also wanted to get on board the production team to oversee and protect the things that I knew I really wanted to discuss within the piece."

Lynch plays Bianca, a dogged MI6 officer and weapons expert, who’s uncompromising in the pursuit of her quarry. "She’s in a male-dominated space, albeit with a female boss and a black man by her side, but none of those things are there to protect her." There’s a personal, family element to this adaptation, which didn’t exist in the original, adding an extra level of humanity and jeopardy.

"Bianca doesn’t know how to be the best, ask for the most, but also bring back the goods at the end of the day. It’s the feeling that she might do that drives her. That level of destruction is what carries her through."

I suggest that because of her character’s race and gender, Bianca may feel she has something more to prove. "That’s another reason why I wanted to co-exec on the show — to be able to tell that story, not shy away from it, but also protect it enough so that we’re not singing from the rooftops about how hard that is. It’s literally just a part of the experience of people who look like me, and it’s in the fabric of the workplace, constantly."

Lynch always appears to be thinking on two levels — about the moment of creation itself, then how that message is controlled afterwards. In the case of Jackal, that included: "black women in the workplace, balancing career and motherhood, black hair — which I love to celebrate in this show…"; as well as "being able to oversee every single edit, every single grade, and every single conversation about music, and VFX."

It was during this process she bonded with co-star and co-producer Eddie Redmayne, since the majority of their screen time is spent apart in a cat-and-mouse chase. "Our friendship was more developed in post-production than on set, which is backwards for me!"

Her story is markedly different from Redmayne’s. While he attended Eton and then Cambridge, she is from a working-class background in Shepherd’s Bush, where she joined as many drama classes as she could, eventually spending a few years at Sylvia Young Theatre School.

"We had no money, but my mum believed in me, and was able to find the means to support that." Lynch still lives locally with actor husband Zackary Momoh, with whom she is expecting her first child.

It feels as if she staked her claim at an early age but isn’t pulling up the ladder behind her — despite the opportunities afforded to her no longer being available to the next generation. For one thing, ongoing series like The Bill, which served as a breeding ground for young actors, were cancelled.

"It really is exposing how, in comparison to the 90s, where there were some [ways in], nowadays it feels as if we need to bring all the creatives of the industry into one space to really talk about setting up organisations for young people, especially young working-class people like myself. It’s about getting to the core reasons as to why the infrastructure was built this way in the first place."

Forthright and considered, she clearly has plans to use her position at least to attempt to enact change. "The industry would be best served when the plasters are taken off, and we let the cuts sit for a second so we can discuss what they look like, how they got there, what we’d do about it, and really reshape the landscape and structure."

It sounds as if she wants to be involved in campaigning or activism to a greater extent further down the line? "President?" she jokes. I gently suggest that perhaps she should sit out the next two terms — in the meantime, she could finish her MI6 training. "I’ll do that then!" Lynch 2032 it is.

I propose that, when the Official Secrets Act releases the papers in 50 years’ time, we can have another interview. "No comment," she says with a wry smile and fixed gaze. Classic spy move.

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