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Eddie Redmayne stars as The Jackal in Sky's new version of Frederick Forsyth's spy novel (Image: Marcell Piti)
It's a sunny California morning at the Four Seasons Hotel, Beverly Hills, and Eddie Redmayne is describing how to shoot a sniper rifle. There’s a definite process to it, the handsome actor assures me, with all his characteristic charm. “There’s a mechanical element, in that you have to figure out which way the wind is blowing at the time, and then you have to do your maths to see where it will go in the next few seconds because it takes a second or two for the bullet to traverse to its target,” he explains.
“You have to see into the future a little bit for that, and you have to be incredibly patient waiting for the winds to align. The moment when you actually shoot is quite specific. You have your finger on the trigger but just the tip of your finger, and you half engage it, and then you take these breaths.”
Redmayne, whose hazel eyes and freckled face give him an enduring boyish quality, demonstrates it for me.
“You breathe in… out … in … and as you breathe out for the second time, the instant at the end of that second breath out is when the release comes and you pull the trigger,” he says. “You have to keep breathing till then to keep the thing as still and as steady as possible.”
Only Redmayne could make sniper shooting sound sexy rather than sinister. The skill is the latest addition to what the 42-year-old laughingly characterises as “the endless stream of useless information” he has acquired during his two decades in acting.
This time round, it’s for his starring role in mini-series The Day of the Jackal, a new TV adaptation of former veteran Daily Express columnist Frederick Forsyth’s best-selling 1971 political thriller.
Previously adapted into the 1973 film starring Edward Fox as the nameless assassin dubbed “the Jackal”, the 2024 reboot puts Redmayne in the role of the deadly professional assassin, a cold-blooded killer for hire who, over 10 edge-of-the-seat episodes, is chased across Europe by MI6 agent Bianca, played by fellow Briton Lashana Lynch, 36, in a series of ever more white-knuckle car chases and shoot-outs.
But there are several contemporary twists to this retelling of the much-loved spy tale, with the Jackal in a fight to save his relationship with the wife and children, who know nothing of his secret life. Redmayne, who also serves as the show’s executive producer, says it is precisely this modern twist that drew him to the project in the first place.
“I’d grown up watching the Edward Fox movie,” he says today.
“It was one of my dad’s favourite movies and I was watching it, frankly, at an inappropriately young age!
“But I loved the movie and when the first three scripts of this series arrived in my inbox, I had a massive sense of trepidation about reading them, in case I didn’t like them. When I did, I found them compulsive.
“The show retained the old-fashioned elements that I’d loved and was made with great love and respect to the original, but it was fresh and new at the same time.”
A shirtless Eddie Redmayne in The Day of The Jackal (Image: Marcell Piti)
One of the more intriguing modern elements, he says, was the fact that this new version – a complex plot featuring both politicians and tech billionaires in place of the Jackal’s original intended victim, French President Charles de Gaulle – is far more willing than its predecessors to blur the lines between good and evil.
“What I found interesting between our series and the original book and movie, was that there was much more of a sense of moral ambiguity,” says Redmayne.
“In the original, there was the idea that De Gaulle was the goodie and the Jackal, while charismatic, was the baddie.
“I feel what this script is bringing is a world where everything is on a spectrum. You have the Jackal and you have Lashana’s character Bianca, both of whom are extraordinarily tenacious, passionate and talented, but both of whom also have dodgy morals.
“I liked that, because it seems to me that things are so polarised at the moment and there’s room for more nuance. I think the show provides that.”
Another attraction, he admits cheerfully, was the prospect of shooting in a series of European locations, each seemingly more exotic than the last.
“I’m not going to lie, that was very appealing,” he laughs. “I love armchair escapism and when it’s pouring with rain in London in mid-November, the idea of getting to be taken away somewhere always looks so good.
“One of the greatest aspects for me was that we shot in Hungary – where I’d shot a lot of television 15 years ago when I was starting out, I have very fond memories of that experience and it was really wonderful to go back.
“We shot in Vienna, we shot in London, we shot in Croatia – we shot all over in some really magnificent locations. That was a huge draw.”
Since winning an Oscar for his portrayal of eminent physicist Stephen Hawking in 2014’s The Theory of Everything, Redmayne has travelled extensively for his work, including 2015’s The Danish Girl and JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts series in which he plays Newt Scamander. But his latest project took him to a brand new destination – an island off the coast of Croatia called Pag.
“I hadn’t been to Croatia before and I found the country really beautiful,” he says. “Pag was unlike anywhere I’ve ever been before – it looks like you’re on the moon. It doubles for Afghanistan in the filming – it was hot and baked and it’s just stunning.”
Eddie Redmayne with his wife Hannah Bagshawe, left, at the premiere of The Day of the Jackal (Image: WireImage)
The only downside to the constant travelling, he adds ruefully, was the separation from his wife, former PR executive Hannah Bagshawe, with whom he celebrates ten years of marriage in December, and their children Iris, eight, and Luke, six. “There was a time when Hannah and I first got together where the plan was for us to live this nomadic sort of circus-like life and travel and do everything together,” he recalls, just a little wistfully. “But the reality is, once you have kids and they start in school and they make friends and have their own life, the idea of taking them around gets harder, so each job I take, we [have to] make a call on.”
For his last project, the 2022 film The Good Nurse, in which he played real-life serial killer Charles Cullen, the family decided to move to New York for the duration of the shooting.
Given The Day of the Jackal was based in Europe, they decided that Hannah and the children would remain in London and visit him on set.
“There were a lot of logistics involved,” he sighs. “When I was in Budapest, I would nip back for weekends when I could, they would come out for school holidays, or we would meet in Vienna, we managed to work it out.”
They even managed the occasional romantic encounter.
“There was a wonderful moment when it was going to be my wife’s birthday when I was shooting in Croatia, miles away from an airport, it was going to take four hours to drive to the airport to then get on a plane to fly home, and since I only had two days off, I would then have had to come straight back.
“But it was either that or them coming to me and it would have taken them an age to come that way, obviously.
“But then we realised that it only took three hours for me to drive to Venice, so – in the most Jackal-like move ever – we came up with the idea to meet in Venice, which we did and celebrated her birthday there, which was incredible.
“We were a bit worried about the kids at first, because I myself didn’t go to Venice until I was in my 20s and we did think, ‘Are they too young to go there?’ But they were fine.”
More than fine, in fact. “There are these amazing velvet slippers you can buy in Venice, and one day my wife and my daughter were in a shop looking at the shoes and my son and I were on a piazza outside waiting for them,” he continues.
“Then we noticed that there was a Pringles crisps can just sitting around and we ended up playing football for about an hour and a quarter with a Pringles can, on a Venetian piazza, which was beautiful. It’s an odd life but from it come extraordinary experiences.”
Right now, the family are in Los Angeles, while he is promoting the TV show and having a fine time.
“Although we had problems last night because we were trying to negotiate watching Rivals on television on our Disney+ account but because we live in the UK our account doesn’t work when we’re in America,” he groans.
“I seem to have all the accounts and none of them work wherever I am. Rivals is something we’re watching at the moment – our friend Fee Blunt (literary super-agent Felicity Blunt, whose husband Stanley Tucci makes the other half of one of Britain’s most glamorous media couples) is the producer.
“Typically we’re about six years behind everyone else.”
Eddie as Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (Image: Jaap Buitendijk)
When they’re not trying to watch television, the family spend their spare time out exploring the film world – which, for an actor who stars in a JK Rowling production, would not be complete without a stop on the Harry Potter tour.
“My kids are firmly into the wizarding world at the moment. I think they’re more into Newt Scamander than they are into the Jackal,” smiles Redmayne.
“My daughter really loves me playing a goodie, and for a long time when we were living in New York for The Good Nurse they assumed that the ‘good nurse’ was a good person until they saw a trailer and were like, ‘Daddy!’
“For the Jackal, my son enjoyed it when I was having to prepare with dummy pistols around the house – he’s quite into that – but by now he’s well up for me playing a goodie again.”
Which character does he more resemble in real life: the Jackal or Newt Scamander? Not the dexterous gun-wielder Jackal, he says, firmly.
“I’m quite cack-handed,” he admits. “When I arrived in Budapest on the first day of shooting, I was taken to see this amazing contraption that they had built of this gun that was specially put-together and could be taken apart again, with all of these specific details they’d worked on.
“The prop master showed me how to put it together and it took him about 10 minutes… and then I tried and it took me about an hour and a half!”
Scamander, then? Though probably not if you’re looking for the magic touch, he admits. “I tried casting spells yesterday and I wasn’t nearly as adept as my children were. I kept saying, ‘I’ve got this!’ and I really didn’t have it at all.”
He doesn’t look too unhappy about it, mind you.
The Day of the Jackal premieres on Thursday on Sky Atlantic and Now TV
English (US) ·