'The Night Manager' Episode 4 Postmortem: Olivia Colman's Brilliance Revealed
Spoiler alert! Episode 4 of The Night Manager has now aired in America, giving us a new appreciation for Tom Hiddleston’s backside after his Jonathan Pine/Andrew Birch had a quick, steamy love scene with Jed (Elizabeth Debicki), and even more appreciation for Olivia Colman, whose Angela Burr revealed why she’s so determined to bring down international arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). Executive producer Stephen Garrett spoke with Yahoo TV about those key scenes.
When episode 4 aired in the UK, #Hiddlesbum trended on Twitter (UPDATE: AMC had to censor the nudity but has put the full scene on YouTube — watch it below). First question: Did you all know when you were filming the scene that it would become a major talking point?
Stephen Garrett: Absolutely no idea. In all seriousness, it took us all by storm and surprise. It was, in our mind, oddly, actually quite a discrete sex scene. I think in [director Susanne Bier]’s mind, it was deliberate: there are endless and justifiable criticisms of sex scenes that you only ever see women fully naked and never men. In this, obviously, there was just a hint of male nudity, and nothing from Jed’s side. When #Hiddlesbum practically smashed the whole mechanism of Twitter, we were a little surprised and entertained.
As Jed is trying to figure out who Pine really is, she says, “Everyone’s attracted to you.” Was that a running joke on the set, just how amazing Tom looks in this show?
I was watching the Twitter-sphere as it [premiered in the U.S.]. There was quite a lot about how beautiful he looks, mainly from women. I think Tom’s genuinely a nice, quite modest guy. It wasn’t that in his presence people were fainting on set. Is he good looking? Sure. One can say that as a heterosexual man — he’s objectively good looking. But I think he’s got that quality of a screen star that something happens to him on screen. You can’t really explain it; there are just some people the camera adores. There is this added impact that they have on the screen, which isn’t necessarily true in life. That said, I saw him on the red carpet, both in Berlin and LA. He clearly has an impact in real life, too. But it wasn’t the case on the set. I think people had a sense of that, but as Pine has been appreciated by audiences now around the world, I think again we were taken slightly by surprise. I think he was, too.
Another memorable scene in this episode is Angela describing the first time she met Roper. How did you decide on when that story — Roper started selling sarin after seeing firsthand what it did to 112 children and 58 adults at a school sports day — would be revealed?
That speech actually came quite late. We realized, as we were either close to filming or possibly had even started filming, that we didn’t properly understand why Burr was so fixated on bringing Roper down. That speech was written very late in the day. It’s interesting, because when you’ve lived with a story that’s so well crafted, and you’ve lived with it for so long, you take certain things for granted. We knew Burr was after Roper. We, as the people putting the story together, it seemed to us self-evident: Why wouldn’t she be? Then we realized, as we feverishly scoured the script for some reason why this would be the case, that actually we never told ourselves and we never told the audience. We never told Burr, or Olivia Colman. As I say, we suddenly realized we needed a moment. I think it’s a brilliant piece of writing.
For a second, Olivia laughs as she’s recounting the horror of what she saw that day and wiping away tears, which I think is such a real moment. That’s what people do when they have to describe something so terrible and unfathomable — it’s like your mind can’t comprehend that you’re actually saying these words. Or it’s some kind of defense mechanism — you laugh at yourself because you’re crying in front of someone.
I think that’s absolutely right. That performance is a really good example of something that you read on the page, and you know it’s good, but I don’t think any of us understood how good it could be until she performed it. What you describe, and her interpretation of those words, was so unique and added so much impact to the words as they were on the page, that you realize what an extraordinary actress she is. Performed by someone else, they could have come out. You’d have got some insight. It would have told you a story. But that visceral impact… I don’t think you can watch her perform that particular speech and not tear up. It’s incredibly moving and very powerful.
There is the question of why this very pregnant woman is putting herself in such a dangerous position now. The fact that children were involved helps us understand.
Completely. It works in that way on so many different levels. She is a pregnant woman who would, of course, relate to that even more powerfully than, say, a man who had never had a child. But having in Hugh Laurie such a charming and seductive Roper, there is the other thing we needed: He has been described a couple of times up to that point as “the worst man in the world.” I think it’s only with that speech that you realize why he’s the worst man in the world. I think you probably start to hate him at that point.
Related: ‘The Night Manager’ Postmortem: Inside Episode 3
‘The Night Manager’ Episode 2 Postmortem: Everyone Book a Trip to Majorca
'The Night Manager’ Postmortem: Inside the Premiere of the Tom Hiddleston-Hugh Laurie Spy Thriller
The Night Manager airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on AMC. Come back after each episode for a postmortem with executive producer Stephen Garrett.
