Whishaw plays Danny – gregarious, hedonistic, romantic and adrift, who falls for the anti-social enigmatic and brilliant Alex (played by [Edward] Holcroft). Just as the two of them realise that they're perfect for each other, Alex is found dead. Danny, utterly ill-equipped to take on the complex and codified world of British espionage, must decide whether he's prepared to fight for the truth...
BBC blurb.
The first screenplay by acclaimed thriller writer Tom Rob Smith, London Spy stars Whishaw as Danny, an openly gay drifter who falls in love with the enigmatic Alex, a closeted investment banker (or so he claims). It would be wrong of me to give too much away, suffice to say that the story would seem to be inspired in part by the real-life case of Gareth Williams, the M16 agent whose corpse was found locked in a holdall in 2010.
For Whishaw, who has played so many vacillating characters over the years – from Shakespeare’s ultimate ditherer, Hamlet, to the bisexual John in Mike Bartlett’s Royal Court play Cock – Danny’s unambiguous sexuality makes a welcome change. “That’s one thing he’s very clear about and very strongly embodies and no problem,” says Whishaw, who himself came out as a gay man in 2013, after the Daily Mail started digging around in his private life...
While Whishaw delved into the history of M16 for his role in Spectre, he says he deliberately avoided research for London Spy. “Because Danny is not from the world that he finds himself thrust into, it was very important to that he doesn’t know he’s in a spy drama,” he says of a character that reminds him of many people he knows. “He has never found a path really, I suppose… lots of potential that’s never been realised or properly tapped into. Yeah, he’s lost in a way that’s so easy to happen in London.”
Independent, October 23rd.
PS It looks like the Freddie Mercury biopic, somewhat inexplicably set to star gentle Ben, is 'trapped in development hell'.
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I've probably mentioned this on here before but amongst those leaked Sony emails last year were several about the Freddie biopic and Ben Whishaw's concerns about the absence of the gay in the script and how their avoidance of it bordered on homophobia.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, he's adorbs!!!
I can't wait to see London Spy.
I wonder if Simon Amstell still holds a torch for him.
Don't think you have - a link, pls.
DeleteWikileaks has a searchable database of the leaks but I couldn't find it using that.
DeleteHere it is, though:
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/31424
Ah, no happy ending for the gays. One must die, as with lesbians in TV dramas.
ReplyDeletePaul Brownsey
Don't seem able to comment via Google any more. I keep getting 'Something odd about the way you sign in' and then a hopeless loop if I try to put this right.
But if the character dies like Mr Williams, that could be a 'happy ending', no?
ReplyDeletePS I'll try and work out how to fix the Google thing. x
"Happiness writes white," as they say.
DeleteMr Williams could turn out to be a nice person in disguise trying to find out the secrets of the world of merchant banking before nuking it. And then his death was just a pretendy death to temporarily deceive (split infinitive deliberate because I want to be an amazing GSN intern) capitalism.
DeleteBut they wouldn't think of that, would they?
Paul Brownsey
The first thing I ever saw Ben Whishaw in was a short film in like 1999 (maybe a little later) where he played a gay rent boy of the night for hire relating his trade with apparent glee to a disgusted black cab driver played by Marc Warren. Even back then he was very striking.
ReplyDelete1999! What was he, seven???
DeleteI just checked and it was 2000, so he was 19/20. It was a series of 10 minute (I think) short films called 'Black Cab'. This was round the time when the Canon XL1 camcorder came out and you could make good quality digital films on a budget and in cramped conditions, hence the back of a black cab. It was really exciting at the time, but of course now everyone has better video capability on their mobile phones.
DeleteAnyway, I check every now and then to see if any of the Black Cab films (but that one in particular) is on youtube and it never is. Until now! Last week, someone uploaded one minute of the Ben Whishaw fillum. Eeeee!!!
Here tis!
It's kind of funny now. She's applying mascara!