bharat2 Spooks

BHARAT NALLURI

“Can you imagine if I made this without Peter Firth? They would run me out of the country!”

“A sign of a film I’m happy with is that I don’t want to change anything… and I don’t want to change anything. It feels just right actually. It’s not too fast and it’s not too slow, but you can ask me that again in two years! At the moment, I’m really happy with it and it seems to hold the audience very well,” says Bharat Nalluri, as he begins to pick apart his joyous experience at directing upcoming spy movie SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD.  

It’s not the first time the prolific director has been involved in SPOOKS, as he also directed the pilot of the series and he couldn’t resist being pulled back into the world of spies and MI5 once more: “Once I have done a pilot, it is very rare that I come back and do more of the show. For SPOOKS I came back for the second series and did 1 or 2 episodes and then I came back and did the very last episode after 10 years. He jokes, “I thought we would have a great party at the end!”

Sat calmly in his chair at Pinewood offices in London, the director is very matter of fact about his role and relaxed throughout the interview. All jokes aside, it is clear to see that Bharat is indeed enthusiastic about the project and had never completely put down the directing baton of the series. “I was looking for something really intelligent and really clever. I don’t care where it is or how it is, I just wanted to do something that is slightly elevated with the characters and then SPOOKS came through to me. They had been looking for a director for ages and my agent sent it to me and said “it’s kind of TV, you’re not going to want to do that now that you’re working in movies.” So I requested to have a look at it and I came down from Newcastle and had a 10-minute meeting and by the time I had got to the front door to go back out again, they had offered me the job. I was apparently the 39th or 40th director they had met. That is really rare, but they just hadn’t found the right thing for it.”

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Kit Harington plays the role of Will Holloway in the film.

SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD is based on the BAFTA-winning TV series SPOOKS, which ran for 10 series on the BBC from 2002 until 2011, and aired in over 60 countries worldwide. It has always enjoyed great global success as the director proudly points out: “It started at 9 million people watching it out over 10 years it went down to 7 million and that’s really amazing for a 10 year run.”

Impressive statistics indeed and for many of those 9 million fans, no doubt they will be relieved to know that the movie has veered too far away from the TV series format. “I didn’t want to lose the core value or they would’ve got someone else, a different director. I’m really happy with the show and I think that’s the reason why it went for 10 seasons. With the scale and the time, you get to see it blossom and really enjoy it. So we wanted to take the core values and energise it, making it something worth going to the cinema for and to have that kind of thrill ride and a good time. Then again maybe SPOOKS isn’t about having a good time, it’s about having a complicated time!”

Speaking of which, that is definitely the case for regular character Sir Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) and for the new character played by Kit Harington, who interestingly had never watched any episodes from the TV show before: “When I met him, I went out to I went out to Belfast where he was doing some small show called GAME OF THRONES and we got drunk in the pub together,” he quips with a wry smile on his face. “He said he had never seen the show, but he had been told it was fantastic and said that his brother loved it, his whole family loved it and they are huge fans. He said he loved the script so I said to him, “is that a character that you want to play?” So when he said yes he asked if he should go and watch all of the episode of SPOOKS. I said no because I want you to be a ‘clean skin,’ I want you to have a whole revelation for that world. I wanted that world to come to him cleanly, so he doesn’t go “okay so this is how Harry did it there.” So he hasn’t watched it at all, but he’s really looking forward to going and seeing them now after all of this press. He was desperate to see it, but I didn’t want any preconceptions of what it is.”

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Peter Firth reprised his role as Sir Harry Pearce

As the interview continued, it was evidential by the director’s submissions how great it was to have the actor on board and he gelled well with Mr. Spooks himself, Firth: “When Kit and Peter met, they were like best mates. Can you imagine if I made this without Peter Firth? They would run me out of the country!”

Having not seen GAME OF THRONES, Bharat could not identify Harington with his infamous TV character Jon Snow, but he was aware of the strong association the audience might have. “We tried to create a very different character. This is his first contemporary character outside of GAME OF THRONES, so that is interesting. I’m sure people will come to it going, ‘he’s the bloke from GAME OF THRONES,’ but he does something really different in this and he’s loving running around with a gun for a start. He does a lot of running. He’s a good runner!”

After previously living in Brixton, the talented director now lives in Washington DC in America and there was a lot of places, which he wanted to show in London; his love letter to England’s capital: “SPOOKS is very loved in the city. The Mayor is a big fan. We wanted to stay here even though logistically it would’ve been cheaper to do it elsewhere, but the city has always been very grateful for that, we have always kept filming here.” In the movie we see some glorious panoramic shots, but with one particular aerial shot above Oxford Circus, it wasn’t such a pretty affair for the man helming the movie: “What you didn’t see was me puking up in the helicopter while we were doing that shot. We got Ridley Scott’s helicopter guy with the best helicopter shots of London you could get. He’s got an amazing team to do it, but they’re so good and it’s like they’re dancing with a helicopter… I was literally directing with a bag!”

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Challenges such as those didn’t deter the director from creating a unique and very British spy movie (you can read our review of the film here) and never felt any pressure during the movie’s creation, but nonetheless it is the audience who has the final say over the success of the film at the box office: “There is a huge following so if I can get some people to go out there and watch it at the cinema as a movie that would be great. It’s not going to be on television. If you go out and see it, then there is a huge will in the world to go and make 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. We have got a whole story idea already. We’re already thinking about where things are leading. We have got this great arc worked out.”

At the mention of such ambitions, I definitely sensed a whiff of the possibility of a sequel and it was interesting to see who would be involved in future projects and would there be anymore familiar faces during Sir Harry Pearce? “It’s important to have a new character like Will – because we killed all of the other ones! We brought back Matthew (Macfadyen) in the very final episode and lots of people are hoping he’ll appear in this movie, but there are five more movies to go!” Now that we would like to see. He continued, “All of the actors that have appeared have become super famous. We have created a huge well of actors. You had Peter Firth who was an OSCAR nominated actor for EQUUS, David Oyelowo who I bumped into in Washington and he was there showing his new movie to a certain person… Now he’s hanging out with President Obama and Oprah! Then there is Richard Armitage who has gone on to do so well…” When asked if he is likely to come back, the response was rather tantalisingly ambiguous. “Well, we just saw a hand didn’t we? Who knows? He’s doing so incredibly well and he’s got lots of things lined up. So yes, I can see some actors stepping back into it further down the line, but for now you’ve got Mr. Game of Thrones! He’s the biggest heartthrob in the world!”

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Will Richard Armitage return as Lucas North?

Speaking of known heartthrobs, Benedict Cumberbatch is another man who has graced the screen starring in SPOOKS, which he may not be that well known for. Bharat reflects on the time he first laid eyes upon the successful actor: “I remember him coming in on series 2 playing Jim North, the mole. I remember casting him and thinking he’s really good. Then he sat down and did a scene with David and Matthew and he was simply spectacular. I turned around to the producer at the time and said “watch this space.” He was a young kid and when you first saw him he was kind of geeky and gawky, but as soon as he spoke we knew he was going to be an amazing actor.”

SPOOKS: THE GREATER GOOD arrives in cinemas May 8th. 

Here is the trailer for the gripping film below: 

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