You Bet Jack Lowden Has A Favorite "Slow Horses" Scene...and A Close Second

When the producers of the much-loved “Slow Horses” series first recruited a cast for the often-comedic spy drama, they well realized they had a prime asset in generational talent Gary Oldman. They also had a near-legendary array of supporting cast, with Jonathan Pryce, Kristin Scott Thomas, and  Saskia Reeves, but perhaps they—and certainly the public—only partially grasped what heft Edinburgh-raised stage discovery Jack Lowden would bring them in his role as River Cartwright, the son and grandson to two of the story’s dangerous espionage operatives.

 Now, with a fifth season due out on Apple TV+ next summer and a sixth being shot, and Lowden beribboned with an Emmy nom for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (won by Billy Crudup of “The Morning Show”),  he’s become highly visible. 

If Oldman was nominated as Best Lead Actor in a previous Emmy run or the series, Lowden all but tiptoed in, emerging from acting in the provinces to a growing rep in London, and arriving to prestige with a 2014 Olivier Award for his role in Ibsen’s “Ghosts”. 

He was tabbed as a soldier in “Dunkirk” and continued winning good notices—while meeting wife-to-be and master thespian Saoirse Ronon in “Mary Queen of Scots,” and in 2016 serving as  a recurring character on the BBC’s “War and Peace”. In  2022 he scored the Trophee Chopard  award  that Cannes hands to a chosen arriving actor. Lately he’s asserted his amusement at starting at age 19 and only now becoming badged as a big deal at age 34.

 He was in Los Angeles last week in a clear prelim to a coming Emmy campaign (and before a Q&A which was nimbly conducted by Variety awards staffer Jenelle Riley, and telescoped via excerpts below), he graciously greeted a short file of admiring attendees, leaning in for selfies and shaking hands.

Little imagining that a bit later he’d be making a fond jest about being decidedly less famous than his spouse with her four Oscar noms, I went  pounding right in on that very theme. As  confessed on Facebook soon after: 

Jack Lowden spoke about the show after finale Episode 406 screened last night. Just prior, we had a few seconds to speak about wife Saoirse Ronan's outstanding turn in "The Outrun," which he produced and in which spouse Ronan went full farmgirl to dive in fully hands-ons on in a soppy, real-life “lambing” scene:

"Were you on set when she birthed the lambs?"

Lowden: (rising, affirmative inflection, eyes widening in amusement): "I was.”

 There was a moment of mutual appreciation about this particular feat in a tour de force enactment of the heroine’s whirlwind multi-substance addiction leading to a recovery almost as rigorous. 

"Which was early on in the shoot?"  

Lowden, with still more emphasis and a nod that summed up the mad range of it all: "It  was.”

An hour later, after the episode showed to much applause, he gave forth answers equally amusing and humble.

 On how he failed to match his pro dancer brother’s prowess as a youth in Edinburgh:

 “I tried, I was awful [in] this little ballet school in Edinburgh. And I was quickly--encouraged to narrate the ballet shows rather than dance…and from that point, I was in front of an audience like I am now. And I just fell in love with this relationship because I was a very shy kid, but for some strange reason, this [gesturing with the mic] feels very, very normal to me. 

“So then I went on stage, and I basically was on stage for years. I was very late to camera. I still find camera a bizarre thing, strange.”

His invitation to join “Slow Horses” came out of the blue: 

“Yeah, I knew nothing about it.  And when the scripts came in, the thing that struck me so quickly was the humor, that's what I fell in love with. And River– especially because he's such a cynical person, and he thinks the whole world is against him--I find him very self -obsessed, which I really enjoy. He is, wonderfully, surrounded by, in particular, quite a lot of women that kind of smack him around the back of the head. And I had that my entire life, a very natural place for me to stay.”

He doesn’t want to know River’s character arc in advance:

“I don't read the books in advance. I read the books as we go along. So I don't really know what happens past what we're filming.  But the problem with doing that is that it's a sort of [television] writer’s nightmare, because I'll listen to the audio book and I'll hear things that are said, and I'll run in the next day and tell Will Smith, the writer, ‘Can you put this in?’ And he just wants to hit you in the face.”

He’s got a recurring wish to see the slow horses cohort really tie one on:

 Strangely, I've always said this, that I think the slow Horses as a group of people are who you would want to you'd want to be found with late at night in a bar. In fact, I am going to pitch this to the writer…to do this not around a dinner table, [but] in a shit pub. Because I think, after about five or six drinks, there would be a phenomenal bunch of people. There would be arguments and there would be tears, but then eventually you would have a scene where you would just watch all the slow horses dance. 

 In the finale’s final passage in which River and Oldman’s Jackson Lamb convene in an almost filial way, they sought to insert a very special prop:

 “When we did that scene, Gary and I, in our typical fashion, pissed about a lot with the fact that we thought it would be funny that when River  turns up, that Lamb has bought him a drink already—the campy-est, fruitiest- looking  cocktail, yellow and red and green, and had an umbrella. And Gary just slides that across. 

“They cut it. “

And yet when they do take hold of actual whiskies:

“It’s my favorite moment in all of “Slow Horses.”  I really like the physical aspect of it, that something as simple as the two of them take their whiskey at the same time is really gorgeous, and it says a lot more than what is actually said.”

He’s quite comfortable with the acting icons that surround him:

“Yes, because they're very normal people. The British have this wonderful tradition of theater. And of all of those greats--none of them take themselves seriously at all”. 

The quiet legend that is Hugo Weaving is no exception as a very dark father figure:

“It was incredible, because Hugo's made his name playing these really sort of iconically evil men, and he's just this big, lovely Australian, warm hearted, lovely man. I feel like I get lost in [when]  he's very twinkly. He shuts it off very quickly as soon as the red light comes on …mesmerizing.”

He knows River’s sporadic sprints and vaults have their own ironic stature, but:

“I don't prepare for them at all.  I wish I could say there was some sort of extreme exercise regime, but I was kind of adamant that they  feel like it would for normal people, and that when they ran, when they're jumping over things, you can kind of almost hear the joints. It was described very early that in the first season, River constantly vaults over things. The word vault was always used. So even in the summer before I shot, whenever I was out on a walk, my wife, we'd be walking around, and there'd be a fence, and I'd sort of look that way and that way. And then…

One such sprint in a small French village involves a snatched conveyance:

“I was particularly fond of the scene in episode four, when he finds a shit motorbikeas he gets chased by an Alsatian. Ridiculous…

“But everything has to be like when they get that right in Bond [action scenes],  where he looks like he doesn't quite know what he's doing, and everything sort of works. Oh, Christ, if I pull that lever, it sort of works. And we're, we want that element in slow horses that they have a plan, and it never goes to plan—whatever they end up doing is by mistake.

 “I think that River  has the ideal image of a spy on his wall, and he, every day, goes in and tries to fulfill it. He never, ever fills it. But I think his heart is in the right place, and I think in the wonderful way that most humans are, I think he's trying with every fiber he has, but he will, he will mess up again and again.

 Somehow, amid the action and comedy the show finds the drama of a parent’s dementia as played by Jonathan Pryce as River’s grandfather:

“With his grandfather, he is going through something horrendous that I think probably everybody in this room has either experienced or has dreaded experiencing, which is watching a loved one disappear in front of your eyes with dementia or Alzheimer's. It's one of the great fears I think of us all as we look at our loved ones. And members of the cast had experienced it with loved ones. And I think again, to throw that into the world of espionage, to have a young man dealing with his hero physically and mentally deteriorating in front of him was a stroke of genius. And I think those scenes were particularly difficult.” 

A little uneasy with his celebrity status, he learns how to deal by observing his wife:

 “This is the first time I've ever experienced anyone knowing who I am, but it's lovely, because we're all amazed that suddenly the series blew up.  [Still] that's a really strange experience. People just sort of looking in a supermarket, normally it's my wife—and I  sort of hold the camera so they can take the photograph.”

But the script recently got flipped: 

 “Absolutely one of the greatest moments of my life. We were on queue for an airplane, and it was a long one, and she said, `There's this girl  with a camera, looking like she’s  coming over.' Saoirse will hate me for telling me she came over and this, this lovely girl went, `I'm so sorry, Jack– can I have a photograph? ‘ 

 (With ironic bravura): “Thank you!—take all the photographs you want!’”

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Previous posts:

Dogtown.press on "Slow Horses"

https://www.dogtown.press/brits-to-the-rescue-slow-horses-remounts-with-elan/

 Dogtown.press on Saoirse Ronan:

https://www.dogtown.press/saoirse-ronan-in-the-outrun-rides-it-like-a-soldier-2/