Sign in to your Collider account
[Editor's note: The following contains some spoilers for The Day of the Jackal.]
Summary
- The Peacock and Sky series 'The Day of the Jackal' follows an elusive assassin as he's being chased by a British intelligence officer.
- Lashana Lynch, as co-executive producer, saw the longevity of the characters and contributed to elevating female storylines.
- Lynch and co-star Eddie Redmayne's minimal on-screen interaction was compensated by their collaboration behind the scenes in shaping the show.
The Peacock and Sky series The Day of the Jackal, which ranked #1 on Peacock’s Top 10 TV Shows chart and was the biggest new series ever to launch on Sky, pits a highly elusive lone assassin (Eddie Redmayne) against a British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch) whose sole focus becomes tracking him down. A ghost until Bianca Pullman starts to put the pieces together, once she is on the trail of The Jackal, she’s too driven to stop hunting him in a cat-and-mouse game that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The Jackal is a highly-skilled master chameleon with the ability to disappear into a full transformation, from his face to his age to his voice, allowing him to walk away from every job undetected. But then, Biance becomes aware of him and follows him down a road in conflict with her life as a wife and mother. Thankfully, the success of the series has already led to a Season 2 pick-up, giving the two characters further opportunity to ultimately collide.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Lynch, who is also a co-executive producer of the series, talked about seeing the longevity of the characters, getting more involved in the conversations, considering each project as a new experience not influenced by the past, having so little time on screen with co-star Redmayne, how that visually iconic moment in the season came about, changing how we represent women on screen, and how she’d like to try her hand at something comedic.
'The Day of the Jackal' Makes You Wonder Whether You Should Be Rooting for the "Good Guy"
Collider: When this came your way, what was it that that got you interested in it? Was it just the specific type of story? Was it the character? What intrigued you about this?
LASHANA LYNCH: The first three scripts that I read drew me in immediately and made me really see the longevity of the characters. I felt Bianca’s perspective and her discomfort with herself quite quickly, and I could see that audiences would respond to her in a way that is nicely uncomfortable. You think you’re gonna root for her, and then she makes some decisions that are overly complicated and complex, and you don’t know if you should be rooting for the “good guy.” They were just really strong scripts that made me proud to dive back into the M:I-6 world and to dive back into stunts, which I said that I wouldn’t necessarily do again for a long time, until these scripts changed my mind really nicely.
I also jumped on board as co-executive producer on the show, which means that I get to have all the conversations that I care about in the entire industry in this space, and the protection of female storylines, storylines that the Black community would be proud of, hair, costume, makeup, VFX, the set builds, the detail within what’s in Bianca’s cupboards and how that represents my community. There were so many intricate conversations I had with our excellent team that brought us to a place where I feel like we’re elevating how we tell stories like this and how we tell original IP stories that could just be a direct stamp of the original, but we got to push so much and be proud of it in a different way.
Related
'The Day of the Jackal' Review: A Tense, Well-Crafted Update of a Classic Thriller
Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch star as an assassin and a spy locked in a cat-and-mouse game.
It’s so cool, as an actor, to get to be a part of the superhero universe, as well as getting to do a Bond movie. But when you do a project where you never actually get to completely tell the story that you start telling, like what happened with Still Star-Crossed, is that always a little bittersweet? When something like that happens, does it make you a little more hesitant to sign on for a TV series again, at all? With a TV series, you’re never guaranteed that you’ll actually get to finish the story you’re hoping to tell.
LYNCH: That is very, very true. Thank you so much for watching that. I really appreciate that you’ve been with me for a long time. Every single opportunity that comes my way, I try to consider everything as a fresh, new experience and try not to be tainted by anything that I may or may not have been able to do in my career. Everything genuinely happens for a reason. Nothing happens before or after it’s time. I don’t believe that I was meant to be in TV for the last few years, or else I would have. Something would have come up, like The Day of the Jackal, and it would have been great and I would have been happy experiencing that. Scripts like this come about, and Marvel scripts or Bond scripts come around, and they’re always very unexpected. You just deal with them on an individual basis and you learn what you can and you grow as an artist. Here, I got to grow a lot more than I had anticipated and got to really shape my views on how we make TV. That’s so new. I get to carry that experience around for the rest of my career now. So, I try not to be tainted by things that happen because it’s all a collective experience.
Lashana Lynch and Eddie Redmayne Didn't Spend Much Screen Time Together in 'The Day of the Jackal,' but They Collaborated in Other Ways
Image via Peacock I love a good cat-and-mouse story where one character is trying to hunt the other one down, but I would imagine the most disappointing aspect of that for the actors is that it means you have little to no actual screentime together. Even though you never directly interact, did you and Eddie Redmayne have conversations about that dynamic, or do you just have to trust in each other and that it will all work in the end?
LYNCH: Because both myself and Eddie were execs on the show, we got to have conversations regularly about what we wanted the show to look like and how we wanted to develop the scripts. We worked very closely with our directors to maintain the throughline that is going to keep audiences wanting to watch more. Even though we didn’t share the screen as much as you would see two leads on a show share the screen, we did share it in other ways, just by communicating in and around our other skill sets. That was really important. I have a real love for music and wanted to help define and create a musicality and a grounding within the music for the show. Eddie has an incredible eye when it comes to VFX and the grade. He knows how to look out for things that we need to develop, so we’re continuing to push the needle forward. We were talking constantly, and I think our friendship really developed in post when we were having those conversations weekly, about what we wanted things to look like and how we maintained a standard that we all wanted to feel proud of. Actually, in the end, not sharing the screen as much as we thought didn’t even matter because we’ve got to do it in other ways.
Related
“There’s a Bit of Sociopathy in Him”: Eddie Redmayne on Playing a Complete Enigma in ‘The Day of the Jackal’
“As much as I would love to Be Tom Cruise, I definitely did not do all my own stunts," says Redmayne about his assassin character.
I love that moment when you’re both on either side of the same wall, bathed in different colors. It’s such a cool moment because there’s so much tension in that scene, even though you’re not talking to each other. What was that moment like to shoot?
LYNCH: With naturalistic drama, when you get to a point where you are slightly breaking the fourth wall, it’s quite nice to work with how set builds move. Audiences don’t often get the chance to see within the nooks and crannies of a set, and there, we really got to utilize the set for the sake of that frame. Those colors are so vivid and visceral and make you feel something, and they’re literally playing with the temperatures of these people and their journeys to each other. It’s the hot and cold, the masculine and the feminine. They work really, really nicely together. And that was much harder to shoot than you’d think. It took a while, but it’s such an iconic moment in the show now.
Lashana Lynch Loves the Idea of Spinning How Women Are Represented on Screen
Image via Peacock The scene in the hospital where your character is trying to get information from this guy that’s not giving it to her, and she keeps suffocating him with a pillow to get him to talk, what was that like to do to, to figure out this very physical at the same time that you’re also trying to communicate?
LYNCH: I had the flu that day, so it was not the best time to be dealing with stunts of that nature, but I loved it. It was really exciting to do because we made sure that all the parameters were in place and that everything was safe. We had such an incredible team to do that. I felt like I had my own classic film moment within that scene. That’s a scene that I feel really proud of, and will in years to come, because it spins how we represent women on screen on its head. You don’t see women do that unless they’re mad at something and hit someone with something. Here, we really got to live with her in her rage. Women’s rage is so interesting to experience, as TV watchers, and doing it in that way was incredibly powerful. Very violent, but powerful.
Related
‘The Day of the Jackal’ Just Gave Us the Jackal We Deserve
Eddie Redmayne's Jackal goes full cold-blooded killer, leaving no room for sympathy — or survivors.
What do you want to do next? Is that concept changing, as you get more of a voice and a say in the characters and how the end product looks?
LYNCH: Exactly that. I said I wasn’t gonna do stunts for a while because, with The Woman King, I did all my stunts entirely on my own and I’m very proud of that, but I wanted to shelve it. And then, this came, and now I’m back to doing stunts. I enjoy shifting in and around what teaches me something through a project. Here, I’ve learned that I have to produce. I’ve got too much to say. I’ve got too much going on in my brain to not express that through other areas of creativity, as an artist. Outside of that, I definitely have to do something light. I definitely need to do something easy, chill and light. Something comedic, maybe. I need to exercise my funny bone. I haven’t done that quite yet, so that might be my next thing.
The Jackal is a highly effective assassin that deals strictly in dangerous hits for large payouts. However, after one job puts him in the targets of a British intelligence officer, the pair engages in a dangerous and destructive chase across Europe.
Release Date November 7, 2024
Seasons 1
The Day of the Jackal is available to stream on Peacock. Check out the trailer:
English (US) ·