SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers from “Black Doves” Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.
“Black Doves,” Keira Knightley’s first television series in more than two decades, has already proved a massive success for Netflix, which, knowing it had a hit, had ordered a second season from Knightley and creator/showrunner Joe Barton before the show even premiered.
Over the course of six episodes, viewers have been entranced by Helen (Knightley) as she balances her competing roles: elegant wife of Wallace (Andrew Buchan), the Minister of Defence, doting mother of twins, supportive friend to semi-alcoholic assassin Sam (Ben Whishaw), passionate affair partner to her lover Jason (Andrew Koji) and ruthless spy for a mercenary organization called the Black Doves.
After Jason is mysteriously murdered, Helen is hellbent on revenge before realizing she has stumbled into a global conspiracy that could possibly result in World War III, and pits her against the Black Doves and its brusque, cold-blooded leader, Mrs. Reed (Sarah Lancashire). As well as fighting off both U.S. and Chinese assassins, plus some murderous U.K. gangsters, she also goes to head to head with fellow Black Doves member Dani (Agnes O’Casey) who has designs on Wallace and is keen to see Helen out of the picture. (We won’t even mention the London-based crime organization the Clarks, who also want Helen dead.)
Following her Golden Globe nomination this week, Knightley sat down with Variety to talk about how much she knows of Helen’s murky past, hopes for Season 2 and whether she’s swapped corsets for guns permanently.
Firstly, congratulations on the Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations! Were you expecting it?
They’ve both been a total surprise. And what a lovely thing. Because you make it for people to enjoy. Quite often they don’t; a lot of times it goes wrong. It’s really nice when you get one where you’re like, “Oh, look, we intended to do that, and people are liking it, and that’s just great.”
You’re being called the new Queen of Christmas, since this is your fourth yuletide project after “Love, Actually,” “Silent Night” and “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.” Are you ready to take Mariah Carey’s crown?
Yeah, 100% I’m ready. As long as nobody expects me to hit those notes in that song. Apart from that, I’m totally ready.
Given you’re so closely associated with “Love, Actually,” did you hesitate when you saw “Black Doves” was also set at Christmas?
No, because I didn’t really think about the Christmas of it. It’s funny, you don’t think about the Christmas of it in the script until you’re actually watching it, and you’re like, “There’s Christmas lights all over it.” And we were very much living in Christmas for six months, because that’s how long we were shooting it. But no, I didn’t quite realize it was as Christmassy as it was. I mean, it wouldn’t have been a turn off for me, but it wasn’t intentional.
Joe Barton told me when I interviewed him recently that he was a bit Christmassed out by the end.
I feel like we were all a little Christmassed out. I mean, six months of Christmas baubles was quite intense. I think if he chooses to go back to Christmas [for Season 2], we could just about do it again. Who knows?
Joe seemed to think it wouldn’t be Christmas, but he’s open to Easter.
I mean, sure. We could have some big bunnies running around it, it’ll be great.
He also mentioned that you were specifically looking for a contemporary project, rather than something period, when he sent over the pilot for “Black Doves.” Have you hung up your corset for good?
I haven’t hung up my corset for good. I’ve never got a plan outside exactly what I’m looking for at that precise moment. I wanted something contemporary. I wanted something that was entertaining. I was quite interested in violence, and I wanted it to be set in London, because I didn’t want to have to take the kids out of school. So it was quite a specific group of things, and I didn’t really think I was going to find anything. And then my managers from America phoned up and were like, “Do you know Joe Barton?” and I’d literally just watched “Giri/Haji.” I was like “Yes!” [They said] “He’s just handed in this pilot, and it’s violent and it’s set in London and it’s contemporary and it’s Joe Barton.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” It’s’ been one of my favorite jobs to do. It was just wonderful. And I think partly because of the silliness of it. I mean, the ridiculousness of it is what made it so fun.
Were you conscious of treading the line between that melodramatic silliness and grounding it in reality?
Yes, but I think that’s what Joe’s work does so beautifully. Because when you watch “Giri/Haji” or you watch “Lazarus,” it’s a tightrope that he walks. Very few people can do it, and you recognize it as soon as you read it. Because the dialogue is so delicious, but the whole setup of it is like, “This is wild.”
I’m always thinking, “OK, what’s the reality?” So with the fight scenes, I was like, “How does somebody my size beat somebody that size?” [In Episode 2, during a knife fight between Helen and Elmore Fitch, played by Paapa Essiedu], as soon as they said knives, I said, “OK, so like a butcher. So I’d learn where the tendons were, and I’d slice the tendons and as long as I got that then they’d be debilitated and they’d bleed out and that’s fine.” And Joe was like, “But that’s horrible?” And I went, “Well, yeah.” And he was like, “No! You just hit him with a dish towel, and he gives up.” So he’s very good at balancing it, going, “Yeah, I get that that’s real. But actually, we don’t need to go that far.” I will always offer up slicing tendons, and they can reject it. That’s fine as well.
How much did you know about Helen’s backstory when you started shooting? And are we going to see more about what happened with her stepfather and her sister in Season 2?
I mean, I’m assuming so, but I don’t know. The backstory was growing and changing as we went, which was quite interesting. My big question was always, did I kill the stepfather? Because that’s quite a big character point. He went “Absolutely not. You didn’t kill the stepfather.” And then at some point we did shoot a scene where I say I killed the stepfather. I’m like, “Wait a minute…” And then he was like, “Oh no, actually, I’m taking it out again.” So it was up in the air. I suspect I probably did.
What would you like to see Helen do in Season 2?
I want to kill Dani. I don’t think it’s OK that she tried to fuck my husband and kill me on Christmas Eve. So [Joe and I] are having a very funny text line at the moment where I’m basically saying, “Let me kill Dani.” And he’s like “Errr.” I’m going murderous, and he’s like, “No, wait a minute!”
To be fair, those are good reasons for Helen to kill Dani.
She’d definitely kill Dani! It’s not OK to fuck her husband, or try to fuck her husband. I mean, I get to have affairs, but he does not, obviously.
Do you think Helen loves Wallace?
I think everything for her is real. I think she does love her husband. I think she does love her children. I think there is a world where she is a very good wife and a very good mother. She’s just also a horrific wife and a horrific mother, and she is betraying him at all times. So that relationship I find really interesting.
We went through a lot of discussions of exactly what this relationship would be, and I think what we came up with was, I think it is [love]. I think she stayed for a reason — because she could have gone — and so the reason that she doesn’t go is fascinating, and again, something that I think we can dig more into.
Aside from the fact she’s a spy and her husband is the Minister for Defence, it’s a very relatable concept: “Do you ever really know the other person in a relationship?”
I think that’s what’s lovely about the whole thing. Yes, it’s in the ridiculous, large world of spies and all the rest of it. But ultimately, it’s about the different faces that we all wear, and that you are never known fully. The fascinating thing about this one is the only person that knows her whole self is Sam. So it’s this platonic relationship in the center, which is the only place for both of them where they can be entirely themselves.
[Helen and Sam] are desperate for that love, but they’re never going to get it, because they’ve got this side of themselves which cannot be known to the person who they’re in love with. So the melancholy of that and the loneliness of that — within this silly world of explosions and all the rest of it — is actually what gives [the show] a heart at its center, which is what I loved about it.
The scene in which Helen gives up her plan to run away in order to come and help Sam is really touching. What was it like wielding both a baby bump and a gun?
I had a prosthetic belly and prosthetic boobs and all incredibly heavy and enormous. But it was quite amazing shooting the scene, because people were really shocked by the image of it. Actually that scene came in quite a long way after we started filming. There were whispers of it, but we hadn’t quite seen how it was going to work. I think it was between [director] Alex Gabassi and Joe going, “She’s got to be pregnant.” And I think they were completely right, just judging from the set and everybody’s faces going, like “What the hell is that?” It was a good kind of shocking thing.
In literature, pregnancy is sometimes treated as the ultimate expression of femininity — and here it’s juxtaposed with you murdering assassins. Did you think about that dichotomy while shooting the scene?
It did go through my head. I’ve just never found pregnancy to be a “soft” thing. I got sciatica in my second pregnancy — I was so angry at the end of it. I was in so much physical pain, and I was so angry that I remember being in a swimming pool — the only time that I was not in pain was if I was floating in a swimming pool — and for some reason, I had to get out. And I just remember really shouting at my husband. I was like this angry hippopotamus full of rage at this whole thing. And I think that’s actually more what was in my head. I understood the rage, the discomfort of needing to piss every five seconds, having your sciatica being completely blown to pieces. I think I’m much more interested in that reality of pregnancy, and therefore that kind of violence that she’s experiencing. I could connect to that in a way that isn’t the soft, fuzzy version of pregnancy that you’re used to seeing in popular culture.
Given the potential repercussions of Sam killing Trent in the season finale, could Season 2 see Sam and Helen set against each other?
Yes! I mean, this is just fun for me and Ben — this is not me saying that this is what’s going to happen in Season 2, because I actually don’t know. But we were constantly going, “Is there a price that they’d turn on each other?” Because they are fundamentally capitalist extremists. There is no morality. So there is a price for everything. And there is nothing higher than their own ego and their own selves. They’re mercenaries. So is there a world where they turn on each other? Joe, when we talked about it, said “Absolutely not. They’re completely best friends.” But you plant a seed with Joe, and then he goes away, and he’s like “Hmmm.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
English (US) ·