With its third season, Apple TV+’s spy drama “Slow Horses,” based on Mick Herron‘s series of spy novels, doles out the smallest revelations about Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, played by Gary Oldman. “Another layer of the onion is peeled back,” says Oldman, whose Lamb doesn’t mind that the world sees him as a slovenly, flatulent insult hurler leading a team of failed operatives. Of course, he’s more complex than that.
“There’s also a great moral compass, it’s very strong, and there’s loyalty too. Even though he might be a taskmaster, he’s very loyal to his team.” The series received nine Emmy nominations, including a lead actor in a drama nod for Oldman.
Explain one of Jackson’s superpowers: He’s a human databank when it comes to his MI5 rejects. How is that? That’s the spycraft. He knows where everybody lives.
[He’s] followed them. He knows what they’re up to. That’s what I think is great about the spycraft of Lamb.
It’s the clothes, it’s all that; you keep people guessing. In Season 4, we have a new head of the security department at MI5. She thinks she’s got his number immediately and completely underestimates him.
The idea behind the dirty [raincoat] and the smell of whiskey and cigarettes is that he’s playing chess. That’s one of the great joys of playing him. That and the fact that he has no filter, that he’s utterly direct.
The reason we enjoy it as an audience, and I enjoy playing it, is because we can’t b.