The Big Picture

Jack Lowden considers Season 3 of Slow Horses his favorite of the series, as it feels more comfortable and hits the right tone. The show’s writers and directors have allowed the cast to own their characters, and Lowden praises the collaborative atmosphere on set. Slow Horses Season 4 is currently in the works, and Lowden expresses excitement for the show’s potential and hopes for its renewal.

In Apple TV+’s espionage series, Slow Horses, Jack Lowden plays Slough House recruit, River Cartwright. As we near the halfway mark of Season 3’s 10-episode count, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down for an exclusive conversation with Lowden about the series so far and how he’s taken ownership of his ambitious character.

If you’ve not had a chance to catch up, Season 3 sees Cartwright still vying for MI5’s good graces, but Slough House as a whole is in turmoil after Catherine (Saskia Reeves) was taken hostage. Writer and producer Will Smith returns with director Saul Metzstein to bring an action-heavy season that has begun to take a deeper dive into the Slow Horses as they and their unimpressed leader, Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), try to get to the bottom of why someone in their right mind would target Slough House.

In this one-on-one, which you can read below, Lowden talks about how the show has evolved since Season 1, adding that Season 3 is “by quite a long shot” his favorite of the Slough House saga. Each season of the show has been acclaimed by viewers, and Lowden shares how Smith and the four directors who’ve worked on Slow Horses have maintained the heart and tone of the show and allowed the cast to own their characters. He also talks about the status of Season 4, working with Gary Oldman, the action this season, and his transition from the stage to screen.

Slow Horses Follows a team of British intelligence agents who serve as a dumping ground department of MI5 due to their career-ending mistakes. Release Date April 1, 2022 Rating TV-MA Seasons 3

COLLIDER: I really want to start with how much I loved Season 3. I really do think it’s the best one yet. It’s such an awesome season. What do you think in terms of the three seasons? Do you have a favorite?

JACK LOWDEN: This one. Absolutely. This one by quite a long shot just because I know what it felt like to make it, which, because we had a big gap between the first two, we all came back feeling a lot more comfortable than the first couple. The tone of this show is so difficult, and so to feel like we’d really sort of hit it and then we could relax into it, this one, definitely.

Also I think that Will [Smith] and everyone who’s working on the scripts, obviously they had more time to work on Seasons 3 and 4, and they know the actors playing the roles. The scripts were just so good.

LOWDEN: Yeah, they are. And also, Will is there a lot of the time on set and Will is not a precious writer at all, and I think it helps with the nature of this. Coming from the background that he comes from on the [Armando] Iannucci stuff and things like that, he’s very, very receptive to actors throwing in ideas or sort of changing the lines or whatever, so it’s a complete joy, the way of working.

How much have you taken ownership now of River in terms of, “I don’t know if he would say this?”

LOWDEN: That’s a good point. Yeah, a little bit of that. I was bold enough to even try that at the very beginning, but there’s probably a lot because we’ve got Season 4, and it’s been pretty much in the can already. Will is brilliant, and the writers are brilliant at adapting to us, so it’s a lot less now. There’s a lot less of me having to say, “He wouldn’t say that.”

What’s the Status of ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4?
Image via Apple TV+

I saw all of Season 3 and it showed a trailer for Season 4 and it made me crazy because I know I have to wait a while. I asked Will, “When will I see it?” And he’s like, “Maybe a year.” It needs to be sooner.

LOWDEN: I know. This is the problem with it, man. We’re shooting it really quickly, and sort of shooting ourselves in the foot in many ways that we’re giving everybody all this great stuff. Thankfully, it’s really brilliant. So, yeah, I think you are going to be in a lot of pain for a while.

Yeah, I know. I have a lot more on Slow Horses, but I wanted to ask, you’ve worked on a lot of cool things, what do you think you were the most nervous to do the night before filming began? Which is the one that you were in your head the most about, like, “Is this gonna work? Am I right for this?”

LOWDEN: Wow, that’s a brilliant, brilliant question. Every single one of them. I’m not gonna lie. But Slow Horses was definitely the one that I really… because a lot of the other things that I’ve been fortunate enough to do, I’ve played a lot of real people. I’ve played a lot of people where there’s a guide there, so to speak, so somebody’s giving you this blueprint. I always know what I could fall back on or aim for, to a certain extent. But with River, it was a complete blank canvas, so I did not turn up on day one knowing exactly what I was going to do with River. No way whatsoever.

I am a big fan of the movie ‘71, which was, I believe, your first film role. What do you remember about making that film, and how scared were you making your first movie or how excited were you?

LOWDEN: It was a strange experience because I grew up on stage. I’d been on the stage since I was a kid in many different forms and it was being on stage that made me want to be an actor. So then to suddenly be asked to act not on a stage with an audience, but with a film crew in Northface jackets looking fairly bored as your only audience, and who are very specifically told they are not allowed to laugh or not allowed to clap or not allowed to cry or whatever — obviously, because it would ruin a take — that was very, a very, very strange experience at first for a guy to get used to. But ‘71 in particular was an incredibly high octane shoot with some brilliant, brilliant people and some brilliant young actors that now have blown up.

Image via StudioCanal UK

It’s also a fantastic movie.

LOWDEN: It’s a great movie.

Jumping into Season 3 and why I get to talk to you, how have you been describing Season 3 to friends and family?

LOWDEN: A lot of it is prefaced with, “It’s even better than the first two. It’s been done with much more of the same, but just done even better, in my opinion. Everybody’s learning as we go with this. It’s definitely a far more personal story, this one, because it’s essentially one of our own who we’re fighting for rather than the world and rather than everybody’s general safety. That’s how I’ve been describing it.

You never know when you make something what the reaction is gonna be, but I have not spoken to anyone that doesn’t think Slow Horses is awesome. What has it been like being part of something where all three seasons people are like, “Oh, this is a really great show?”

LOWDEN: It’s brilliant. It really is. When we’d heard about the reception of this season, part of me was taken aback and it was brilliant, but part of me also was like, “Yeah, great because that’s exactly what we all thought it was gonna be.” We could feel it. We could feel that it was just getting better, and I think it’s gonna be the same with Season 4, as well. It’s always wonderful when you’ve not made a pile of shite, you know? It’s always great. [Laughs]

What Do All Four ‘Slow Horses’ Directors Have in Common?

One of the things about Slow Horses is each season you have a different director. I’m curious, how would you compare James [Hawes] to Jeremy [Lovering] to Saul [Metzstein] to Adam [Randall]? Do they all have something similar or are any of them radically different workers in many ways?

LOWDEN: In many ways, yeah, they are radically different. They are all completely their own director even on something that has to have a similar tone. It must have the same tone otherwise that’s a mess. But from an actor’s point of view, they are all very, very, very, very different, but they all, ultimately, have funny bones. That’s for sure. And they all have hearts, I think, which both of those things are very key to Slow Horses. They’re all British basically, so there’s a very British sense of humor, so to speak. They’re wonderful. On this one in particular, Saul had a hard job in that he was coming into something that had been established, and after a long break. He dealt with that very well, particularly with the actors, and was very sort of, “You do what you think you should do and I’ll tell you if it’s shite or if it’s good to help you out.” He didn’t come in and say, “I want it to be this and that,” which would have been the wrong thing to do, and exactly the same with Adam. I’m incredibly excited for people to see what Adam’s done as well. He’s a wonderful director.

Do you consider Slow Horses to be a workplace comedy?

LOWDEN: No, I consider it to be a black comedy thriller and its arena is the workplace. I think what makes it fantastic is the fact that it’s a huge show, it’s Apple, it’s massive. They could go mad with this; they could take us to the moon, they could do stuff like that. That’s the age that we’re living in with things like this, but most of it is set within a very wonderfully built and designed shithole essentially. Everything is yellowing and falling apart, and absolutely not glamorous at all. So no, I take that back, workplace is definitely in there, for sure.

Will was like, “Oh, it’s a workplace comedy.” [Laughs]

LOWDEN: I completely take back everything I just said, and whatever the guy who’s creating it says, stick to that.

No, he had other answers, too. Before you started filming Season 3, because you had that long break since Seasons 1 and 2, how do you as an actor get ready that night before the first day of filming? Did you rewatch episodes from the first two seasons or were you like, “I know this character. I’ve done this. I’m ready?”

LOWDEN: I did feel like I knew the character by that point. By the time we came back for Season 3, I felt like I knew him, but I wanted to push him a little bit more. The great gift of coming back, because I’ve never done any recurring character before, and coming from stage where you do the same thing over and over again, you get to play the character again and again and again. It’s actually quite comfortable to me doing this because I feel comfortable. Gary said earlier, “If you’re sweating, you’re doing something wrong,” and so, on this I’m not sweating anymore, which is a wonderful feeling for an actor, and when an actor is at his most potent and dangerous, I think. I felt really prepared in that sense for coming back that I felt like there’s a baseline here that I don’t need to worry about anymore and now I can have a little bit more fun.

Image via Apple TV+

Obviously I’m convinced that Apple is gonna renew your show. Have they asked you to save any dates next year for possible filming?

LOWDEN: No, they have not yet. We’ve still got things to do. We still haven’t really finished Season 4 because of the strikes. There’s still quite a few days Gary was mentioning that we need to do because of the strike. I mean, I’m with you. I hope so. Certainly, I hope so because having done Season 4, it’s got so much potential.

I would be seriously stunned if they don’t want to make more. Especially because how would you not want to have Gary Oldman on your channel? He’s so good in this.

LOWDEN: Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to tell me that. I think him and the show in general has been a real coup because there’s nothing like it on any other streamer or channel.

I’ve talked to you about this before but one of my favorite things on the show is watching Gary eat and just the fact that he just goes full force in whatever he’s eating. Also, Will was telling me sometimes he’ll be like, “I should eat something in this,” and add to it. What is it like working opposite him when he is eating noodles or whatever it may be, just going full force?

LOWDEN: The more that I work, and the more fortunate I am to work with people of Gary’s caliber and Gary’s experience and accolades and all these things that Gary has, every time I work with people like this, I realize that, “Oh, you do a lot of the leg work, a lot of the stuff that that needs to happen.” Like that scene you’re talking about when we’re doing the noodles, I think it was like a five or six-page scene. I basically talked the whole thing and Gary just had to eat noodles, and there was me worrying about, “Am I going to get this line right? Am I getting the point across well? Am I in the right headspace for River or whatever?” And it’s all irrelevant because Gary’s eating noodles, and watching Gary Oldman eat noodles, he’s always more interesting, but he’s earned it. So, I’m looking forward, hopefully I can get to the day where I can eat a bunch of noodles and let some young actor just explain the plot essentially.

Related ‘Slow Horses’ Producer Loves Making Gary Oldman Eat on Screen Showrunner Will Smith talks about spinoff ideas, future seasons, perfecting the tone of the show, & working on a bigger scale.

My last thing for you because I’m just about out of time. One of the things about Season 3 is that it really ups the ante with action. It has way more action this season than I was expecting. What was it like for you reading the script and seeing what you were going to be asked to do?

LOWDEN: I’m learning it’s not really a shock anymore with River if River has to run. River runs, nonstop. Basically River exists from running, to an eye roll, to running, to the next eye roll. That sort of sums him up quite well. But yes, you’re probably right, the action is towards the second half of the season. When I first read that, it did hit me, “Jeez, we really are going full throttle here.” I mean, it’s never not fun to do that, man. It’s never not fun to call that your day job.

Slow Horses Season 3 is available to stream on Apple TV+.

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