People still can’t get enough of Kristin Scott Thomas and Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses.”
“We’ve worked together before. We’ve got very good acting chemistry. And it’s really fun. These two characters are so brilliantly written. You can’t beat great writing,” she tells Variety at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, where she picked up the Crystal Nymph Award for her career.
The show also has some fans in high places.
“Apparently, all the MI6 and MI5, they love it. They really love watching it! We’ve never seen people like this. We’ve never seen the inside of these spy places.”
Her character, Diana Taverner, is “the ultimate ice queen,” she says.
“I mean, I have my ideas, but we will never know what she’s like when she’s not doing her job. She’s just so ambitious and so devoted to it, and she’s become this representation of security in the British Isles. She’s a sort of iron woman. Not a hair out of place, perfect lipstick.”
She adds: “She takes it to such an extreme that you have to think that it’s about something else. It’s just so… perfect. The clothes that she wears are fantastic. They make this shape, and this shape means power. She thinks: ‘You want perfect? I’ll give you perfect. I’ll show you what that really means.’”
Taverner, just like everyone around her, is “wrestling with her humanity.”
“They’re scrabbling, and they make mistakes. And they have their own egos, because they’re humans. Diana and Jackson Lamb [played by Oldman], they balance each other out. He’s filthy and she’s perfect,” she laughs.
“Together, despite themselves, they make a very good team.”
After “Slow Horses,” the fans approach her differently now.
“When you are doing a TV show, you are being watched in someone’s living room, on their phone. They have control of when you appear, because they press the button. When you do a film, they make the commitment to go to you,” she says.
“Now, people think they know me, because I’m in their living room. It’s a much more personal connection. I’ve really noticed that.”
“In the theater, people are really friendly and open. When they come up to you afterwards, they saw you on stage, and they really appreciate the work that you’ve done. When you’re on film, they’re slightly in awe, because you’re so big. But on television, the image can be the size of your phone. So suddenly, they’re more powerful than you.”
She notes: “If I’m in the street and somebody comes up to me and says, ‘I love ‘Slow Horses,’ they feel empowered to tell you that, because they invited you into their house.”
With the next season already looming on the horizon, what’s next for Taverner?
“I’d love to see her laugh,” says Scott Thomas.
“I mean, properly laugh, not laugh at someone, but laugh. I’d love to see her sing or hum something. I’d love to see her happy. You don’t often see her happy. You see her satisfied, you see her gloating and you see her relieved, but you don’t actually see her happy. You don’t see her relaxed, ever.”
She adds: “The one thing I do not want to have to do is get into another lift, because I hate the lighting in the lifts.”
She would like to share more scenes with Oldman, too.
“I would love to have more to do with Gary, because I find that the scenes that are between Jackson and Diana, or River and Diana, tend to be more of a problem for Diana rather than something she’s just sort of solving. We don’t get to hang out.”
But while Taverner is still very much the ice queen, Scott Thomas is “much more relaxed” these days.
“It just happens with maturity. I’m less shy now. I haven’t got time to be shy.”
Later, during the press conference at the festival, she admits: “Sometimes, people have accused me of being frightening in my life. And I go: ‘What are you talking about? I’m not frightening at all.’ I’m terrified, so I can’t be frightening. And then I saw ‘Slow Horses.’ Oh my God.”
“I just saw the way this woman looks at people. And I thought, ‘Oh, I get it now.’ Now, I’ve been really, really careful in my life to smile a lot. On purpose. It has changed my way of being, I suppose.”