Abe Friedtanzer
Sam Spade is a famous fictional private detective first brought to life by author Dashiell Hammett in his 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. The character has since been portrayed numerous times on screen, including in the 1941 film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart. The latest actor to take on the role is Clive Owen, who recently has been doing great work across various television series including in A Murder at the End of the World and as President Bill Clinton in Impeachment: American Crime Story.
Awards Radar had the chance to speak with Owen about how he used Bogart’s performance as a reference and his process of learning just the right amount of French to play the character:
“Well, luckily, Scott insisted that I didn’t have to be that good in French, which was very, very good for me. I didn’t really do it much at school, so I thought I would have time to learn the French, like properly learn French. I started and worked with a teacher, and after a while, I began to realize that I was learning an awful lot of stuff that wasn’t really relevant to me, because I wasn’t going to be tested, I wasn’t going to be tested on my grammar. I wasn’t trying to pass an exam, I just needed to speak and be conversational. And I so switched tact really, and I learned most of it phonetically, like an accent.”
He had high praise for series co-creator and director Scott Frank as he looked back at his TV credits:
“I hadn’t done TV for a very long time before Soderbergh called me up about The Knick, and I adored that script so much. I really wanted to work with him, and that was the first time I had done TV in many years. I really enjoyed it. When the writing’s good and you’ve got a really good director, for me, it’s irrelevant whether it’s TV, whether it’s film. With TV, obviously, you get longer to explore characters and really dive into a story, but if the writing’s good, and the director is someone you want to work with, be it TV, film, or theater, I want to do it. I’m not specific about which one I prefer.”
Listen to the full conversation below.
Monsieur Spade premieres Sunday, January 14th on AMC, AMC+ and Acorn TV.
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