Steven Prusakowski
If you think you know every side of actor Eddie Redmayne, you don’t know Jack… or better yet, Jackal. The versatile Academy Award winning actor has shown his dramatic chops again and again in films like The Theory of Everything where he portrayed Stephen Hawking, as well as his musical work in Les Misérables and on Broadway for his Tony-nominated performance in Cabaret. Redmayne has even cast his spell on audiences in the world of fantasy for the Harry Potter world with the Fantastic Beasts series. The actor reinvents himself role after role, but nothing prepared me for how completely unrecognizable he becomes in his role in Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal.
Based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel, the limited series follows Jackal (Redmayne), a professional assassin hired to kill a German chancellor candidate. After executing the hit with an almost impossible two mile sniper shot, the assassin is tasked with a kill that has a large enough payout to allow him to retire from the deadly life. Dampening his retirement plans are M-16 intelligence agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) who is determined to stop him, leading to a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that puts both their lives—and those around them—at risk.
Redmayne’s portrayal of the cold, emotionally detached assassin stands in stark contrast to the more heroic, respectable, or likable characters he’s known for. He often appears unrecognizable, both due to his elaborate disguises—transforming him into an elderly man or adopting various other incognito looks—and because of the cold, detached demeanor he adopts. As an assassin, he is emotionally disconnected from his actions, portraying a stone-cold killer with little regard for the consequences. The series is dark and unflinching, and Redmayne’s portrayal of this chilling, calculated character adds a truly menacing edge to the story.
Awards Radar spoke with Redmayne and Lynch (who Joey recently spoke to for Bob Marley: One Love here) in a brief conversation about the series where Redmayne explained why he wanted to take on the role. “I was a massive lover of the original film. I grew up with that,” Said Redmayne. “There was something about Edward Fox’s performance in that, that was so sort of casually ruthless, and yet deeply enigmatic and charismatic, but without you ever knowing anything about him.”
For those expecting a very defined good versus evil story the characters are much more complex than that explained Lynch whose character makes some questionable decisions in the interest of catching the killer.”There’s so much ugliness in the characters and in what happens and things happen so fast and there’s not much time for recovery, both for the characters and for the audience. It’s just nice to see characters in mess.”
Watch my interview with Lynch and Redmayne where they discuss what they put into the series, a humorous anecdote about maybe the most surprising fake outs of the series, how Lynch’s decision to produce allowed her to dive deeper into her character, and 3 well chosen words to describe the series.
The first five episodes of The Day of the Jackal are now streaming on Peacock. One episode per week will be released for three weeks on Thursday before the final two episodes debut December 12.
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