“Slow Horses” showrunner and writer Will Smith told TheWrap that one of the things he loves about the show’s lead, the gruff, unkempt Jackson Lamb, is that the spy series leaves much of the character’s backstory untold.
“Lamb has seen a lot of loss and he’s slightly burnt out from it all,” Smith told TheWrap following the Season 4 finale, in which Slough House loses yet another agent.
“He hasn’t got the emotional bandwidth to deal with that anymore,” Smith continued. “He talks about that in Series 1. He says to River, “It’s a tough life. And when I was your age, I lost the baker’s dozen.’”
Even if someone where to mount an adaptation of Mick Herron’s 2023 novel “The Secret Hours,” which spends half of the book with Lamb and MI5 archivist Molly Doran (Naomi Wirthner) in Berlin during the Cold War, Smith “cannot imagine” casting a younger actor to play Lamb.
TheWrap: Like you said, you don’t get into the backstory of Lamb. I think the tendency now is to want to do prequels, but I’m not sure I’d like to see a young Jackson Lamb story. What are your thoughts?
Will Smith: I don’t think people would want that. Early on, Mick and I used to joke about that, and he used to be quite vehemently against it. And for exactly the reasons you say: It’s the fascination with Lamb.
There are parallels with other major characters in fiction and film and TV, where they have delved into the background and it does lose some of the magic. You think, “I don’t really want the explanation, because I quite like the mystery and the enigma. I like the not-knowing.” And it loses something to explain it.
But then Mick has then written a brilliant book called “The Secret Hours,”where he does go back into post-war Berlin with Lamb and Molly. It’s a fantastic book as it goes between the two timelines. And he brings in some Slow Horses in a really fun, tangential way. So that could be a really interesting one to do. It’s not really a young Lamb, but he’s still the essence of Lamb.
But, like you say, it’s tricky. You don’t want to spoil the magic of what the hell happened to him. You just [wonder], “What made you this way, Lamb?” That’s the question that is on everyone’s mind. And yeah, would it be the wrong thing to answer that?
Let’s say you did decide to adapt “The Secret Hours.” Would Gary play the younger version or would you have to cast a different actor at that point?
I don’t think you could cast a different actor. You just can’t. Gary is Lamb, that’s it. I’m talking completely out of turn here, it’s not anything that’s happening.
But yes, I think Gary is just such a supreme actor. I’d love to see how Gary handled the challenge of playing a de-aged Lamb, which hopefully the technology be there that he could do it, and how he would physically approach that, and how he would think. I’d love to hear that or explore that, but it’s nothing that’s actually happening.
I just cannot imagine anyone doing Jackson Lamb with [a younger actor]. You have to go, okay, “Who’s the young Gary Oldman?” And Gary is Gary is Gary. It’s a really tricky thing to do. It’s a really tall ask that, yeah, it should not be approached lightly.
Seasons 1-4 of “Slow Horses” is now streaming on Apple TV+. Season 5 is expected in late 2025.
