Editor’s note: The below interview contains major spoilers for the Slow Horses Season 6 finale.
Slow Horses Season 6 has officially wrapped up, and it doesn’t seem like MI5’s biggest misfits will ever be the same. Now that the smoke has cleared in the wake of Frank Harkness’ (Hugo Weaving) attack on Diana Taverner’s (Kristin Scott Thomas) safe house, Slough House has been forced to say goodbye to several of its own, including the quiet but compelling J.K. Coe (Tom Brooke) as well as the group’s latest and most surprising member, Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley). With at least one more character’s fate up in the air after that finale cliffhanger for River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), how will the events of Season 6 impact the Slow Horses moving forward?
Before the premiere of “Judgment Day,” Collider spoke with Christopher Chung about Roddy’s Season 6 storyline, from his dynamic with the long-suffering Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) to his newest screen partner in Lenny Rush, as well as how the loss of Flyte has both shattered Roddy’s world and left him more intent than ever on becoming the hero who will always save the day.
COLLIDER: Last time we talked, you hadn’t played Harry Beecham.
CHRISTOPHER CHUNG: That might be correct.
Even though I love Roddy in Slow Horses, it was so nice to see you play such a swoony guy.
CHUNG: It’s nice to step out and play the kind of character that Roddy Ho thinks he is.
I had the exact same thought. Before we get into bigger spoiler territory, I wanted to ask about your Season 6 scenes with Jack [Lowden] and River becoming progressively more annoyed with Roddy. River’s trying to find out who’s been calling his phone, and Roddy is predictably unhelpful. Are you ever aware of Jack making certain gestures behind you in those moments?
CHUNG: I’m not, actually, to be honest. When I watched Episode 2 recently, where he’s doing that, I knew that he was doing something behind my back when we were filming because I could hear him rustling, but I didn’t quite know what it was. I thought he might have been going through Ho’s stuff on his desk, or whatever that might be, but then I watched it, and this facial expression that he gets is so brilliant. But that, I think, is the great fun of it.
Me and Jack went into that scene not knowing what it was going to look like, and I remember talking about that scene specifically. I think it’s about Ho pushing River’s buttons in a way that he doesn’t really know. Roddy thinks he’s being really helpful and sincere and offering him some kind of counsel, but Ho says this line at the end of it, “I just thought you wanted to talk since your grandpops is dead.” It’s just so blunt, but he is actually genuinely trying to be helpful and sensitive in a very Roddy Ho way. Getting to play those scenes with Jack, I don’t think we’ve had a lot of back and forth since Season 1. There have been a couple of scenes, but to get a couple of scenes together this season was really great.
Christopher Chung Has Nothing but Praise for His Newest ‘Slow Horses’ Scene Partner
“He’s actually a master of comedy in a way that any 17-year-old should not be.”
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Image via Apple TV</figure>
One of your new scene partners this season is Lenny [Rush] as Reece, who is so brilliant and funny and even goes toe-to-toe with Jackson Lamb. Was there anything he did in your scenes that stands out to you, or a choice he made in a scene that caught you off-guard?
CHUNG: There’s this scene where we get to the Suffolk house, and Moira’s given us all pasta, and Reece is being quite a suck-up to Moira in that moment. Lenny just sucks up spaghetti at one point, and it’s so brilliant because it’s the way that they’ve timed it in the edit. But when he did it, I just couldn’t control myself.
He’s actually a master of comedy in a way that any 17-year-old should not be. It was so much fun to work with him. I felt very protective of him on set, like he was my little brother. I suppose, with the dynamic, Reece probably thinks Ho is a child, as well. So that’s probably why they go together so well, because there’s a certain commonality and brain capacity between them being children in the series.
I did find myself reflecting on the trajectory Roddy goes on, especially in the wake of Season 5, when you and Gary [Oldman] have those one-on-one scenes together. Is Lamb trusting Roddy with more responsibility, or is it that he doesn’t really want to deal with Reece, so he’s just going to shove him off on someone else?
CHUNG: It’s more so the latter. Lamb knows that he has to take care of business, and the kid will get in the way of that. But when Lamb calls Blake’s grave, you can see such a huge shift happen within Slough House at that moment, and I’m telling River, “We’ve got to go. We’re not joking anymore. This is real.” There’s such a tonal shift within the pace at that point. I think Roddy puts his “agenting” hat on, so he does become a little bit more serious and a little bit more focused on what needs to occur — even though he’s told to go dark, and he doesn’t.
Was that a real house that was found for the safehouse, or was it built for the purpose of just getting to blow it up? Because that place looks destroyed by the end of the season.
CHUNG: That was a real house. There were a lot of adjustments made to it. All of the reeds that are down that we all run through — that was all greenery that was put in for us. I thought that was there already, but it was meters and meters and meters of these long reeds that we had to run through, which seemed excessive to me, but then when you watch the show, it’s so incredible. It’s so cinematic.
[Director] Adam [Randall] and [DOP] Eben [Bolter] are such incredible filmmakers. The shots that they got with the way that the set was dressed were just mind-blowing. When I watched those last two episodes, I went, “This is so incredibly beautiful and tense all in the same breath.”
But they took out that massive window, and we replaced it with shattered glass. There were a lot of adjustments that happened to that property. I’m sure that it cost an extortionate amount of money to do, but I think every decision that was made on that set was totally justified. It looks brilliant.
‘Slow Horses’ Christopher Chung Explains How Roddy Is Forever Changed After Season 6
“That was a real moment where I wanted his world to shatter a bit…”
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Image via Apple TV</figure>
I almost feel bad bringing up the Flyte of it all, but honestly, I’m still reeling over it. Last season established a bit of a crush on Roddy’s side, and Season 6 definitely leans into that — but he’s also listening to her, following her lead. When Roddy finds Flyte after she’s been shot, I was curious about how you wanted to play the emotion of the moment, because it’s not like you have a lot of time to react. The danger is still out there.
CHUNG: Most important is that this is the first experience that Ho has had with death being physically in front of him, someone that he knows and has a shared history with. There are so many moments in the previous season where he’s asking Lamb if he’s got photos of men flattened on the ground, and whenever someone dies: “Did you take pictures of it?” He has this kind of morbid fascination with death, but has actually never been physically in front of someone dead that he knows.
That was a real moment where I wanted his world to shatter a bit, and the perception of being so nonchalant about death and carefree about things to drop out of him, and actually, reality to really smack him in the face. Flyte is someone that he’s had a relationship with — friendly, professional, or otherwise — someone that he knows, he’s been in her flat, and someone that he fancies, as well.
So, to see her dead on the ground like that, it definitely changes him, and it changes the stakes for him, as well, which is why you see him running away from Reece at the start. But then he comes back at the end because he’s like, “Absolutely not. This is not happening to other people that I know.” It kind of really instills a kind of courage in him from seeing her.
Talking about how that continues, where he does pick up a gun. Unfortunately…
No, but was that something that you felt because of the emotion — his world has just been cracked open, so how would that be affecting the way that he’s going to be able to aim a weapon?
CHUNG: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I love the moment when he’s gone to bat for Shirley and Reece, and he knows that he’s run out of bullets, and Niall [Wright]’s character starts to raise his gun to shoot him, and you just see everything fall out of Ho’s face, where he’s like, “I guess, fuck, this is it. I’m done.” And then Reece shoots him in the back. Really, what he’s done, in his mind later on, is create a distraction for Reece to be able to do that, so he actually saved the day.
At this point, where do you think the finale leaves Roddy heading into next season?
CHUNG: What he’s found at the end of the Suffolk shootout is that he needs to step up to the plate and be more of a man, and it sets him on a path to prove himself in a really toxic masculinity kind of way, but in a Roddy Ho toxic masculinity kind of way. Not saying that he’s going to become Andrew Tate, but I think he will really start to look to be someone that’s more front-footed and make up for his past transgressions where he feels like he’s dropped the ball.
When Catherine tells us that we’re going to go to the church to do the toast for the Slow Horses who’ve passed, and I’m playing that shooting game, my idea was that we should try and design a game that he’s made that relives what happened on the beach for him — and actually, this time, he’s the hero. Going into Season 7, it’s him wanting to be the hero in the story.
All six seasons of Slow Horses are available to stream on Apple TV, with Season 7 set to premiere at a date yet to be announced.
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