Guy Pearce talks to Chris Evans about his new espionage thriller and the return of Neighbours - 'It certainly felt like it was all over'

Virgin Radio

30 Nov 2022, 11:54

Actor Guy Pearce joined The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about starring as Kim Philby in new espionage thriller show, A Spy Among Friends. He also chatted about the return of Neighbours!

A Spy Among Friends - which is available on ITVX from next Thursday, 8th December - is set in England in 1963, where Nicholas Elliott (Damien Lewis) works for MI6 as an intelligence officer but is left in turmoil when he learns his close friend and colleague Kim Philby (played buy Guy) had been secretly working as a double agent for the KGB and has defected to the Soviet Union. 

Of his character in A Spy Among Friends, the Memento and LA Confidential star told Chris: “I must admit, through the course of the show, I kept having these moments of going, ‘I can’t believe this actually happened. I can’t believe he got away with what he got away with for 30 years’. And I do feel that obviously he was quite a duplicitous character, and I’m sure that that his feelings about Communism were justified and felt very real, but I do think that a lot of what drove him was probably his disdain for what he might call the blind British ruling class and its inability to question itself and do the due diligence that it should have done in order to keep tabs on everybody. 

“I think he took advantage of a system that was ready to be taken advantage of.”

When speaking about how close to the truth the story (based on the novel of the same name by Ben Macintyre) is, the actor said: “Obviously, in the spy world I think it’s probably hard to fully glean all the facts, as things are somewhat hidden. The sense that I get though, is that the interview that took place between Kim Philby and his very close friend Nicholas Elliott when the walls were closing in on Philby, by all accounts that four-day examination was as true as we portray it, and then Philby hopped it on a Russian freighter… and never came back.”

On the English accent that his character has, Guy - who was born in Blighty but moved to Australia as a three-year-old - said: “I am from Cambridgeshire. Ramsey Street knocked that out of me of course very quickly. Like any good Englishman, it’s easily retrievable!”

Of course, the actor and musician first rose to prominence when he was cast as Mike in Neighbours. He began filming in December 1985 and made his first appearance during the episode broadcast in January 1986. He played Mike until December 1989, and then reprised his role for the ‘final’ episodes this year. However, it turns out that Neighbours isn’t finished after all, and will return on Amazon Freevee next year.

In what was thought to be the final episode, Mike announced his intentions to buy a house on Ramsay Street and move in with his true love Jane and his daughter, Sam. With the show now coming back, Guy was jestfully asked how many episodes he has now signed back up for, considering where the story left him. He joked: “I guess another four years! Like I did back in 1985! I hadn’t realised that’s what I was roped in for, so I’ll have to chat to the producers about that, and see what we can do!”

When Chris asked whether anybody had the sense that the Neighbours would return, he said: “It certainly felt like it was all over, and Amazon’s news was quite the surprise. And, in fact, I have to do a presentation at the Australian Film Awards next week, which was going to be about the death of Neighbours, and all the wonderful careers that it’s begun, and I still will do something, but we’re still now trying to figure out how we make it work based on the fact that Neighbours is actually returning. There’s bound to be some gag in there that I can rustle up.”

When Chris told the star that he seems to be very happy in his skin, the Emmy-winner said: “One of the beauties of the job that we do is, on some level, it’s probably like a form of therapy. I think we’re always searching for the truth of the characters that we’re playing, which I think, on some level - maybe not at the time - but it enables us, or forces us, or drives us.

“I’m always looking for the truth of who I am.”

He continued: “I was a pretty anxious kid when younger and I’ve certainly worked hard at trying to be more confident and relaxed in the world, and as a 55-year-old, hopefully I’m somewhere there to being more relaxed in my skin than I’ve been before.”

A Spy Among Friends is available from next Thursday, 8th December on ITVX.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.