Writer-creator Joe Barton talks to The Hollywood Reporter about Ben Whishaw and Knightley’s chemistry, his dream casting for a season two villain and that sentimental ending: “It’s a Christmas show!”
Keira Knightley in ‘Black Doves.’ Netflix
Upon its early December release, Joe Barton‘s spy thriller Black Doves soared into Netflix‘s top 10 most-watched shows in 89 countries.
Starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, the series has already been renewed for a season two. It was a bloody and brutal season finale — we’d expect nothing less — where everyone (metaphorically and literally) lost their head a little.
In Black Doves, Knightley stars as Helen Webb, wife to the U.K.’s defense secretary Wallace and ascending government minister (Andrew Buchan). For years, she’d been passing her husband’s secrets on to a shadowy organization Helen works for (helmed by Sarah Lancashire’s Mrs Reed), which leaves her hard-pressed to explain where she’s been and what she’s been up to when returning home to her family after a hard day’s work.
All of a sudden, the death of Helen’s secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) sends her and long-time friend Sam (Whishaw), who also happens to be a talented hitman, on a mission to find the killer. This is running parallel to the assassination of China’s ambassador to the U.K., which is at the center of an escalating foreign affairs crisis.
It turns out, as we discover in episode six, “In The Bleak Midwinter,” the ambassador was accidentally killed by a young man, Trent, the son of Tracey Ullman’s Alex Clark. It just so happens that Alex is the top boss of a London crime network with connections everywhere — even the Prime Minister’s office. When Trent reveals he was the one who had Helen’s lover killed in a bid to cover his tracks, our star loses it completely and shoots the mother-son duo, with the help of Sam, ignoring their warnings of grave repercussions. It’s bedlam, but somewhat adorably, Sam has her back.
Sam has to leave his ex-boyfriend, Michael (Omari Douglas), for good when offered a job to work for the now-adult child he was once supposed to kill, Hector Newman (Luther Ford). Helen discovers that Jason was actually an MI5 agent sent to figure out if she was a government leak, but is buoyed by the knowledge that her confession to being a part of the Black Doves went nowhere; he submitted a report shortly before he was murdered clearing her entirely.
With an ensemble cast of Ella Lily Hyland, Adeel Akhtar, Gabrielle Creevy and Finn Bennett, the show is a festive murder-feast full of twists and turns. Below, creator Barton talks to The Hollywood Reporter about his plans for season two, what exactly that final glance from Knightley was signifying and a small detail you may have missed about Lancashire’s enigmatic Reed: “It’s quite subtle.”
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Congratulations, Joe, on a cracking finale. Why did you want to leave the season where you did?
I wanted to emotionally wrap up the story. I guess the last half an hour of it really is tying up the relationships like Helen and Wallace, Sam and Michael, Helen and Jason. I went out of my way to give everyone an ending. And partly that’s because, in the streaming age — luckily, we are coming back — but you never know when you’re writing it, whether you get second series or not. And I’ve done things in the past where I’ve left [it] on big cliffhangers and then not come back. So I wanted to provide enough closure for the characters.
I also wanted to do something where it’s a little sentimental, you know? It’s a Christmas show and actually, I have always thought of it as a Christmas show. And one of the things that you do is you want that [sentimental] ending. I always imagined finishing it around the Christmas dinner table, but with a bit of an edge, with a curious look right at the end.
Tell me about that look from Kiera.
That just means there’s still a duplicitousness about her. It’s to acknowledge that she is having Christmas dinner with her family and it’s a very happy family, but don’t forget that she’s still this other person and the two sides of her haven’t gone away.
The ending with Helen and Sam together is great. Their relationship is at the core of this show. Are you pleased with Kiera and Ben’s onscreen chemistry?
Yeah, it was always going to be about that friendship. I really wanted to write a Platonic love story. There’s a specific relationship, I think, between a gay man and a straight woman, and that interesting dynamic, which you occasionally see. But to actually put that at the heart of it was always interesting to me as well: the idea of two friends who hadn’t seen each other for years coming back [together]. All the things that we talked about, me and the producers and story editors, it was always stuff like that. It wasn’t like the spy stuff. The relationships were our way in.
Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley in ‘Black Doves.’ Ludovic Robert/Netflix
It’s also about being human and how grief is intertwined in that.
Basically everyone is sort of miserable at the start. They’re all grieving. Helen has this man that she’d fallen in love with and he’s died. One of the things that kicked off the idea was reading about this woman who had written a letter to The Guardian. She was talking about how her partner had recently died and they’d been together for years, and she loved him, but the twist was their relationship was an affair. He was married to someone else. She was having to grieve in secret, which I thought was really fascinating and tragic, and this really interesting, human story. It was always about love and grief and heartbreak. And the same with Ben’s character. I think the most interesting moments in a relationship — or when you’re writing about them — is the beginning or the end. Those are the moments where the most drama is happening.
With Sam, we see him shoot his father, yet he is unable to kill Hector as a child. So there is a morally gray area and a boundary he won’t cross.
It’s the challenge of presenting someone that kills people for a living. What I thought was interesting about him is that I think the codes are completely bullshit, really. I think he knows he’s lying to himself as well. But this one time, where he did something that is objectively good, the objective right choice, where he didn’t murder this child even. That destroyed and that blew his whole life up, and it caused all this trouble for him and Helen. But he was like, ‘No, I did that. And that is the one good thing I’ve ever done.’ So later on, when he meets Hector as an older man, he still can’t kill him, even though he’s supposed to, even though it would help him. With his dad, he’s confronted with the fact that he’s supposed to kill his father. And really, for me, that was the moment where he either went for it or didn’t, and he wanted to be a hitman. In my head, he wanted to be a hitman because his dad was a hitman.
So it was about forcing this very complicated character into a world of binary, do or do not; good or bad. He’s so much more complex than that, but he’s trying desperately to think of himself as good or bad. His whole speech about, ‘I never killed anyone that didn’t make the world a better place,’ which is what his dad told him. His dad was lying to himself, and he’s lying to himself.
In the final face-off with Alex Clark and Trent, Sam’s trying to talk Helen down. But it escalates, and we see in full force how ride or die he is for Helen.
Definitely. He loves her and he would do anything for her. He knows the emotional toll of murder, particularly murdering someone younger. I mean, Trent isn’t a child, but he’s 19 or 20. So he’s a young guy, and he says to her, I don’t remember exactly, but ‘you’ll never forgive yourself’ or something. And also, there’s the actual threat that whoever kills these people is probably going to be in a lot of trouble.
But yeah, he takes the burden on because he loves her and because she sacrificed everything for him when she was going to get away and didn’t. So it’s that sort of unity. And they both keep failing to get out. He wants to just go back to Michael, but he can’t help but be in this situation which is going to make that impossible. Every time they think they’re gonna get happiness, they don’t quite manage it, but they have each other.
Will we see Michael return next season?
I love the character, and I love writing for Omari, who’s just such a brilliant actor. He and Ben have brilliant chemistry. It is like, if he knows what’s good for him he’d definitely stay away from Sam. But maybe he doesn’t.
I want to talk about Sarah Lancashire’s character, Reed, this unknowable overlord. Have you written a backstory to her, even in your head, and can you tell us anything or would it ruin the facade?
I do and I’ve been thinking about it a lot for series two. I’ve written some stuff. I couldn’t really give it away, but I love that character. And having Sarah come in and do it is amazing. And actually having someone like Sarah come in and do that, you want to know more, because it’s Sarah Lancashire playing the part. Yes, I would like to delve more into her backstory and who she is, but that would be definitely something for series two.
Sarah Lancashire as Reed. Netflix
I’m really intrigued by the character of Wallace, too. I feel like one of the stereotypes in a spy setting is a complicated husband, too, but he’s actually deeply in love with Helen. He does not have an affair. The CIA agent in the last episode says that Wallace is actually clean. Why did you keep him clean?
I think it was about giving Helen a grounding or an option. Her thing is that she can’t decide what she wants, really. She’s married to him for her job. But does she also love him? Kind of yes, kind of no. She’s met someone else who is more exciting and dangerous and interesting, and she loves him, but then that causes all this trouble. Wallace represents a different life for her that she either can or can’t commit to. If he was duplicitous and conniving, or even if he’s just like this real shit, you’re like, ‘Well, why would she go with him?’ I remember Wedding Crashers where the lead actress [Rachel McAdams] is with Bradley Cooper, he plays her boyfriend. Then you’ve got Vince Vaughn who is in love with her, but her boyfriend is os horrible. You’re like, it’s not even a choice. Why aren’t you going with the guy that loves you?
Wallace loves her, and he’s not perfect, but he loves the kids. He’s a bit boring, but he represents comfort and familiarity and safety, which is not necessarily what she wants.
And when Reed hands Helen the file on everything to do with Jason and she throws it into the Thames, is that her completely letting go of that corner of her past?
Yeah, that’s how I see it. It’s the one time where finding out all the secrets and the information about someone is actually too much, it’s too painful. She knows that he loved her in his own way. She also knows that he was lying to her and treating her the same way that she treats her husband, really. But she knows that actually, the stories he told her weren’t true, but the love he had for her was true, and that’s enough for her. She doesn’t need anything else.
I have to ask: who was the woman sat with Reed at the end?
It’s quite subtle. It’s actually [Wallace and Helen’s] nanny. There is a character, if you go back and watch, she pops up throughout.
Marie!
Marie. Exactly. She’s the one that’s sitting there. So the idea is Reed has got a spy in Helen’s house. But there’s something ominous because with Reed, you never know entirely if you can trust her either. So she’s got machinations.
You think of Black Doves as a Christmas show — would season two also be at Christmas say, a year on?
If it was down to me, I’d probably set everything at Christmas. I just like writing about it. But no, I think mostly because of schedules and release, to have something ready for next Christmas would be impossible. And then you’d be in a situation where we’d have to make people wait two years for the Christmas after that, which should just be too long. So I think inevitably it’s not going to be a Christmas show. But it’ll be interesting to see them out of their winter coats.
Season two then: we thought we were dealing with the big boss, are we about to deal with an even bigger one?
Well, one of the things I felt watching the first series was that Sam and Helen, they don’t really a Moriarty. They don’t have the big bad. Tracey Ullman comes in and there’s a great scene in that, but she only comes in at the end and there’s a reveal, and then she’s gone. One of the things I think would be really fun to do is actually to give them a proper onscreen antagonist, a proper villain for them to have to deal with. So that’s big on my list of things for series two.
Who would be your dream casting for that villain?
Man, I don’t know. It’s too early to say, because I don’t even know exactly the age or even gender of the villain. We’re still playing around with it. What’s been amazing about series one is getting all these incredible actors together. So we do feel quite excited about who we can add to the group. Some names have been flying around. I’ve got one idea, but we’ll see.
Black Doves has proved so popular. It’s got such good numbers on Netflix, already confirmed for a season two. What do you think it is that’s resonating with people, and what does that maybe say about the public’s TV appetite?
I think what people really take away from it is the relationships. It’s a hangout show. I think people really like the relationship between Kiera and Ben. I think they also like things like Eleanor and Williams’ [relationship]. They like the found family thing, which is a very Christmassy idea, that seems to be the thing that people most respond to, which is, actually, I just like being in the orbit of these people, and they’re mad.
In terms of what people are looking for in TV, I don’t know. My personal theory is that what people will always respond to, above anything else, is the characters. Finding a little group of people that live in your TV that you want to spend time with. That’s the magic sauce. I always think that with Game of Thrones. It was massive, the biggest show in the world, and then it ended. And I think a lot of TV commissioners were like, ‘We need another Game of Thrones.’ And I think the mistake a lot of them made was [thinking] what people loved about that show was fantasy and dragons and big battles. And people did love that stuff. But really what they liked was Arya and the Hound or Jamie and Brienne.
Season two is in its early stages… Are you still in the writers’ room?
Literally, I’m in the writers’ room right now. We have just finished a meeting. We’re figuring it all out and putting it all down on paper. But yeah, we’re going to be filming next year, so hopefully, it won’t be too long a wait between series for people. That’s where we’re at.
