Damian Lewis With His Mona Lisa Smirk
by Stephanie Bunbury | Deadline | October 7, 2022
Nothing has quite the same screen allure as a secret world. Espionage is so secret, by definition, that we have to take even its existence as a matter of trust; all we know about what goes on behind the intelligence agencies’ closed doors is what is relayed to us through books, films and series like A Spy Among Friends, based on Ben Macintyre’s book about the British double agent Kim Philby. Presumably, a certain kind of person is drawn to that world where nothing can be let slip outside it. To work for both sides, one must constantly be aware of who said what to whom, who knows what, who saw you where, who remembers you there — that anyone should want that life is a mystery in itself.
A Spy Among Friends – two episodes of which are screening as part of the London Film Festival – reunites Alexander Cary, a writer and producer on the long-running espionage series Homeland, with actor Damian Lewis, who also steps up as an executive producer of the new series. Lewis is best known on both sides of the Atlantic as Homeland’s Nicholas Brody, the Marine Corps sniper imprisoned and possibly “turned” by Al-Qaeda. Here he enters another secret world, but in a very different guise: He plays Nicholas Elliott, an operative with foreign security agency SIS, who also is the closest friend of Philby (Guy Pearce).
