by Gill Pringle
For Keira Knightley, new espionage series Black Doves presented a welcome opportunity to return to the world of fight scenes and thrilling stunts – something she’s had little opportunity to do since starring in four Pirates of the Caribbean movies almost two decades ago.
As “Black Dove” Helen Webb, she plays a quick-witted, down-to-earth wife of a politically ambitious Defense chief – while also covertly passing on her husband’s secrets to a shadowy organisation.
Co-starring Ben Whishaw as Helen’s partner-in-crime Sam, they both work for Sarah Lancashire’s enigmatic spymaster in this witty six-part action thriller written and created by Joe Barton.
When Helen’s secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is assassinated, Helen and Sam set out to investigate who killed him and why, leading them to uncover a vast conspiracy linking the murky London underworld to a looming geopolitical crisis.
“I trained for about a month before and was doing a bit of Jiu Jitsu, mostly boxing, and also a Filipino knife fighting style and then guns. I think the lucky thing was that I did quite a few action movies in my late teens, early 20s,” says Knightley, now 39.
“With the knife fighting stuff, I’ve done so much sword fighting, that actually, it was kind of still in there. They did have to keep reminding me: ‘No, not like that, not sword fighting, you’re knife fighting; don’t flourish like that’, or whatever,” she laughs today.
“The actual shooting of the sequences was intense, because obviously, they’re choreographed, so it’s sort of like a dance when you’re learning it. But I think the stunt team is pretty good, I was happy with the style of those fights. It’s not like reality…
“You have to believe that people as slight as us could perhaps win in a fight,” she says referencing herself and co-star Whishaw.
People may know Whishaw as the voice of Paddington Bear or as Q in three James Bond movies. Chameleon-like, he has slipped into many guises, memorably breaking out as a murderous olfactory genius in Perfume: The Story of a Murderercontinuing to surprise audiences with his roles in Mary Poppins Returns, The Lobsterand receiving multiple awards for his portrayal of Norman Scott in British TV miniseries, A Very English Scandal.
There’s no denying Knightley and Whishaw’s on-screen chemistry, so it’s little surprise that a second season of Black Doves has already been announced even before the first series premieres.
When we catch up with the duo, they even act like partners-in-crime, finishing each other’s sentences.
Knightley was intrigued to play a woman who is leading such a bold double-life.
“I think she incorporates so many personalities within herself, and I felt like they were all true. My identity as a mother and who I am to my kids is very different from who I am in different spaces. We’re one way to our children. We get into work – and we’re completely a different way. Maybe we have a hedonistic side to us, which you would never show to your kids. And Helen is that – just in a really extreme way. Her other self happens to be murderous and selling her husband’s secrets,” says the actress, who in real life has two young daughters with musician husband James Righton.
“But I felt like all of the parts of her were true in the moment. I think she is a good mum, I think she is a good wife, I think she is a good spy. It just happens that maybe it’s not so great when they all collide.”
Whishaw enjoyed how the script paints him as a champagne-drinking ruthless mercenary whose heart also aches for his former lover.
“I would say that they’re people who have a capacity to disconnect from what it is that they’re doing, or to dissociate. But I think that we all do that. It’s a very human thing,” he says.
Given how Whishaw’s Sam is the son of a contract killer, he’s been in training – in a sense – since birth.
“There’s a sort of code that he has inherited from his father, which I think is to do with loyalty. In a strange way, this assassin code is less frightening than the world is, because at least there is some structure that you can obey and follow. That’s how I interpreted it.
“He has this code; he owes Helen something – he’s indebted to her. And I think he loves her – probably the only person that he really has that kind of love for. And I think he’s also kind of an addict, addicted to old patterns of behaviour, like we all are … he wants to be free of this thing. I don’t think that he likes doing what he’s doing. I don’t think he’s a happy person. But he can’t escape it despite what he might hope or dream; he’s kind of trapped,” he says.
Knightley particularly enjoyed Black Doves’ Christmas background, even if the good cheer masks a darker truth.
“Crristmas is meant to be so cheery and lovely, and it’s a family time, and this story is exploding all that. It’s about the contrast of those two… and also, nobody feels more lonely than they do at Christmas if they’re on their own.
“So, if you have these two people where they’re lonely at their very centers, setting it in that place, which is all about connection and family, really gives it a kind of pathos at its centre.”
Black Doves streams from 5 December 2024
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