1 day Ago By Sally James
Keira Knightley’s intelligent choice of characters is nothing new. The 39-year-old star bagged her first film role at the age of nine. It was in 2002 that Knightley won the London Film Critics’ Circle Award for Best Newcomer for her role in .
It was the following year that her breakout role as Elizabeth Swann in launched her to international fame. Her character in her latest Netflix series, Black Doves, is layered with lies, pain, and joy. I had been looking to do something like this for quite some time and it just came along.
I had seen Girl/Haji and loved it. So, when the chance to work with Joe Barton came up, I was super excited. I read the script for the pilot for Black Doves and just thought it was brilliant.
It is a spy thriller. I play the character of a woman named Helen. She is married to a Tory MP but is a secret undercover agent, selling government secrets.
Helen is a two-faced psychopath who has an extra-marital affair. It is when her lover gets murdered, she sets about avenging his death with the help of her best friend, an assassin, played by the brilliant Ben Whishaw. It’s through seeking revenge that she discoveres that this weird kind of bloodlust makes her feel alive again.
But, at the same time, there’s a lot to Helen we don’t know at the beginning of the show. I had about a month to train before we started filming. I did jujitsu, boxing, knife fighting, and gun training.
It was a lot, but we had a great stunt team that was so incredibly brilliant. What you learn is that fight scenes are just like choreographed dances. You learn the basic movements, and then the stunt team will work you through the choreography.
I don’t think you can ever truly know that, whatever the platform. I really believe that this show is great and people are going to love it, but at the same time, you still need that luck for it to come together and be a hit. There is so much out there to watch, but you have to believe that what you have made is cool and people will watch it and respond to it.
Very exited. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Getting to do all that spy stuff is a lot of fun. It is different.
With a series like this, it’s the format that allows you to explore the character and story in a much deeper way than you can in a film. You have so much more time to delve into all of those complexities of the story, which is something I really enjoy. But even with this, six hours of television still wasn’t enough to answer all the questions about such strange characters.
Thank goodness we have a Season 2. Being British myself, I’m not sure I can answer that fairly. I’m a little biassed, but I would say that there is a particular way of storytelling that comes with British dramas.
I don’t have any specific things that I want to accomplish. I don’t know what I am going to be interested in next. It is only the characters that interest me.
I have no idea what the future holds. I just want to hopefully be lucky enough to keep going and to keep doing interesting work with great people. I think that is all I can wish for.
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