Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Slow Horses Season 5 finale.
While everyone may have been surprised to see someone other than Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) named as MI5’s First Desk on Slow Horses, we should’ve known it was only a matter of time before she found a way to become the real front-facing leader of the operation. Before then, however, “Lady Di,” as Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) calls her, had an obstacle to overcome in Claude Whelan (James Callis), who perpetually seemed out of his depth as the head of MI5. Nowhere was that more obvious than in the most recent Season 5, which ultimately wraps up with Whelan out and Taverner in as First Desk.
While it’s unclear whether we’ll see the disgraced Whelan again any time soon, Callis was happy to chat with Collider about some of his character’s biggest moments in Season 5. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the actor outlines the biggest differences between his Slow Horses role and his most iconic character from Battlestar Galactica, why you should feel conflicted about rooting for Whelan in that scene with the Gimballs, and why the experience of filming that high-tension park scene in the finale with Jack Lowden was even trickier than you’d think.
COLLIDER: Selfishly, as a Gaius Baltar supporter, I was personally delighted to see you popping up in Slow Horses. It does feel like there are echoes of Gaius in Claude Whelan, as somebody who is a schemer, but also feels like he’s so often in over his head. I don’t know if those parallels were anything that you actively thought about or considered.
JAMES CALLIS: You can’t. Because I’m playing both roles, I can’t forget. The deal is, I think that if it were somebody else playing the role, you might not see so many similarities because they’re actually, I feel, very different kinds of people. Gaius, either in the miniseries or the end of the first episode, he’s like, “I’m not on anyone’s side.” He’s really, really deeply, morally ambiguous or bankrupt. He’s a lot of these things. It takes him a long time to become who he is through the show.
Claude’s a different character, totally. For anybody who’s in the service, you’re in the service because you love the country. You’re not morally ambiguous about that at all. You may not be the best person to defend the country. Somebody might have the wherewithal to go, “You know what? Maybe somebody else?” So, he’s way more of a politician than Gaius Baltar ever was, and that’s the thing I was thinking when I was first reading the script was the amount of energy Claude is spending, as it were, wanting to please people or to be urbane. And again, it’s like, “Well, this is great…if you’re not the head of MI5.” You know what I mean? You shouldn’t be thinking about pleasing people. Where’s the hunt? What’s the thing?
So, yeah, there are a lot of different things. Claude’s got — it’s strange — way more integrity. I know it may not come across like that, but he does know who he is. And for the longest time, Gaius Baltar has no idea who he is. Even their relationship with women is a different kind of thing, and this is because a central character that’s not talked about or is not really in the mix at all in Claude Whelan’s life is Claude Whelan’s wife, and that makes him the complicated individual that he is.
James Callis Knows Why You Might Feel Conflicted About Rooting for Whelan in ‘Slow Horses’
“Whenever a character in the show decides to go rogue, it’s nearly always a disaster…”
The scene where Whelan goes to Gimball and his wife with that leverage is like a little victory for him. At the same time, you feel conflicted about cheering him on because he’s fighting fire with fire in that regard. What was your approach to that moment?
CALLIS: I know Victoria Hamilton. We were at drama school together. We played husband and wife at the Almeida with The Doctor’s Dilemma and another television show, so it was absolutely wonderful teaming up with Victoria again. You’re not the first person to say that to me, but you want to kind of be on Claude’s side, and then you’re like, “Do I? Who’s worse? What’s going on?”
To segue ever so slightly, when do you throw the towel in? So the principal person is presented with this kompromat or whatever, and you’re the head of the thing, what would our parents or generation do? Well, resign. Then the service doesn’t have anything, whatever it is. Look at today, and look at the people who are like, “No. Absolutely no way. Definitely not. No.” And we’re watching those people continue to have great careers, if you see what I mean. So, doing the scene with them, just the whole nature of the reversal and being able to have that information with them, it’s like he’s not thought it through. He’s really not thought it through. Like that whole thing about being recorded, if you’re a spy, there might have been other ways in which that message might have been delivered with a staggering effect without necessarily compromising oneself.
Whenever a character in the show decides to go rogue, it’s nearly always a disaster for any of them. I have a scene with the Park lawyer, Matt [Green] — brilliant. You can imagine that the lawyer would be like, “You can do all of this stuff, but not you personally, dude. We can send a letter, or we can do this,” or whatever. It’s like the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. It’s not just the fact of this one thing and him, necessarily. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to really contain this thing.” It’s all the other crap from the season before. “If I can just win this one, then I’m really on target now!”He’s almost testing himself, and he thinks that he passed the test.
That scene in the park, which starts with Whelan finding his driver dead in the car, is a very high-tension moment. You don’t know if he’s going to make it out of this alive. How many days was that to film? You get to work a little with Jack [Lowden] , too, and there’s that hug between you two when River saves Whelan’s life.
CALLIS: You can’t really do an interview without, first of all, mentioning the brilliant writing. So you’re like, “Is he gonna be alive?” What do you think I looked like when I was reading the script? And they do that thing where you go to one place and then they jump. I really thought he was going to be — what is that wonderful thing all the kids are saying now? — he was going to be unalived. So it was a huge relief and joy. It was really intense.
The young actor who pulls the weapon on me, wow. That’s a lot of heavy lifting that is going on there. You really believe it, and at some points, that makes me believe it. As a person, you’re ramping yourself up into this moment, and you’ve got this firearm, but also the dog. Let’s put it this way, it’s tricky with direction with dogs. They don’t always do what they’re supposed to do, and this was a case where we needed the dog to jump up on this guy. This guy was so amazing, take after take after take of, “We need the dog to get to you. If the dog doesn’t do it, then we can’t use!” And that’s a funny moment on set when the person who’s come with the dog can’t get the dog to do whatever because they’re confused, and there are 200 people, and it’s exciting and whatever, but then lots of other people become dog experts. So, it takes a while.
I think we filmed the whole chase over two days because it’s actually two different locations. And yeah, it’s my only scene with Jack. That’s another thing, again. It’s a lovely little thing about Claude; he’s such a mess, but he does have this integrity. If River saves his life, he’s going to make sure that River has a good job. He wants River to have a good job at the end. When Lamb turns to Whelan and goes, “He’d just fuck it all up,” Whelan thinks to himself, “I’m an honorable guy.” So, nobody was more excited about living through that moment.
There are lots of different acting challenges. Everything has its own acting challenge. Acting with somebody — you come into a room, but actually, then they’re dead, that is its own acting challenge, to feel as natural as possible that something that horrific would happen. Somebody was asking, “What do you do afterwards?” I’m pretty sure they do a fair amount of therapy. No matter what you think you’re saying to anybody else, you’ve got to talk to somebody.
