Jack Lowden interview: ‘Slow Horses’
As Jack Lowden revisits some of his improvisational moments on “Slow Horses” that made it into the show, there’s one moment that he’s very fond of. It involved Rosalind Eleazar, who plays Louisa, and the two were in a car together as she still has PTSD from the death of her lover, Min. “At the end he tries to make her feel better. It goes wrong and he just leans over and gives her a hug and he doesn’t know why he’s doing it. That wasn’t in the script. That was just me and that’s one of my favorite ones,” he tells Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the video interview above). That spirit is fostered by the show’s creator, Will Smith. “He breeds that environment well, which is an incredibly generous thing for a writer to do on a show and more writers should do it because it gives the actors a great sense of ownership.”
“Slow Horses,” which can be streamed on Apple TV+, is a spy drama that focuses on Slough House, an office of MI5 that houses rejects who have seriously and publicly screwed up while on the job. Lowden plays River Cartwright, who messes up during a training exercise. As the staff of Slough House are expected to do menial, paper-pushing work, they find themselves getting caught up in various pieces of active espionage. The series also stars Oscar winner Gary Oldman as the rude and obnoxious boss of Slough House, Jackson Lamb. It also stars past Oscar nominees Kristin Scott Thomas and Jonathan Pryce.
When thinking of where he’d like to see River go in the next couple of seasons, Lowden is very matter of fact that he wants River to have a night off. “I would just like to see him go dancing. I really want to see him let loose because they’re always at work. I really wish they’d write a whole episode where all of the slow horses go to a club, and it’s just set in the club and they get progressively drunker and more home truths come out like any good night.” He also assures us that he has no hang-ups about dancing on camera. “I dance better than I act. I was told once, ‘Maybe you’re not the best dancer in the world but you can really move,’ and I’ve always worn that as a badge of honor.”
This summer Lowden received his first Emmy nomination for Best Drama Supporting Actor for playing River on “Slow Horses.” He’s also won several major awards back in the U.K. including the 2014 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in a West End revival of “Ghosts.” He’s also won the BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor twice: “Calibre” in 2018 and “Benediction” in 2022.
