Tom Hollander ‘had no idea how his exhilarating TV thriller was going to end’

A plot with sensational twists and turns is one of the cornerstones of a great TV thriller.

But it’s another thing entirely when even the lead stars of the show have no idea how the story is going to end.

‘Normally, if you’re reading a thing that’s complete, you know where it ends. In a way, the end of something defines who the character is. But if you don’t have the end, then you have to stay in the moment. You can only play the moment,’ Tom Hollander stresses to Metro.

The Pride and Prejudice actor currently stars opposite Niamh Algar in a brand new high-octane TV thriller called The Iris Affair, created by Luther mastermind Neil Cross.

The relationship between Cameron Beck and Iris Nixon, the characters played by Tom, 58, and Niamh, 33, is complex. They first meet when genius puzzle solver Iris follows clues leading her to a piazza in Florence, where entrepreneur Cameron is waiting to offer her a job.

The job in question? ‘Waking up’ a mysterious technology that has the potential to change the world. But, there’s one slight problem, an eeny, meeny, miny snag – the machine could also be unimaginably dangerous.

As soon as Iris realises the gravity of the situation, she goes on the run, with Cameron nipping at her heels as he strives to track her down with his considerable resources.

Prolific actor Tom has several acclaimed thrillers under his belt, from The White Lotus to The Night Manager. However, not only does he think that The Iris Affair is ‘funnier’, but it was a unique way of working, as writer Neil was still finishing the story while they were in the process of making it, he explains.

‘You don’t know quite what’s coming. It’s actually unfurling in front of you, because Neil is writing it in front of you,’ he shares.

‘You have to make choices which allow you to go in any direction. You get a sense of the tone and what the possibilities might be. You know you could be capable of lots of bad, but you could also be capable of good. So you have to come up with a personality that allows both of those things to happen without actually knowing which way it’s going to land.’

After revealing they were waiting a while to find out what happened in the final episode, Niamh chimes in: ‘That was good, because it means that you’re not pre-empting the ending. You can just play the scenes as they are.’

On paper, Cameron might be deemed the ‘villain’ of The Iris Affair, while Iris is the ‘hero’. However, as viewers will discover as the eight episodes unravel, it’s not always that simple.

Neil previously admitted that when he was creating the character of Iris, he thought of her as a ‘bad Will Hunting’, referencing the prodigy played by Matt Damon in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.

‘It was almost like an amalgamation of Matt Damon characters, like Good Will Hunting, Bourne meets Talented Mr Ripley,’ Niamh says, joking that Matt turned down the lead role in The Iris Affair.

The Virtues actress continues: ‘I think that’s what’s so interesting – that she’s a shapeshifter. She’s constantly trying to adapt and not get caught. It’s that ability to code-switch.

‘She’s immensely smart, but a bit detached from her own emotions. As the show progresses, they start to get in the way a little bit, which she’s not used to. She’s never had responsibility before, until she started caring about Joy [a teenager played by Meréana Tomlinson whom Iris tutors while undercover], and that becomes problematic.

‘She thrived being a hermit, and now that she’s got friends, it’s really messed her up.’

The Iris Affair might be reminiscent of other thrillers in some respects – the title sequence gives major James Bond vibes, and the aesthetic has a 1970s feel – but the idea for the story came from Neil wanting to write a series that he would watch, and that he couldn’t find elsewhere.

‘The Iris Affair is the first time that I have deliberately set out to create a piece of television to entertain myself,’ he tells Metro. ‘There was an Iris Affair-shaped gap. I couldn’t find the show I wanted to watch, so I had to write it.’

‘I think it doesn’t quite look, sound or feel like anything else which is on TV at the moment. In some ways, it’s a really old-fashioned adventure thriller show, and it’s about clever people up to dastardly and exciting deeds while wearing good clothes and driving nice cars in beautiful places under bright blue Mediterranean skies.’

As exhilarating as The Iris Affair can be, it could also potentially serve as a warning of the dangers of technology and how quickly it’s evolving in today’s day and age.

But while Neil, 56, is ‘fascinated by the unexpected consequences of technological revolution and technological change’, he insists that he wasn’t trying to plant a deeper message in his writing.

‘I don’t think anybody can really confidently predict how big or in what direction that revolution is going to go. I think we would be foolish not to be at least anxious,’ he outlines.

‘There’s no point staying at home and stocking up on canned food, because we can’t do anything to change what’s going to happen next. That’s what makes it so scary. It’s like we’re on the edge of a cliff and it’s crumbling and we’re slipping, and we’re slipping faster and faster and faster towards which we do not know.’

Nonetheless, the screenwriter adds: ‘I’ve got nothing of any importance to say to anybody. I have no messages that I wish to convey. I have no insights into the human condition, which everybody else doesn’t have, but as far as I’m concerned, my sole and only job is for people to turn on the TV and see this show and enjoy it.’

The Iris Affair is available from Thursday October 16 on Sky and streaming service NOW.

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