Was the part written with Ben Whishaw in mind? “When I started out, I thought it would be wonderful to get Ben. After three scripts, we sent it to him and he signed on. All the rewrites were done after talking to him. It was a collaborative process. He’s in every scene more or less, the show hinges on the audience falling in love with him and going on this dark and disturbing journey. I was very lucky to have such an extraordinary actor.” What does he bring to the part? “You don’t see all the thinking he’s done about it. It feels so effortless and real. Even when it’s intense, it doesn’t feel forced. In episode three, he has to hold a scene for seven minutes - there’s nothing else going on other than his performance. And it’s very disturbing and unsettling. He has an ability to grab hold of an audience and not let them go. I think it’s a kind of magic. He’s very seductive as a performer. People have fallen in love with him in Bond; here, we’ve given him the entire series and he’s done something unbelievably believable with it.”
