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The Driver Era photographed by M.K. Sadler for 1883 Magazine

Avan Jogiafor1883 Magazine

Photographed by Harry Eelman

“I think this process has helped me discover more about who I am. I’m finding it easier to talk about myself and to talk about what’s important to me in interviews than I ever have before. I’ve come to realize through the last year and a half, wouldn’t it be better if we were all a bit more open and honest and easy with each other? Being able to share this EP feels like doing that.”

Ben Barnes - 1883 Magazine

Ben Whishaw - 1883 MagazineInterview

“Ben Whishaw is a kind of endearing enigma, the versatility of his catalog within his seventeen years plus career has few parallels, earning him billing in some of Hollywood’s highest-grossing films. 

Interestingly, amidst the glitz and red-carpet glamour, he manages to lead a perplexingly private life, absent of Instagram, Twitter accounts, and the gratuitous retweets and photo shared that have become so flagrantly synonymous with celebrity status. While he does not ascribe to any social media handles, he exemplifies the kind of heart-on-the-sleeve candour that makes real-time engagement with him all the more meaningful. His anomalous response to stardom is not only refreshing, it is aspirational; private as he is, Whishaw upholds an unguarded demeanour that gives ample consideration and attention to all those with whom he interacts. 

The depth of his off-screen sincerity is paralleled by the dynamism of his on-screen personas: he makes the dejected disposition of Mr. Banks (in Disney’s illustrious Mary Poppins Returns) as palpable as the anxiety and agitation of Norman Scott, the scandalised, gay lover of liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal. Not to be type-casted as the brooding, ill-fated type, Whishaw skilfully diversifies his repertoire with his recurring role as ‘Q’, the quirky tech guru who unfailingly sustains the life of James Bond through ingeniously devised weaponry and innovative gadgets in the last three instalments of the 007franchise. While he and Q both maintain and alluring secrecy to their personal lives, a unique dissimilarity is their disproportionate affinity to technology – Whishaw jokingly declares that he ‘is the least tech-savvy person’ of his generation. 

Gadgets and gizmos aside, Whishaw’s trajectory is illustriously gilded with film, Broadway and now television appearances. His role in this season’s Fargo will expand the sphere of his cinematic influence with at-home audiences, the show is among the highest-rated programs within Sunday evening prime time television. On the heels of Fargo’s fourth season premiere, Ben sat down with 1883 to discuss the dynamism of Rabbi Mulligan (his character portrayal on Fargo), the yin and yang dynamic of Q and Bond’s relationship, and the bucket list of roles he hopes to realise. 

Your catalog radiates plenty of contrasting roles… Your portrayals range from the ill-fated Hamlet to the benevolent Paddington Bear, to coasting between the melancholic Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins, to the iconic ‘Q’ in the Bond films. Was there intention in choosing such dissimilar roles, or did this happen serendipitously? 

It’s quite serendipitously, quite random. But I suppose that if i have any agency at all, it would be that I am quite aware that I like to find something different to do next. You try and go somewhere else that you haven’t been before, each time that the next job comes along. If it feels like i’m doing the same thing over and over, I start to get a big frustrated with myself… bored with myself. So I am looking always for new challenges, but I have to admit that a. lot of it is also quite random. 

I’ve been told by other actors that separating one’s actual self from that of the character portrayal can be a challenging task while shooting a film or television series. Are there any aspects of Q that you - perhaps unwittingly - have come to include within your own demeanor? 

Hmmm. That’s an interesting question… I don’t think so. Of course, there is a lot of. me - I bring a lot of myself to it, even unconsciously. But one thing where we completely differ is that I am the least technologically-savvy, advanced person on the planet. 

Not before me. [Laughs]I think I’m the least. 

Well, I would like to have a contest with you, Constance, because I am truly shocking. I can’t believe how I got to 40, and I still have to ask how to… I had to fill in a COVID-19 form, and I couldn’t do it because I had to figure out how to get the signing app up. I just avoid all contact with technology. 

You don’t have an Instagram or Twitter account. 

I don’t have anything like that. I am living in another century. [laughs]

More power to you! I’ve read that London is your first love, before acting and theatre. 

Did I say that? I don’t know whether that’s true, but I do adore London. I love it!

Is it your favourite city in the world? 

There are so many cities that I haven’t been to, that Id like to see. However, of the ones I’ve visited, yes. I absolutely love London. It’s my home; it’s where I’ve always wanted to be. I find it endlessly interesting and stimulating. 

Endlessly. I love London so much. If London were a man, I would forsake all others just to be with London. 

I’m totally with you. I’m getting to the age now where lots of my friends are thinking of moving out because they are having families, but I am absolutely staying put. I adore it here! I love the way it looks, and I even love the shitty weather! 

Me too! It’s a perfect backdrop for the architecture. 

It’s all moody, and there’s a magic to it. I love the layers of history: from the very old to the absolutely cutting-edge, all butting up against each other. It’s just wonderful. 

London is a rare city where all of these contrary elements are juxtaposed in a way that just works! 

I completely agree. I also love the people. I love the diversity, and that everything and anything goes, and for the most part, people exist alongside each other in peace. Very, very different people. I just find that wonderful. 

It’s civilized. 

I grew up in a small town in a county not too far north of London, but I always felt like that was much more of an aggressive, uneasy place than London which I’ve always found to be very tolerant, peaceful and accepting of difference and variety. 

Moving on, you’ve come to include noteworthy television roles within your coterie: A Very English Scandal (for which you won an Emmy) and the new season of Fargo. Is there a difference in how you settle into a character for film verses television? 

Not really, but I would say that one of the real joys of television for an actor - and I guess for audiences, too - is that you get to explore over a longer stretch of time. That’s a real gift, to explore the layers of [a] human being - and that’s harder to do in a film when it’s so much that’s compressed over a short period of time. So yes, I feel excited, as I’m sure lots of people do, by this resurgence of television right now. 

Of all your roles, which do you believe most demonstrates your aptitude within your craft? 

Hmmm, Well I am quite proud of A Very English Scandal. I think that was a moment when lots of things came together, the writing was extraordinary, the direction was perfect, and the cast was amazing. So the whole thing gelled. That doesn’t always happen, so I’m proud of that as a piece of work overall, and proud of what I did in it… But I have to admit that sometimes I don’t always watch what I’ve done… I wait til some time has passed to see whether it worked, or whether it came out as I hoped it would… I don’t know if that makes any sense. 

It makes perfect sense. Someone once tole me that in the mind of an artist, no work is ever complete because when you walk away from it and come back later, you will notice things that you could have done differently.

I think that’s completely true… You’re never really satisfied, but there’s a scale… and the upper limit of it for me is, ‘That’s not so bad’ or ‘It went kind of well’. I mean, you’d have to be a pretty strange person to look at yourself and go ‘That’s absolutely completely marvelous!’ [laughs]. That would be a bit strange. But you may go, ‘Okay, that’s a bit more right than wrong.’ 

While Q’s on-screen presence is limited, he is thoroughly recognisable and essential to Bond’s survival, and managed to outlast all other iconic characters. How would you distinguish the kind of vitality that you bring to this role from that of your predecessors, all of whom were prominent in their portrayals? 

Well for me, it’s all about the dynamic between ‘Q’ and Daniel Craig as ‘Bond’. I think that it’s become a kind of - which may be a little different from the previous incarnations - contrasting of male energies, I guess. There’s an alpha male, hyper-masculine energy and physicality from Bond, and then there’s this much more cerebral, more refined, more elegant energy from Q… From the last three films that i’ve done, that seems to be what I’m contributing in a way to the story…. And, of course, a lot of gadgets and weapons and the stuff that people enjoy. But that [the contrasting energy to Bond] is what I feel is the subtext in a way and may be why it [the role] has a presence beyond the fact that it’s only a brief amount of time on the screen that I have. 

You’ve specified the intense alpha male energy that Bond has, and the role of Q in bringing in that cerebral presence. Yes as intense as Bond’s masculine physicality is, that’s how immense his interdependency is on Q. 

I think you’re absolutely right, I’ve never thought of it quite like that, and I think it’s true. I think it’s part of the charm of the relationship [between Q and Bond]. I’ve really enjoyed playing it with Daniel over these last three films. It’s been such a joy, such a pleasure. 

In that respect, we can say that Q is as much the savior as Bond is. 

Yeah… in a different way, in a sense, yes. I think it’s one of the interesting progressions of the last few films which are that Moneypenny, Q, and M play more prominent roles in Bond’s journeys over the course of those films, and, as you say, I like that kind of…

….Interdependency? 

The interdependency and in a way, it highlights Bond’s crazy, wild, maverick side by having these people who are much more entrenched in the system… he’s the one that goes off-piste. You feel that all the more because you’ve got the slightly more established characters beside him. I like that contrast. I think it powers the film in a really interesting way. 

Being the youngest actor to portray Q, how did you prepare yourself to step into such an iconic role that was famously played by Desmond Llewelyn? 

Well, to be honest, I approached it a bit how I would approach a very famous role in theatre. For example, in a play that has been done many times before, you try not to be too aware of how it has been done by predecessors, You want to bring yourself to it with a clean slate. This might be a bit of a dangerous risk, but I always think that I would like to go into it slightly unaware and make of it something myself, rather than being too hung up about how it was portrayed in the past. I like to go on my instinct. I had long conversations with Sam Mendes - because Sam Mendes was the director who cast me in the role - and any good director and the producing team of the Bond films - they entrust you with the part, so I felt very emboldened to make it my own, finally. 

That sounds like a dream scenario. 

Yeah, and so far, audiences seem to like it, you know? 

With respect to your repertoire of roles, which character portrayal most parallels your personality?

Ohhh.. That would be giving too much away. [laughs].

You do like to maintain mystery.

I do find it hard to say because I truly believe that acting is a peculiar thing in that you’re portraying someone else, but at the same time it’s completely you that’s up there on the screen. It’s just different facets or elements. So they’re all different parts of me. My dear friend, Andrew Scott, he always says - I think he was quoting someone else - he says: ‘We contain multitudes. We’re more multifarious that people sometimes make us out to be. People are full of different people.’ So, I couldn’t narrow it down to one character, honestly. 

We know so little, if anything at all, of Q’s private life. If ever there was a secret vice for Q to possess, what do you think it would be? 

I think that your audiences will get a glimpse of that in this new film, so i’m not going to give too much away. Yeah, I feel inclined not to say too much more except that there’s more insight into his private life in this film. 

Q is easily recognised as confident, unmistakably clever and eccentric. Which part of London town might I find him at 2AM on a Friday night? 

Let me think about that. I think Mayfair or Kensington. I think he probably goes to bed early most nights, but he probably goes to some exclusive restaurant every now and then with a companion. I think he has quite [an] exquisite taste, and he’d save up on his not expensive civil servant salary and go somewhere occasionally that was pretty exclusive for a meal. 

To what degree have you noticed Q’s evolution from your initial portrayal, till now? 

Well, I guess the big thing is that when we met my ‘Q’ in the first film I did [Skyfall], he was a bit cocky [laughs]. He had the arrogance of youth, and in a way, inexperience. Now he’s a bit less cocky because he’s been around a bit more and messed up a bit more. It has something to do with aging. He’s slightly more… weathered and world-wearied, perhaps. 

And that’s healthy, sometimes.

Definitely.

You’ve joined this season’s cast of Fargo, a series that depicts domestic migration and international immigration, cultural assimilation, and the ruthless quest for money. In what ways - if any - do you relate to your character Rabbi Milligan in the series? 

Rabbi is an Irish immigrant, but he was raised partly by a Jewish family and then adopted finally by an Italian family. So really, he fits in nowhere and belongs nowhere. He has seen and suffered and committed great violence. But he is one of the very few characters in the show who, in spire of the circumstances of his life, is capable of acting humanely, even lovingly. I so enjoyed playing him. My grandad was an immigrant - Russian mother, German father - and he lived most of his life in the south of England after the war, with the word ALIEN on his paperwork. I thought about him a great deal during the making of the show. 

In what ways does this portrayal distinguish itself from your previous bodies of work? 

Near the end of the shoot, Noah Hawley, the creator of Fargo the TV-Series, sidled up to me on set and said ‘So, you enjoying playing the strong and silent type?’ and I said ‘Yes, YES, SO MUCH.’ It’s not a character type I have ever been cast in before. But I felt somehow or other that i could relate to him - that there was a part of me just like him. Rabbi has no illusions about the world; he’s rather austere and very quiet. But he is a good man. Or has a yearning to do good - to do what is right. I wish I could play him again and again. 

Most actors have a dream role that they hope to portray. Is there any portrayal or character type on your bucket list of depictions? 

I honestly don’t have a dream role or anything like that. I love seeing what blows in - I like it when things are unexpected. Any role with some complexity and multifacetedness is a delight to me - and some darkness and humanity and humour. I always think the audience should feel like they’re meeting a whole human being, with areas that are a bit unknowable perhaps - not just a couple of character traits. My all-time favourite performers are Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. You could say they always play themselves in a sense, but it’s not that simple. It’s about how they work with what they have - how they use themselves. I think they were magic. There should always be some magic. 

Watch Ben in Season 4 of Fargo currently airing at FX on Hulu and will be on Channel 4 soon! 

Interview by Constance Victory”

{UNSEEN} Joseph Quinn by Pip x 1883 magazine

he’s the master, we’re the puppets

1883 MAGAZINE