The character of David Cartwright on Apple TV+’s Slow Horses wouldn’t have the humanity he has without the brilliant input of multiple award-winning actor Jonathan Pryce. Here, in an interview with The Contending, Pryce shares that the key of playing his character David is expressing true empathy for people suffering with dementia. That respect and gentle care informs so much of what he puts into what David goes through this season. As he shares here, he hopes that portraying this realism helps people understand dementia better as well as entertaining with the great drama, action, and humor for which Slow Horses is known. Pryce continuously demonstrates an enormous love of his craft, and the instinct he has for acting in general allows him to continue turning in outstanding, award-worthy performances year after year.
Here, he says it’s all in the brilliant script, but few actors could bring David Cartwright to life like Jonathan Pryce. Find out more below.
The Contending: We start off this season with your character David in his house and the confusion about if River visited, and David thinking that he has shot him. Right off the bat creating the tension for this season. What was it like creating that sequence?
Jonathan Pryce: Pretty much like anything else really. Obviously you’re dealing with the script, and I was fortunate with my character that most of it was shot chronologically so I was carrying on as they were telling the story. That was it really.
The Contending: You have played other characters that have suffered with dementia, but what was it like playing David with dementia?
Jonathan Pryce: If anything, it was kind of a privilege to play this character with as much sensitivity and respect for a man with that condition that we could. It’s a tragic story we’re telling, and the seeds were laid when you see David going to his gentleman’s club in season three, forgetting that he is no longer a member and being rescued from that situation by River.
As you said, it’s not the first time I played someone with dementia so I know the effect it can have on an audience seeing someone in that position. What I found from doing it in the theater and meeting audience members who were family, friends, or caretakers of people who suffered from dementia was for them seeing someone in that state on stage actually gave them a sense of comfort. Because they felt being in a theater seeing it made them feel like they were no longer alone that people could share this. I met a man who had given up his work to look after a parent and that parent had since died, and he said that it was the first time he was able to cry since his father’s death because it was a situation that was shared.
So with Slow Horses we are telling a story and it is a drama but hopefully there are positive effects that can come from it. Before I started on Slow Horses, I worked with the Alzheimer’s Society in England as a spokesperson and an ambassador for them. I think seeing people like David in a drama can raise people’s awareness of the condition, and that a family member should be diagnosed early so they can start treatments that can alleviate the condition. There’s a great value in what Slow Horses is doing with David Cartwright’s character.
The Contending: One thing I thought was very interesting as a story point this season was the fact that David has kept the secret of River’s parentage. But what I liked is you can understand why he did that; it wasn’t just to protect himself and his reputation. There was a personal emotional reason to do that. I wondered if you had a chance to think about his decision and any insight you had into it?
Jonathan Pryce: I hate to be boring but it’s all in the script. The value of it as you say quite rightly is it’s his secret. If I have a process at all as an actor it is keeping my own secrets about what I think about the character. There are things you will talk through with the director and the other actors. Things you have to discuss; how you’re going to move around the set, how you got to behave, etc. But there are certain things you want to keep secret because you don’t want to, as in life, preempt people’s reactions to you. That includes the other actors’ reactions to you, but part of the joy of the show is working with such good actors, and that surprise about each other is maintained.
I see my job as fulfilling the script, telling that story and any secrets about that are my business. Just like the secret about River was David Cartwright’s business. But it is valuable to know that as an actor, what drives your character, and it’s also the reason why people keep trying to kill David. Which leads the audience to wonder why they are trying to kill this nice old man. It’s definitely a complex story we’re trying to tell as far as David Cartwright is concerned. It’s interesting that a show like Slow Horses can take time away from the intrigue and action and explore the emotional family life of people like David and River. It is very valuable.
The Contending: That emotional family life is very much on display in the final scene between you and River. That whole episode River has interactions with his three father figures and, in rewatching the scene between him and you, what I love so much was with everything that River has found out he obviously still loves his grandfather and is more hurt that he has to put his grandfather in a home. The sad look he has on his face the whole time, and David is saying the most horrible things to him at that moment. Anything you can say about that experience would be great to know.
Jonathan Pryce: Scenes like that speak for themselves, and it would be gratuitous to add on. Jack and I didn’t have to talk a lot about it because the relationship is quite natural. Jack as an actor is very open, very giving, and you’re playing a situation where a young man has love and respect for an older man. As the character of his grandfather, I would advise him, and in life I’m the older senior actor and I’ve seen a lot and done a lot. The great thing about Jack is he was willing to listen to all my anecdotes and all my stories! (laughing) We got on really well together and I love him as a person and he’s a wonderful actor. If you’re an old man and he’s a young man there’s a lot you have to take for granted, you don’t have to talk about it, it’s just there.
It’s like when you work with a family member. I’ve done more than one show with my wife and the last show we did together was the play “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia” by Edward Albee, about a married couple that have been in a relationship for a while, and he has an affair with a goat, and that affair is symbolic of a whole bunch of other things that has gone on in his life and and everybody else’s life. But Kate (Fahy) and I never had to talk about what it’s like to be a married couple in a long relationship. We had that as the baseline from which we could explore the text. It is the same with Slow Horses. The older I get and all I have done (not that I am perfect) I feel like muscle memory guides me in the way to explore a character. It’s subconsciously. You just absorb things about the character.
In recent years when I played Pope Francis, after initial scenes I didn’t have to think about him. I became him in some ways internally, and because of that there were only certain ways I could say things in a clear, honest way about the character. I don’t want to sound like something mystical that one does, but it is what I do.
In the mid-70s, I spent a little time with Lee Strasberg and got to watch him teach and got to talk to him a bit. I found myself eating sandwiches with him in his office, and I didn’t particularly like his teaching methods but I can understand why they were valuable to his pupils. But it wasn’t the way I would like to work. But we were sitting there in silence eating and I thought this is Lee Strasberg for God’s sake, I have got to ask him a question, so fifty years from now I can tell an anecdote about asking Lee Strasberg a question (laughing). So I said, “Mr Strasburg, I’m doing this play on Broadway and it’s the first time I’ve done anything for any length of time, so do you have any advice about recreating the character?” He was very quiet and then he eventually said, “You do it!” Then he bit into his sandwich and ate for a bit longer and then said, “It’s your job!” That’s the best advice you could give anybody, it’s your job. I do see it as a job, and we get a lot of flack for talking about acting but it is a craft. You are your musical instrument, your paintbrush, you are creating sound images, and it is valuable. It has a huge place in society.
The Contending: Most definitely! Without it we wouldn’t have these memories we come back to and the emotions we acquire from them.
Jonathan Pryce: It’s true! The BBC was to entertain, educate, and inform. When I went into the theater that was how I felt. The early theater I did in the seventies, a lot of it was politically motivated, and it was about changing the situation. The more you do it the more successful you get, the less chance you get to do outwardly political theater. But my political views inform all my work.
The Contending: So this is a more ridiculous question after all the poignant things we’ve just talked about. Slow Horses has strong emotion and drama but it also has its humor. The one scene I remember from the last season is David locked in the bathroom and Ho saying, “Sit down,” and David looks down at the dirty toilet and just says “I’m fine.” What about the humor works for you at this show?
Jonathan Pryce: Christopher (Chung) and I were locked in the toilet and we had no lines, there was no script, so it was just what we improvised. I was really gratified that they kept that in, and it was my birthday recently and Chris sent me a birthday message: To his toilet buddy. It was a fun bit.
The Contending: You talked about interacting with this cast, and this season you got to spend a lot more time with Saskia Reeves who plays Catherine. You guys had some really interesting interactions where you were brutal to her, and then you’re kind and really showing what it’s like to be someone suffering from dementia. Then there is the added tension (or at least I had it) that David would reveal he was behind the killing of her boss, while she is being so kind. What was it like working with her more because I don’t believe you guys had much of a chance in the previous seasons?
Jonathan Pryce: I always liked her as an actress but I never met her before in all my years. She is one of the most honest, truthful actresses you would ever want to work with. Again, not a lot you need to talk about because the situation is so strong. But it is a symptom of Alzheimer’s that you go through all sorts of emotional changes and one of them is to be angry. I didn’t really think about it much at the time but I think somewhere that anger came out because he knew there was something about her that made him angry. I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this but Saskia had a family member who had Alzheimer’s so again we didn’t have to act too much if at all. She was enormously sensitive and a wonderful contrast to Jackson Lamb, who couldn’t hold back pouring scorn on David. That scene where he’s saying I know you’re in there, come on, come on. People have even asked me if David was putting it on in order to disappear. The contrast in the way Catherine and Jackson approached David was wonderful theater.
Slow Horses streams exclusively on AppleTV+.
