“I just thought it was a very present and pertinent and interesting story,” the actor says. Would you like to play me?’” Fortunately, Smith responded swiftly and positively. “I was saying to Matt, ‘This is slightly awkward. “It was a strange situation to be in,” says Bright. “We were able to have quite an easy connection as a result of that.”īright contacted Smith, who was on a beach holiday in Mexico at the time.
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“I’d shown him around Parliament, as I had with the other actors, as part of my job on that TV program,” says Bright. Back when he was political editor of the New Statesman, Bright had been an advisor on the TV show Party Animals, which featured Smith. When it came to casting Martin Bright, Producer, Ged Doherty, suggested The Crown star Matt Smith to Hood, and the director agreed. She was really keen to know absolutely as much as she could about how I felt at the time and what was going through my mind.” “We went out for a meal with Gavin and I felt relaxed quite soon after she walked into the restaurant because she came up to me and gave me a big hug! She had lots of questions. “I met her before filming took place because she wanted to meet me,” she recalls. Meeting Knightley was also strange for Gun. So I didn’t feel it was my place to push her into revealing to me any more than she felt comfortable with and that she had already revealed to go into the script.” “She’s in quite a tricky position because if you question her really on it, she still is bound by the Official Secrets Act. While Knightley also got to spend time with Gun, speaking to her about events wasn’t easy. She also read government e-mails from the time that are now in the public domain “to give me the background I needed to play the scenes the knowledge I felt she probably would’ve had in some way that made her so absolutely certain that leaking that document was the right thing to do”. When it came to research, Knightley diligently read the Marcia and Thomas Mitchell book and waded through the hefty Chilcot report. It was an important story to tell and to put out there.” So I thought it was really interesting that there was a story that is such a significant part of modern history that wasn’t really known about or remembered. I was pretty politically aware but at that point I was in America, and it obviously wasn’t really covered there at all. Knightley was 17 when the Iraq war began in 2003 and admits now that Katharine’s story was not one she recalled.
That was the main reason and she gravitated towards it straight away, which was brilliant.”
“She’d never played anything like this, and if she would be willing to take a risk on it, it would be a phenomenal role for her. “We just thought she would be the perfect person,” offers Doherty. The first actor on board was British two-time Oscar-nominee Keira Knightley, cast as Katharine Gun. “When you’re dealing with real-life characters as smart and unique and with the powerful personality of a Ben Emmerson or the genuineness, intelligence, kindness and determination of a reporter like Martin Bright or someone with the spine, courage and integrity of a person like Katharine Gun, you really need to find actors that embody those qualities in themselves,” says Director, Gavin Hood.
With her life, liberty and marriage threatened, she must stand up for what she believes in…īringing actors to Official Secrets was always going to be a challenge. Charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act, and facing imprisonment, Katharine and her lawyers set out to defend her actions. In the volatile political climate of 2003, Britain and the US angle to invade Iraq, GCHQ translator Katharine Gun leaks a classified e-mail that urges spying on members of the UN Security Council to force through the resolution to go to war.
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