‘Black Doves’ Creator Joe Barton Breaks Down the Christmas-Themed Spy Show’s Goriest Scene: ‘It Was Such an Arresting Image — Keira Knightley Covered in Brains’
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers from “Black Doves” Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.
Keira Knightley may be coming for Mariah Carey’s crown as the Queen of Christmas with her latest project, “Black Doves,” which dropped on Netflix this week. The London-based spy thriller opens with a merry Santa Claus singing in a pub and ends six episodes later on Christmas Day, cementing the actor’s repertoire of Yuletide projects, which include “Love, Actually,” “Silent Night” and “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.”
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In “Black Doves” Knightley plays politician’s wife and secret spy Helen, who works for a shadowy corporate organization called the Black Doves. But when Helen’s lover Jason (played by Andrew Koji) dies, she finds herself embroiled in an intricate geopolitical web that threatens to upend not only her own life but start World War III. The series also stars Ben Whishaw as Helen’s best friend and fellow spy Sam, Sarah Lancashire as Black Doves boss Mrs Reed and Omari Douglas as Sam’s ex-boyfriend Michael.
Ahead of “Black Doves” premiering, showrunner Joe Barton sat down with Variety to break down that nail-biting season finale, what to expect from Season 2 and whether the series will stick to a Christmas release.
Where did the idea for “Black Doves” come from?
I just love stuff set at Christmas. I’m a big Christmas film fan, also big [on] Christmas telly. I love when shows have their one Christmas episode. “ER” always had a good one. “The West Wing” always had a good one. So I’ve always wanted to do it, but it was actually tricky. The first script I wrote in that week between — I started on Boxing Day, finished it on New Year’s Day — so I was, like, properly engrossed in Christmas. Then obviously time goes on, and I remember sitting with Chris Fry, one of the producers, in like April or something…and both of us just being like, “What do you do at Christmas?” It goes so quickly from your head, you completely forget.
There’s a scene where Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) and Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei) are tied up and talking about their favorite Christmas movies. Did you consider referencing “Love, Actually”?
Yeah, I did obviously, 100%. But I thought that would be too meta. But I do have a real soft spot for “Love, Actually.”
How early did Keira come on board?
She was in it from literally day one, so from that point I was writing for her. I think she was always just really perfect for the character…. It feels like a slight departure for her but I think she’s really good at playing characters that are constricted by public perception of what they should be, even if it’s like, Elizabeth Bennet [in “Pride & Prejudice”] or her character in “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “Atonement.” These characters are trapped in the public-facing aspect of their lives but under the surface is this inner turmoil, which essentially is what Helen is as well, but just obviously in a more contemporary setting and with other genre bits on top of it, action and stuff like that.
The moment where Sam reappears in Helen’s life, killing an assassin and leaving blood all over her face is quite striking. Did that scene play out how you’d imagined it?
That moment was about bringing Sam and Helen back together and trying to do it in a fun, shocking way. He comes in and rescues her and it’s like fireworks — this guy that’s her best friend she hasn’t seen in years is just back, and it’s a literally explosive moment. But it was weird, because it’s kind of the most violent moment in the show and we had a lot of conversations about it because there is more violence later, but there’s nothing as gory as that. And so we were thinking, is it in keeping with the rest of it? But we kept it just because it was such an arresting image — Keira Knightley covered in brains. And then later on, there’s another one where she’s very heavily pregnant, and she shoots a guy and gets, again, blood-spattered. But again, that moment was the full show encapsulated: home life, spy life, motherhood, murdering. You’ve got everything in one image. The first time she gets properly spattered, I didn’t think it’d be quite as much as that actually.
In the season finale, why does Helen hesitate when deciding whether to kill Trent and ultimately why is Sam the one who fires the gun?
It was about who she really is and about whether she’s going to do this thing. It became about this moral question about whether or not to kill this young man. Obviously, a big part of Sam’s backstory is that he refused to kill a child, younger than this guy but still, they’re both young, and it’s about who is Helen? What is she actually willing to do and what is the emotional burden of it? Then obviously, Sam steps in and does it for her, and takes on the emotional burden of killing this young man and also the external threat of he’s the one that does it, he’ll face the consequences. In Episode 3, you see that Helen almost is about to get away when she’s pregnant, she’s about to leave the Black Doves, but then she gets pulled back into it because she turns up, in that staircase scene, to save Sam and to get Michael out of there. So he feels a real burden of debt to her. And again, it goes back to it all being about their friendship and the sacrifices they’re willing to make for one another.
Do you think Jason genuinely loved Helen? Mrs. Reed’s revelation he lied about her to MI5 suggests he did.
Yeah, I do. I think in the same way that Helen’s relationship with Wallace kind of changed into something, I feel like, Jason, he was investigating her, but I think he did genuinely fall in love with her, and she did him. So I think that relationship was real. He actually lied and got her out of trouble. And before he gets killed, she’s the one that he calls. I do think those feelings are really genuine, and maybe if he hadn’t been killed he would have come clean and told her that he was investigating her.
How far are you into writing Season 2 and where will it go – will we learn more about her backstory?
We’re still early in the process. I’m writing the first episode still, and we’re kind of feeling our way through it. We filmed some flashbacks, which didn’t make the final cut, of young Helen and her stepdad and her sister Bonnie. I think that would be really interesting to find out more about. With the second series, I think it’s quite interesting to discover more about the characters, and Sarah’s character. We know quite a lot about Sam, but there’s always more. And just the opportunity to open the scope up a little bit, but that’s all kind of TBC at the moment.
Is it going to be set at Christmas again?
It’s all about when it would be released. It doesn’t need to be constrained by the Christmas holiday. So it might be that there’s a different [holiday] – Easter maybe?
I don’t think it has to necessarily always [be Christmas] which I’m quite sad about, because I love writing stuff set at Christmas. There’s a part of me that’d be like, “Yeah, let’s always do it at Christmas!” But also it slightly sent everyone crazy to be stuck in a permanent Christmas state for six or seven months. Then in the edit, I mean, we were listening to “Good King Wenceslas” in July. And I don’t know if you want to put people through that again.
This interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity.
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