The Cast of ‘The Night Manager’ on the Show’s Thrilling Return

It’s an approach that drives the series. From the opening scene—in which we find Pine in the therapist’s chair—it is as smitten with the interior lives of its characters as it is with high-octane gloss (though there’s plenty of that too). “It’s about PTSD,” says Banks-Davies. “It’s about generational trauma. It’s about all the things that make us who we are, but how they then either bring us together, or divide us. The espionage, the action, the glamour, the beauty, the thriller, that all kind of takes care of itself. But to really hit, you’ve got to excavate that.”

The show’s writer, David Farr—a “connoisseur of le Carré,” according to executive producer Stephen Garrett—has also returned. Le Carré never permitted new works to be created from his books in his lifetime, but he was thrilled and entertained by the success of The Night Manager and, before he died in 2020, had given his blessing for a sequel of sorts to be explored—his sons, Stephen and Simon Cornwell, are both executive producers. One of the ideas Farr wanted to investigate was “the existential and psychological discussions about what it is to be a spy, what it is to be someone who is infiltrating worlds and losing themselves in the process,” he says over a call. “And that seems to me to be more and more relevant in our world where, morally, we are so lost. Young people feel completely bewildered and confused, and I think a character like Pine speaks to that deeply.”

Hiddleston was thrilled by being able to “investigate” being “10 years older, and the world [being] 10 years stranger, and more polarized, more unsettled. John le Carré was an extraordinary analyst of the British psyche, and there are live debates [happening] about the definitions of patriotism and national character,” he says. “I think nationalism is dangerous… Movements start to emerge, which are not creative or imaginative. There’s nothing constructive, they just want to destroy.” Patriotism, he continues passionately, “is a much deeper instinct, it’s just believing in basic decency and defending basic freedoms. I do believe in the basic decency of people, but I know that’s an optimistic viewpoint. There’s a lot of noise coming from forces who wish to divide us, a lot of noise, and it’s mobilizing.”