Eddie Redmayne has quite literally done it all. He’s acted in blockbuster franchises (Fantastic Beasts) and auteur-led dramas (The Theory of Everything), sang his way through high-profile musicals (Les Misérables) and hit the stage many, many times (Red, Cabaret). Along the way, he’s won an Oscar, Tony, Golden Globe, BAFTA Award, SAG Award and two Olivier Awards in addition to armfuls of other trophies.
But something curious happened in the wake of his latest critically acclaimed turn — playing a ruthless assassin in Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal — that even Redmayne hadn’t anticipated. “The amount people talk about it,” Redmayne told The Hollywood Reporter of the buzz that swirled for weeks and months after a November 2024 launch. “When you make films, and particularly films that have gone to streamers, there’s not that sort of one moment when everyone is watching it. What I was shocked by was as [The Day of the Jackal] came out — it started in one block and then came out weekly — was the water-cooler aspect. I got stopped by people on the street and they would just want to drill down. It’s rare that you have such an open conversation and that really was thrilling. I love it, and I love that people are still talking about it.”
Six months later, mouths are still moving. The Day of the Jackal, inspired by the acclaimed novel published in 1971 by Frederick Forsyth (who just recently died at age 86), follows an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin known as the Jackal who carries out hits for sky-high sums. After a high-profile job, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer, played by Lashana Lynch. What ensues is a globe-trotting, cat-and-mouse chase across Europe. The series, produced by Carnival Films, part of Universal International Studios, and Sky Studios, comes from an executive producer team that includes Ronan Bennett, Gareth Naeme, Nigel Marchant, Sam Hoyle, Sue Naegle, Brian Kirk and Redmayne.
Because his name is on the list of executive producers, Redmayne said that it’s also led to him feeling “great pride” in the show. “When you have used the whole of you rather than just the actor part of you, you feel so heavily invested, so when those people stop you in the streets and say that they’d enjoyed this, I think you hear it more than perhaps you would when you are more of a gun for hire. It thrills me that people have loved it,” he explained, adding that it was not just a vanity credit. “It’s completely all consuming. I was doing Cabaret in New York but in the mornings, all day, I was working on the edits and on the marketing, the visual effects, the music, and it was sort of all encompassing.”
Not that Redmayne is one to shy away from the heavy lift of a project like this one, which required months of prep to learn all skills required. “It’s an actor’s dream,” he said. “I describe this show as a sort of actor’s playground, all the things that when you are little and the reason you get into acting [like] changing your voice, doing accents, doing languages, changing the way you look, makeup, stunts, all of that really, but also this quite intense depth of emotion. It had everything. It was a very easy yes for me.”
Also an easy yes: A second season that is now in the works. “I can literally say nothing,” Redmayne said with a smile before offering just a teaser that he’s already read some of the new scripts for a new batch of episodes. “I was so proud of what we’ve worked on, and I’m so excited to see if we can push it to another level.”
Redmayne in The Day of the Jackal.
