Christopher Chung says that Roddy Ho, the irritable hacker character he plays in Slow Horses, still thinks he's the smartest guy in the room at the Slough House home for disgraced MI-5 agents in Season 4.
Based on Mick Herron's novels, the spy dramedy follows a ragtag team of MI5 agents -- dubbed Slow Horses -- exiled to a remote location and given busy work after they made mistakes or annoyed their bosses. New episodes stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+
"Roddy has an inflated sense of self and is, in many ways, kind of deluded," Chung, 36, told UPI with a laugh during a recent Zoom interview.
"It's really hard for me to view him externally now, because I feel like he's kind of so interwoven inside of me," Chung said.
"I wonder if he would have that in his bedroom or I wonder if he would eat that, or how he would respond to this. It's kind of good to think like that in the real world because then you can take it on to set."
Chung said he thinks there is more humanity to the character, though, than his hilarious brashness and insensitivity would suggest.
"A lot of people kind of boil him down to being an obnoxious, arrogant prick, which fundamentally, he is in many ways," the actor said.
"He's probably misunderstood and people don't give him enough time to understand him," Chung added. "I don't think anything inside Slough House gets done without him. I think he's quite useful."
Season 3 ended with Roddy intentionally piloting a wedding-festooned party bus into the house in which one of his colleagues was being held captive, only to learn she already had been rescued.
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"Professionally, he's basking in the glory of his recent bus crash into a house. Personally, he's got a girlfriend. I think that is the most important thing," Chung said about where Season 4 finds his character.
"He views himself as Lamb's right-hand man," Chung said, referring to Roddy's inappropriate, cantankerous supervisor, Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman. "Roddy's the person that Lamb will go to when he needs something done, and everyone else around him is kind of fodder to Lamb."
Chung said Roddy shares Lamb's dim opinion of their colleagues Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), River (Jack Lowden) and Marcus (Kadiff Kirwan).
"They're all just kind of wastes of space. [To] Standish (Saskia Reeves), Roddy does kind of give some grace because there is some kind of mothering that he gets from her, though he would never admit that. But he does tolerate her a lot more than the others," Chung said.
Season 3 saw Standish quit MI-5 over Lamb's outrageous behavior, and Season 4 kicks off with Lamb telling the team that River was killed accidentally by his grandfather David (Jonathan Pryce), a former MI-5 legend who now has dementia.
With two members of Slough House out of the picture, Roddy has "extra space to kind of expand," Chung said.
"As you can see in the first episode, River's dead, i'm gonna take his computer. Waste not, want not. I'm gonna make the most of this," Chung said. "He would have wanted it that way and if he didn't, too bad for him."
No-nonsense and impeccably organized new character Moira (Joanna Scanlan) quickly fills in for Standish as office manager this season.
"Moira, in function anyway, takes the place of Standish," Chung said. "That position's filled, so you know she's gonna come around and start giving me this drudgery work to do, so I don't think he misses [River and Standish] too much."
Chung said one of the reasons the show works is because it subverts viewers' perceptions regarding how glamorous spy life really is or isn't.
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"People like to fantasize what it might be like to be a spy, and this kind of show makes it more of an accessible fantasy because it's not really amazing tuxedos and martinis and fun sports cars," he added.
"It's [listening to] Coldplay in a yellow hatchback. I think that's what makes it so relatable to the audience. They're like, 'Oh, I can imagine every other person now walking down the street could possibly be a spy because they're just normal people.'"
Chung said he didn't sleep for three days before he started filming Slow Horses Season 1 because it was the biggest role he ever landed, and he was "absolutely terrified" about sharing the screen with Oscar-winner Oldman.
His anxieties were soon put to rest, however.
"I got to set and I was like, 'This is my family for the next however long.' It's been me, Gary, Rosalind, Saskia and Jack since Season 1," he added.
"It's like a family that keeps expanding and contracting. We all still talk about Dustin Demri-Burns, who played Min, and the fun that we had. We have this history now within that house, and I think it's quite unique."
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Chung said he especially looks forward to his scenes with Oldman now.
"I know I'm making a really excellent piece of television," Chung said. "It's truly exciting."
The Season 4 ensemble also includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Hugo Weaving and James Callis. The show already has been renewed for a fifth season.
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