Guy Pearce betrays his country in 'A Spy Among Friends'

Whether it's Sean Connery, Roger Moore or others portraying James Bond, or Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the "Mission: Impossible" film series, we find ourselves sucked into the world of espionage thanks to the spy genre of television shows and movies.

In this week's episode of Streamed & Screened, hosts Bruce Miller and Terry Lipshetz have a brief discussion of the genre to set up a conversation with Guy Pearce, the star of "Spy Among Friends," a limited series available now on MGM+.

Read more: Guy Pearce, Damian Lewis ponder betrayal with 'Spy Among Friends'

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was generated by Podium.page and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

0:00:03
Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened in an entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and cohost of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, I I wanna pass you a note. I've got some secrets. Do you have any secrets? Can you share anything? Yeah. Send me a text. Okay? That might be the best.

0:00:28
In the old days, you know, spies were so much different because they would sit on a park bench and they pass an envelope between each other. Right? Right? Now it's like we're hacking into systems and we're going to we always you notice how they always have that clock that counts down until the file is uploaded, and it's like, oh, is it gonna happen? Is it gonna happen? Well, there, all you had to worry about was did somebody grab the envelope or are you just letting it go? So it is a different world.

0:00:57
And there's a new mini series or limited series, whatever you wanna call it, that has been airing in Great Britain already, and it got huge reviews. They loved it over there. It's called a spy among friends. And we're getting it now on MGM Plus. And it is the the sort of true story of Kim Philby. You probably have never heard of Kim Philby at all. But he was a traitor to Great Britain. He was a spy, but he was getting information from Russia. And when they found out that he was defecting to Russia, they sent his friend to try and talk to him about all of this. And, like, would you keep this information? I don't know how I could ever be a spy because I talk too much. And I think I I would tell too much. But that your your best friend could not guess that you were gonna be a traitor. And, you know, wouldn't you have dropped some kind of message about this? I find that just really hard to believe. Yeah. But but yeah. And that was a big scandal in the sixties. And people remember the name Kim Philby because he was this trader who went to Russia. And he was very well known. Today, it doesn't graze the radar. People really don't know who he is, or who his friends were.

0:02:17
But the film, which kind of looks at the class system that's very popular in Great Britain, tries to explain all of that by that because there was a group of young man who thought that they were if you will, better than other people because they went to the right schools, they had the right majors, they had the right connections, their parents were probably somebody. And as Damian Lewis says, they dabbled in communism. And so they thought that this was kind of a cool thing that we could do, and they wouldn't be caught for anything like this. Well, Kim Philby, didn't just dabble. He was doing a little bit more with all of that. And I got a chance to talk to Guy Pierce who plays Kim and he was talking about acting acting and acting as a spy. How much acting is involved with all of that? Do you really Do you feel you need to pretend all the time? And he said this class system is something that kind of it didn't matter. You didn't have to do that because they just accepted whatever you were doing was just temporary, and they were allowed to do that. And he and the the creator of the series, Alexander Carey, talk about how this is kind of important again today. Because we're seeing a class system that's being created in just all parts of the world, where some people think they're above the law, and they don't have to worry about consequences. And then others who don't don't seem to be able to catch a break no matter what. That's fascinating.

0:04:00
What's your general thought on on spy movies and TV shows in general? Do you do you enjoy them? Do you get sucked in? Oh, you know it. I I it's strange how something like James Bond has changed so drastically. Because in those early days, you know, with Sean Connery, maybe Roger Moore, who didn't they did a lot of things that was they they were just conversational. That's how they got their information. And then they started getting all those toys. And then they started having gadgets and, you know, I mean, come on. Where do you find all this stuff? And how would you be able to create all this? And then you have all these kind of inched people. How do you keep anything from somebody else that they wouldn't know? Today, it's so over the top. Look at how, you know, it takes several years for somebody like Tom Cruise to make one of his spy films. So it's a it's a different game. I think it's changed. But I think they suck you in all the time because you always wonder That was the bad guy. I'm not really sure I know who the bad guy is.

0:05:06
Did you see the spy a couple years ago. That was the one. It starred Sasha Baron Cohen, you know, who everybody knows is Borr at, but he did a really serious take He played Eli Cohen, who's a Israeli, and he was spying in the nineteen sixties. And ultimately was caught, but it was the the true life story and it was a very serious role for him. But it was a real fascinating look into into espionage.

0:05:36
Could you be a spy? I thought about it. I I think I could. Really? Yeah. I don't know how you do that in school, where you say, alright, I'd like to go on the spy track, please. Could I please take those classes that are necessary for that? I I couldn't. I know I couldn't. Because the I mean, I can keep a secret, but I don't think I could like the Americans, I don't know I could do what they did, where you just suddenly assume new identities and live among people for years, and then you're kind of trying to get a little bit of information out to the others. I don't know that I could do that. At some point, I would break.

0:06:12
And I think where they always go wrong with these kinds of films is they have families. Right. And I think a true spy has no connections. That's why you see James Bond as such a good spy. Because he always seems to be a loner. Once they get him with somebody, then it becomes, uh-oh, I've got to worry about somebody killing this person. You know, to get to me. So if you're as bi, you should be a loner. It never worked out well for for James Bond in those movies because he would he would either meet someone and they would end up dead or they would end up turning on him.

0:06:51
Well, could you imagine that this day if you were, like, googling pussy galore, I think it's a reminder. I think it's a reminder. You know, they in when that movie became out, they released trading cards for that movie. Did you say that? No. Because I I wasn't born back numbers, but but they changed the name of that character to Kitty Galore because we couldn't we couldn't go that. It's a little too dirty for the kids back in the sixties. So, yeah, that that was always kind of fun, Goldfinger. But, yeah, I I don't know if I could be a spy.

0:07:29
Like, it it always sounds cool, but then you think about, well, you got all these crazy secrets. You can't settle down with the family. Somebody's gonna keep a secret in your own house. If you get kids, come on. They don't have work. They do. Right?

0:07:43
I always wonder too when watching things like mission impossible. You know, that that that this recording will self destruct in ten seconds. But it it goes up in flames. Nobody notices that. Nobody sees this, like, flaming package that's sitting next to you on the train and and it does it not set off as smoke alarm?

0:08:02
You know, for many years, studios would send out DVDs of their films. And they would disintegrate. I mean, after you had watched it once, you couldn't watch it again. And they always said, well, that's how they should have done that stuff. Because a tape recorder that's burning yeah. That's not gonna happen. Not a problem. That might that might raise a couple of red flags.

0:08:25
Well, and you could never rerun. You know, you never could go back and look at a scene again. You saw once. It's on your computer. That's it. It's done. Now you can go back to screening lengths and go back and see things if you wanna look at the more than once.

0:08:39
But yeah. So the spy world? No. The the best best thing about me is I couldn't remember anything because I think I've learned so much in my lifetime. There's so much crap in my head. That we have to we have to empty the trash at some point to try and remember these things. So if you put me under oath and had a lie detector and everything hooked up, I'd be good because I couldn't remember a darn thing that you'd told me.

0:09:04
Does did Guy Pierce talk about at all? Like, how he how he researched for this. Yes. You're using. He did. And and that's that's in the interview. I want you to listen to the interview, you know, talk to some of the kind of research he did. And how it would kind of work for him? How he would be as a if he could be a spy? So there's a lot of interesting things there. I think you should unpack it. It's not that long.

0:09:29
We have Guy Pierce and Alexander Carey talking about a spy among friends. Can a spy really have a friend? I think I think friendship is the main currency of of spies. I think that I think I think I mean, it's a good question because on one side of the relationship, yes, that question is pertinent. On the other one, it's pertinent in a different in completely the opposite way. Yeah. It it just it struck me as if I were a spy, I would not be friendly with anybody. I would just let it go. But there also is an element of acting that's involved. And Guy, would you make a good spy? Well, look, I I may make a good spy, you know, on the surface, but I mean, of course, I can work as an actor on screen but it's never a life or death situation. I don't know how I'd I don't know how if I've got the Hutzpa to to, you know, act as well when I know that there are lives or countries or at stake. So probably not, I think, is the answer.

0:10:40
How does spies operate today when there's just so many ways that the truth could come out? Is it a a whole different world and what? Because the the sixties is kind of a a a real romantic period at at least for spies. Well, you're I think in the sixties, human intelligence, in other words, human to human getting information in sort of bars and on park benches and all the rest of it was a reality. And and was the the the the the main way of of getting and passing information these days. There's a lot more of sort of cyber espionage and all the rest of it. And I think you'll find that in various intelligence agencies. There are also still two factions. You know, there's the there's the one that goes, well, human intelligence is really the only the way that you're gonna get the definitive stuff or the stuff that's gonna be, you know, keep on giving. And then there are people who are gonna go, no. Let's just put a drone up. So so So, you know, they're very different these days. But Yeah. But that's the friendship thing. The friendship thing is important for a spy. Yeah. It doesn't seem as much fun, but maybe I'm wrong, never been a spy, can't can't weigh in.

0:11:52
Guy, how much did you read about him before you actually started doing this? Did you know much about him or not? I didn't know a lot. No. I mean, I'd seen a couple of films that had been made and I'd seen a documentary once about the Cambridge five. So I didn't know a lot. I knew of Kim Filby, of course, but knew no detail about about him really and certainly knew nothing about this relation it between he and Nicholas Elliott.

0:12:17
I read a number of books before we started and through the course of making the show. One in particular, I think, was a was a helpful piece, which was written by Eleanor, his third wife, his American wife, the wife that he was with in Beirut when he when he left. She wrote a book that that that looked at some of the letters between the two of them, you know, that published the letters between the two of them through that time. So there was something personal and human about the way she wrote. And so that was an interesting little way in for me into into Filby. But, yeah, I read I read bits and pieces of all sorts of things before we started. But of course, I always would would come back to the the script.

0:13:07
And at a certain point, I find I have to sort of let the let the research material go. Were there things you could relate to? And did you like him at all or not? I never know the answer to the liking question because whilst making I'm so in I'm so embedded in into him that I lose myself in a way. So it's not necessarily that I have then have an opinion of him. I'm I'm I'm so sort of, yeah, lost in trying to just become and understand him. I think the bigger question is is is whether I understand him and and, you know, I'm that's what I'm searching to do through the process and and, you know, you can probably only understand any character, you know, this much at the best of times when you're dealing with someone like Philby, you can probably only understand him this this much because he's a mystery to everybody. So it was a complex and challenging process. Yeah. Well, thank you. Both it's been so exciting to watch this unfold. And I'm just playing dumb through the whole thing. I'm not I'm not looking ahead to find out anything. I don't wanna know anything, but it is fascinating. It's a a different world, a different time. So thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks, Bruce. Nice to meet you. Alright, Bruce. Thanks for that interview. A fascinating discussion there.

0:14:37
Did you get to talk to anybody else from that Phils from that series. Who is who plays the friend that, you know, has to try and talk to this Kim Philsby. I did get to talk to him. And I do have a story Maybe you can add a link to this. And if you don't wanna read, you'll see some more stuff from him about this whole project. But it's a six part limited series on MGM plus. And, Eric, could you do anything this next week that I worry about? I'll know you're a spy. Sounds good, Bruce. So we'll have a link to that article in the show notes of this episode. And otherwise, we will see you next week with another episode of streamed and screamed. Have a great one.

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