Tom Hiddleston & Diego Calva on the Return of ‘The Night Manager’

When The Night Manager concluded in 2016, fans waited for news that the limited series adaptation of John le Carré’s 1993 espionage novel might someday return.

Then, they waited some more.

And then, a little bit more.

Ten years later, the patience paid off, with a new season of the Emmy-winning show starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman debuting earlier this year on Prime Video.

“There was no second book, no sequel to The Night Manager,” Hiddleston, 45, says. “The challenge for us became how do we move forward and honor and retain the very specific narrative stitching of his writing?”

The answer to that question came from le Carré’s own life and his complicated relationship with his father, who was a con man.

“These themes of trust, deception, secrets, lies, betrayal were part of the very beginning of his development, and he stitched those themes into all of his work,” says Hiddleston, an executive producer on the show, of le Carré’s personal experiences. “So it seemed appropriate to continue the story of fathers and sons, which had a root in the first season.”

As with season one of The Night Manager, all episodes in season two were written by David Farr (director Georgi Banks-Davies took over behind the camera from Emmy winner Susanne Bier, who directed season one). Hiddleston says Farr had a literal dream of what the show could become, built around Laurie’s arms dealer character, Richard Roper, and his three “sons”: a metaphorical heir in Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine, a “legitimate” child in Noah Jupe’s Danny and an illegitimate son in series newcomer Diego Calva’s Teddy Dos Santos.

“Teddy is a three-dimensional character of untold depth,” Hiddleston says. “When he appears in the series, he has to appear with a very specific charisma. He has to be physically commanding — someone all the leading characters talk about before we see him — and almost presents as a primary antagonist, a bad man who has done bad things. At least that’s how he’s presented in the opening. And then as we get to know Teddy, there are so many layers, vulnerabilities, depths, delicacies and sensitivities in his soul. But it really never came to life until we found Diego, who can do all of those things.”

Plus, Hiddleston jokes, Calva is a “very strong physical presence with a charisma that I find uncomfortable.”

Before joining The Night Manager, the Mexican-born Calva was best known for Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico and his breakout turn in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It was Banks-Davies who suggested Calva might be right for the Teddy role, and after the 34-year-old star had a chemistry read over Zoom with Hiddleston, it was clear no one else could play the part.

“There was a charge, even on Zoom, between the way we were playing the scenes,” Hiddleston says.

Teddy is a complex force in The Night Manager — an arms dealer like his father, caught between loyalties and ultimately undone by his hopes to be recognized by Roper.

“Night Manager is a family show about fatherhood, or brotherhood, too,” Calva says. “The moment I understood that, and I felt that void, that pain, the hole Teddy is trying to fill all the time with power, money, stuff — and that’s not enough.”

The relationship between Pine and Teddy in season two is crucial to the drama — Hiddleston says Farr called their bond an “erotic charge” — and one rooted in a mutual codependency and fascination. “They are in a dance of seduction,” Hiddleston says of the characters. It’s an idea that plays out literally in one key scene, when Pine, Teddy and Roxana (Camila Morrone), a woman with connections to both men, dance together. 

“Even now when I rewatch it, I am still finding layers in it,” Calva says. “We were just dancing, and there was no rehearsal. We kind of found every scene doing it, and that was something really cool. You can’t rehearse; you can’t create that kind of situation. It just happens.”

The Night Manager is streaming on Prime Video.

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