Archie's Jason Isaacs: 'Cary Grant's life was far worse than documented'
Jason Isaacs talks to Radio Times magazine about playing the real Cary Grant.
“When I was offered the role, I thought I ought to run a million miles in the other direction,” recalls Archie star Jason Isaacs. “Cary Grant was dazzlingly suave, a lady-killer and beloved by the entire world. Then I read the script and realised this was about Archie Leach, not Cary Grant. It’s about a damaged man, who created an avatar so people couldn’t see how damaged he was.
“He got the whole world to love him, but he was riddled with anxiety and addiction. He destroyed his first four marriages – and almost every other relationship, too. He only found peace when he gave it all up, and realised it wasn’t the adulation of the world he wanted. He needed to love himself.”
Although Grant was very much a man of his time, Isaacs says a modern reading of his personality is strangely relevant. “He was one of the most famous people in the world. He played the perfect man, leading the perfect life. Many of us see people with lives that seem perfect, but none of them are. In almost any life you can compare and despair.”
To help him play the actor, Isaacs searched for recorded interviews with Grant, only to draw a blank. Almost. “I read all the biographies and watched all the films. That was useless, because it was all such an act. He delivers every line in the same manner. I didn’t feel I’d seen Archie Leach.”
Then he had a breakthrough. “I read one interview from 1986, just before Grant died, and I tracked down the writer. He had been running a Cary Grant film festival at university and wrote to Grant for an interview, on the off-chance. Grant replied and said, ‘Yes, give me a ring’. He couldn’t believe it. When Grant comes on the phone, he says, ‘You aren’t recording this, are you?’ and the journalist says, ‘No’. But, of course, it was recorded.”
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Isaacs continues: “The written interview was published but the recording has never been aired. I begged the journalist to let me have it in confidence. When I listened to it, I felt for the first time that I was in conversation with Cary Grant myself, not only in terms of what he sounded like, but who he sounded like.
“And I had that in my headphones the entire time. I listened to it before we recorded every scene. From that conversation I got to his insides.”
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Isaacs says that even the most devoted fan will learn something new about Grant from watching the drama. “His life was far, far worse than has been documented. There was such chaos – carnage, really – in his early life, that I think he felt if he could exert control over everything around him, it would prevent the wolf from coming to the door again.
“He once said that he turned every woman in his life into his mother, and then fought with them. He broke the chain with Jennifer. Jennifer remembers a perfect father. Grant was charming and wonderful, but he was also troubled and very unhappy.”
Archie premieres on 23rd November on ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.
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