Mr & Mrs Smith star explains differences between film and series
Maya Erskine has explained how the series, which she stars in opposite Donald Glover, differs from the 2005 film it has been inspired by.
New Prime Video series Mr & Mrs Smith, which comes from co-creators Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane, and stars Glover and Maya Erskine, has been loosely inspired by the film of the same name from 2005 – but it seems that loosely is the operative word.
The series follows two spies who are paired together and live fake lives as married couple John and Jane Smith.
Meanwhile, the film follows a real married couple, John and Jane, both of whom are spies, but they work for competing agencies and neither know of the other's job.
Erskine recently explained how the narrative plays out different in series, saying: "In the movie, they meet and don’t know each other are spies. In this version, we know we are entering this agreement of becoming partners and essentially carrying out missions together. But having to pose as a married couple. It is like an arranged marriage.
"You’re meeting someone for the first time and having to live in the same house, having to learn their small habits, things that might annoy you, things that you might like.
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"And so I think they start off with the agreement of, let’s not make this romantic, this is just a business partnership and that’s all it’s gonna be and we have to learn to trust each other."
Erskine continued: "Of course, as they start to get to know each other and start to like each other, it gets a little more complicated and they do fall in love.
"And then it becomes a real relationship that I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to just set against a backdrop of high, high stakes like life- or-death stakes.
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"You know, so it could be something as simple as having an argument about keeping the toilet seat up. But if you don't do it, then you might get shot through the window.
"It's just always what Donald has coined the 'spy sandwich', which means it's just our relationship set against the backdrop of the spy genre."
Sloane also recently revealed what tone viewers can expect from the series, as it not only differs dramatically from that of the film, but also from most other spy projects, with Sloane calling it "the antithesis of a typical Bond-type thing".
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She explained: "The tone of the show is the thing that I think was the trickiest piece, and it's ever-evolving, which is part of the fun of it. But the way that Donald [Glover] and I had initially thought about it is like, what is the antithesis of a typical Bond-type thing?
"And the first thing that I sort of came up with was the idea of a spy coming home after, like, a crazy chase sequence, and taking off their shoe and having a blister because they wore the wrong shoe. The in-between moments that you don't normally see in something like that, and the vulnerability of that.
"But then also, Donald and I both come from the comedy world, but very grounded, very sort of bizarre, surreal comedy."
Mr & Mrs Smith premieres on Friday 2nd February on Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that.
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