I'm Tom Hiddleston, and this is why The Night Manager is back and needed in an ever-more uncertain and fragmented world

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Jonathan Pine is the Night Manager. Almost 10 years ago, in a series broadcast on the BBC, audiences were introduced to Pine – created by the late, great John le Carré – as a former British soldier turned luxury hotelier, recruited by Angela Burr [played by Olivia Colman] to join the Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – as an agent in the field. Pine’s mission: to infiltrate the inner circle of Richard Roper [Hugh Laurie].

Roper was a successful British businessman engaged in the illegal arms trade, selling British standard and chemical weapons – for a price to the tune of $300 million – under the counter to the highest bidder. Weapons that would kill innocent children. John le Carré called Roper “the worst man in the world”. Roper’s cynicism and corruption is a vision of Britain that Pine (and le Carré) vehemently resists: a Britain and a worldview Pine cannot see flourish, or win.

Jonathan Pine was challenged to extract information and intelligence on Roper’s corrupt business dealings and pass it up the chain of command. In so doing, he was called upon to deceive and dissemble, to deal in secrets and lies, to wear many masks, present many faces and conceal many truths. He had to seduce and betray. One false move would be fatal. An unconscious shadow move, an instinctive slip of the tongue, and he’d be a dead man.

By the end of the first series, at great personal cost and risk to himself and others, Pine succeeded and delivered Roper to his captors. The illegal sale of weapons never went through. Roper never got his $300 million. The errant knight had slain the dragon.

Our second series begins 10 years later. Ten years have passed in the real world, and in our story. Ten complex years, in an ever-more uncertain and fragmented world. But Jonathan Pine is still the Night Manager. We find him in the present day now running a surveillance operation for MI6 called “the Night Owls”, tracking and tracing numerous nefarious characters passing through London’s luxury hotels and casinos – those who might pose potential threats to national security and stability. It is quiet, passive work. He remains alert, engaged and nocturnal. He still works at night. He still operates in the shadows. He’s still the Night Manager.

Pine’s curiosity – his desire to know and understand the world as it really is, to see the truth behind the curtain – still burns. But his name is not Jonathan Pine. In the external world, at least, his real identity has been erased from the record. He lives a new life, under a new alias: Alex Goodwin. For Pine’s own safety, his real name, his real identity, his personal history and private pain have been buried and suppressed. His trauma has been locked deep within him, like an unexploded bomb. Pine’s dreams are still haunted by the presence of Roper. The errant knight still haunted by nightmares of the dragon.

One night, in that half-waking sleep of Alex Goodwin’s routine, a chance sighting of an old Roper mercenary prompts a call to action. Pine picks up the unmistakeable scent of familiar dragon smoke – of corruption, of cynicism, of wrongdoing – and he feels he has no choice but to act. His curiosity impels him towards a new adversary, Teddy Dos Santos [Diego Calva], and a new potential accomplice, Roxana Bolaños [Camila Morrone]. His re-engagement draws him into a new high-risk game of deception and deceit in Colombia.

Pine’s chameleonic skill at shape-shifting will be required once more. He will invent a new persona: Matthew Ellis. Fast-talking and hard-living, Ellis is a high-flying, reckless financier, with money to win, money to burn and money to waste. It’s another test of Pine’s capacity as a performer: a man wearing masks, using different personae to become intimate with his enemies. Teddy and Colombia will present a new test of his mettle, a new dance of seduction and betrayal, a new dance with danger and death.

The experience of making the first series of The Night Manager, directed by Susanne Bier, was one of the most creatively fulfilling of my working life. The opportunity to explore and inhabit John le Carré’s intricately constructed spy thriller, and to play his profound and complex protagonist, remains one of the most rewarding privileges I have ever been afforded as an actor.

The experience of making the second series, directed by Georgi Banks-Davies, has matched, if even surpassed, the first time. David Farr, who originally adapted The Night Manager for the screen, had an idea that set the wheels in motion. An image came to him one night, which made the possibility of a second series real and impossible to ignore.

David Farr’s idea was, in fact, born out of the passing of time. Jonathan Pine, aflame with moral fury, with deep wells of private pain, would have experienced the turbulence of the last decade in real time. Everything we have been through, he has been through, but on the inside of the intelligence community.

David, Georgi and I shared a curiosity about Pine’s vulnerability. For a man so courageous, so competent and so capable, where does it hurt? And does his hurt both drive him forward and also make him fallible?

Coming back to play Jonathan Pine 10 years later – the same 10 years for him as for me’ 10 years older, with 10 years more life experience, a few more scars on the inside, a few more scars on the outside – I still find his moral courage incredibly inspiring. His resilience is remarkable, his endurance extraordinary.

I admire his moral clarity and character. In his own words, “you have to commit… you have to make a decision.” He believes in defending what our country stands for. He believes in protecting the freedoms we live under. He believes that the Ropers and Teddys of the world should not win.

After making the first series, I was fortunate enough to get to know John le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell, a little better. He lived not far from me in London, and we used to bump into each other, walking in the same local park. On one occasion, he generously invited me over for dinner at his house, and I sat late into the evening listening to his extraordinary insights about the state of the world. In one story, he made reference to a veiled warning about the nature of the Russian administration’s attitude towards the eastern border of the European Union. Four years later, Ukraine was invaded.

Le Carré died five years ago, in December 2020. Before his death, he had communicated his profound trust in his sons Simon and Stephen Cornwell (who own The Ink Factory, the production company behind The Night Manager) to develop a follow-up; an encouragement to keep the flame alive. In the years since, I felt even more privileged and fortunate to have known him and to have been invited into his imagined world. In making the second series, I carried those conversations close and kept them alive in my mind.

Also, in those intervening years, le Carré and his sons made The Pigeon Tunnel, a brilliant documentary directed by Errol Morris, in which le Carré played both interrogatee and confessor, opening up about the circumstances of both his real and imaginary lives. He talked about his childhood, about his own experience of what he called “the secret world” (as a former MI5 and MI6 officer himself), about the drives and behaviours in human beings that fascinated him: trust, seduction, betrayal.

Le Carré was passionately interested in – and knew intimately – the attraction of risk and the thrill of duplicity: “it’s the joy of self-imposed schizophrenia that the secret agent loves.” He understood that it takes a particular kind of individual to be drawn to that way of life: “The duality all the time… of being the opposite of your outward self… the joy is voluptuous.”

John le Carré fashioned Jonathan Pine in that mould. Pine is a man who feels at his most alive – thrillingly so – the closer he is to danger. He is a man whose inner truths can be expressed through the masks of other men. The challenge, for Pine, is to hold onto himself: to hold onto his moral core, not to get lost in the maze.

Any spy story – and especially those created by le Carré – interrogates the notion of identity. Behind the masks we wear, who are we really? Is there a centre to a human being? Any spy, whose binding language is secrets and lies, provokes that question. As an actor who plays roles for a living, the parallels might seem obvious. The crucial difference is that, as an actor, I get to go home at the end of the day. After I step off stage or off the set, I go back to my real life. A real life with real relationships, attachments and responsibilities that I hold dear, and which keep me firmly tethered to my ordinary reality.

A spy, on the other hand, all alone, without attachments, must be flawless in the execution of a performance that perhaps only he knows is a performance. Perhaps the more he lies, the more truth he tells. In the insightful words of my fellow actor Diego Calva: “You lie to survive, but only the truth can save you.”

Le Carré’s exploration of the notion of identity also goes beyond the personal. It asks questions of our collective identity, and the complexity of our patriotism. In the first episode of the second series of The Night Manager, Rex Mayhew [played by Douglas Hodge], an intelligence officer of the highest rank, suggests, “A nation’s security service is the truest expression of itself.”

What identity of the nation is being expressed by the security and intelligence services? Is there a binding consensus? What does this country stand for? If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Jonathan Pine stands for something. When Angela Burr recruited him in that Swiss hotel 10 years ago to bring down the dragon of Richard Roper, a moral fire was set alight in his heart and in his soul, which will likely not be extinguished until the end of his lifetime.

What does Pine do with that fire now? Can he harness it or will it consume him? The dragon slayer will push himself all the way to the edge. How far is too far?

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The Night Manager season 2 premieres on BBC One and iPlayer on New Year's Day.

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