Slow Horses' Jonathan Pryce on returning to his Welsh roots with new drama: "I left it physically, but emotionally, I've never left"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Had Jonathan Pryce retired at 60, as he once proclaimed he would when he was a young actor, his last movie would have been Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. He’d never have played the scheming High Sparrow in Game of Thrones, or Cardinal Wolsey in the BBC’s Wolf Hall. Though he probably would still have received his 2009 CBE for services to drama, it’s unlikely he’d have been knighted in 2021 for those services (presumably provided in the years from 2009 onwards).

He’d still have his two Tony awards (one for Miss Saigon, despite controversy over his casting as an Asian character) and his two Olivier awards (his first, in 1980, for a radical production of Hamlet). But he wouldn’t have been nominated for an Oscar for best actor, as he was for 2019’s The Two Popes, in which he starred as the future Pope Francis opposite fellow Welshman Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict. Nor would he have been Emmy-nominated twice in the same year – 2024 – for two very different performances: the Duke of Edinburgh in the final seasons of The Crown and David Cartwright in Slow Horses. More of the latter later.

Chances are, had Pryce given up acting in 2007, he would be best known for playing Juan Perón to Madonna’s Evita in 1996, or the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies. He would never have given some of the best performances of his career. Pryce would have sold himself short.

“When I said it, 60 was quite old and I didn’t want to be the older actor that the rest of the cast and crew patronised – which is what I’d seen happening on jobs that I’d been on,” the 78-year-old says now. “That hasn’t started happening yet and, on the whole, people are very kind to me so I’ll keep going. It might retire me, but at the moment, I don’t have to retire.”

Does he ever worry that if you stop, you drop? “I very much think that, yes,” Pryce says, firmly. “That’s true for everybody in any walk of life. You’ve got to either keep going or definitely find something else to do when you do retire.”

The latest character to keep Pryce going is that of pugnacious patriarch Solomon Bevan in Sky’s compelling, cinematic thriller Under Salt Marsh.

“A double murder is being investigated in a small community that is under threat from rising sea levels and a massive impending storm,” is how Pryce – who, befitting his status, gets an “and” in the opening titles – outlines the drama. There’s a bit more to it than that, of course, with the haunting whodunnit – created, written and directed by film-maker Claire Oakley – concerning itself with big themes like trust and guilt, while delivering a propulsive plot. It also looks (bleakly) beautiful. Helmed by a captivating Kelly Reilly, ably assisted by Rafe Spall, Under Salt Marsh is better than Broadchurch.

Pryce says he relished playing Solomon. A pillar of the community whose family farmed the land around the fictional Welsh coastal village of Morfa Halen for centuries, Solomon is a keeper of secrets – his own and other people’s – with the entanglements of his family, friends and neighbours as labyrinthine as the streams and creeks that anastomose the salt marshes. But, like many pillars of communities, Solomon has feet of clay.

Another reason that Pryce enjoyed Under Salt Marsh was that it was a homecoming, of a sort. Having left his native Wales almost 60 years ago – first to go to art school, then to train as a teacher in Ormskirk, Lancashire, and ultimately to attend drama school in London – Pryce used his weekends off to reacquaint himself with the Welsh landscape.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t see it as this beautiful country with epic landscapes, but rather as a place where I either played in the woods or went to the pubs and then almost couldn’t wait to get away from, like a lot of people when they are 18 or 19. But it is a beautiful country. Although the irony is that a lot of the beauty, especially in south Wales, is man-made. Those beautiful green rolling hills are grassed-over slag heaps, waste from coal mining and steel works.”

After graduating from Rada, Pryce worked at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and then, “it was anywhere but Wales for a long time”, to such an extent that “I would look enviously at casts that were filming in Wales. I left it physically, but emotionally, I’ve never left. Because my family is there – my sisters still live in north Wales – I go back to visit. I’ve left a bit of me, but I don’t think I’ve left Wales, if that makes sense.”

For a long time, he was never referred to, or referred to himself, as a Welsh actor. Then, “I became a Welsh actor in America, where I was called a Welsh actor for the first time. They’re very aware of heritage and background.”

As well as identifying as a Welsh actor, Pryce also admits to being “a praise w***e” who loves the complimentary attention his acting receives. Recently, that praise has been for Slow Horses, Mick Herron’s Apple TV saga about the sidelined spies of Slough House. His performance as David Cartwright – grandfather of River (Jack Lowden) and a former spy himself who now has dementia – is an exquisite slow-burn.

James Hawes, who directed Pryce in the first series of Slow Horses and also in the film One Life – which again co-starred Anthony Hopkins – says: “He has these extraordinary small gears. We’re used to seeing Jonathan in that grandfather role, as somebody vulnerable, who’s deeply touching in his fragility, and yet with the slightest turn of the dial, he’s vicious and threatening and seriously malevolent. He’s masterful.”

Pryce demurs. “When things are as well written as Slow Horses is, very little rehearsal is needed and there’s not a lot of discussion you need to have. You don’t overthink it.”

As for the spectre that looms over River and David’s relationship, Pryce is familiar with the shadow cast by dementia. Even before Slow Horses, he was an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society.

“I played a character on stage [in The Height of the Storm] who had dementia and I realised the power of theatre to tell that story. I’d meet people after the show at the stage door, who were so happy that they’d been to see that performance because they hadn’t felt alone. It was a problem shared and for many, it was the first time they’d been able to cry,” Pryce says. “With Slow Horses, I had another chance to portray a character and his dementia in as truthful a way as possible.”

Pryce, who is married to the actor Kate Fahy, with whom he has three grown-up children, pauses – I think a Pryce Pause is A Thing – then says: “It’s a powerful thing, to be able to be a part of a trade and know that you’re helping people while educating people, while entertaining people.” And who’d want to retire from that?

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Under Salt Marsh begins on Sky Atlantic and NOW from 30 January.

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