William Boyd’s RESTLESS – the book becomes a television event with the author as screenwriter.
“Actress Hayley Atwell has resorted to calling herself William Boyd’s muse”, reports William Boyd via telephone from London. “And the truth is, I’d cast her in anything of mine, she’s terrific.”
Atwell plays Boyd’s ballsy heroin, Eva Delectorskaya, in the BBC adaptation of his novel, RESTLESS, which screens from June 1 through Universal’s 13th Street pay channel on Foxtel.
This is the second time she has played one of Boyd’s emboldened females having portrayed Freya in Any Human Heart. In RESTLESS, her role of Russian émigré living in France enlisted by the British Secret Service is something of a personal best in a career that counts the Hollywood blockbuster Captain America.
“She’s never had to stab a man in the eye with a pencil before”, quips Boyd, whose adulation for the actress fleshing out his creation is warranted in a performance that is layered and nuanced. Atwell’s “look” is beautifully suited to the thirties and forties, as attested in Captain America, and her portrayal of a Russian émigré recruited by the British Secret Service at the outbreak of World War II is the epitome of grace, glamour and intelligence.
Boyd has adapted all the screen versions of his books. “It’s part of the deal. I know that a book and a film are different animals, and because I wrote the book, I’m not the least reverent. It’s quite liberating.”
But doesn’t he owe the reader of his novels some fidelity with the film treatment.
“No. I’ve changed things in Restless because it was necessary. End of story.”
But it’s not end of story, because the story of the novel is the spine of the screen version, and a very solid, splendid spine it is.
“Writing novels is solitary, writing a screenplay is collaborative, and I love collaborating, and certainly on RESTLESS I have liked my collaborators.”
As well as his “muse”, Hayley Atwell, the cast includes an impressive ensemble that includes Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery and Michael Gambon, under the direction of Edward Hall, a veteran of the series, Spooks, an apt aspect of his CV considering RESTLESS seethes with subterfuge and secrets.
What is it about spy stories that so enchant us?
“Double life, duplicity, deceit, it’s fascinating- as long as it’s vicariously, and not visited upon us personally.”
The mole is the melanoma on the skin of national security.
Boyd has been asked to write the latest James Bond continuation novel. How on earth did the Ian Fleming estate allow this when I remind him of this quote from Any Human Heart:
“Freya would loathe Fleming. I can’t put my finger on his essential nature. He’s quite a handsome man- dark, lean- but it’s the sort of handsomeness that vanishes on a closer look and you see the flaws; the weak mouth, the doleful eyes. He’s affable, generous, appears interested in you- but there’s nothing in him to like. Too spoiled, too well connected, too cossetted: everything in life has come too easily.”
“Keepers of the Fleming flame feel I have a feeling for spy genre and I will be keeping true to the literary Bond.”
How hard is it keeping true to the literary Bond when the films have quite a pervading hold on the public imagination of 007?
“The two actors that have been closest to the literary Bond, I think, are Sean Connery and Daniel Craig, both of whom have starred in films I have written, Connery in A Good Man in Africa and Craig in The Trench, which I also directed. But my focus will be on Fleming.”
One wonders though if the Bond girl might have more than a fleeting resemblance to Hayley Atwell.
The 2×90-minute drama RESTLESS is an Endor production in association with Sundance Channel for BBC One. It is produced by Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Frift and directed by Edward Hall. The executive producers are William Boyd, Matthew Read for the BBC and Christian Vesper for Sundance Channel.
Part One – Saturday June 1st, 8.30pm
Part Two – Saturday June 8th, 8.30pm
Only on 13th Street
RESTLESS
By William Boyd, published by Bloomsbury: available now.