Ben Whishaw is seen running around London playing a spy who gives 007 a run for his money in the new Netlfix drama series Black Doves.
The British actor admits to 9honey Celebrity it’s a nice change after years of playing tech whiz Q in the James Bond film franchise.
“Yes, it was nice to be more active, and it was nice to be, I guess, in a way, more aggressive,” Whishaw says at the world premiere of the series in London.
Watch the video above.
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“Yeah, it was a nice opportunity,” he says.
Playing opposite actress Keira Knightley, Whishaw stars as secret agent Sam Young, who tries to keep his colleague and friend Helen Webb (played by Knightley) safe as they unravel a murder mystery.
“I felt like I had never really done a role like Sam before, and I thought I was immediately intrigued by him,” Whishaw tells 9honey Celebrity.
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“He was quite, on the page anyway, he was quite mysterious,” Whishaw continues.
“I don’t know whether it just hadn’t all really been written at that point, and maybe that was what was mysterious about it, but there seem to be something to him, more than meets the eye, so that’s always interesting to play.
“And then I really loved the scenes that he had with Keira Knightley’s character, Helen, and I admired the way that they were written, and I thought that they captured something true about certain kinds of relationships.”
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Among the guns and blowing up stuff with Knightley, there’s another relationship the plot explores – between Whishaw’s character and Michael, played by It’s A Sin star Omari Douglas.
“I’m excited for everyone else to see it,” Douglas tells 9honey Celebrity on the red carpet of the show’s world premiere.
“Mostly all of my time [on set] was spent with [Ben Whishaw], really… It was very intimate, it was very quiet and then I do have a couple of moments with Keira, which was really wonderful.”
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“What was so kind of fun about the process was doing something that was so compact and yet knowing on the outside there was all of this action happening, and I do have a couple of moments in the midst of that action a little bit, so it was nice to kind of dip my toe in it,” Douglas says.
The action-filled role of Sam is a stark contrast to Whishaw’s other big movie out at the moment – Paddington In Peru.
The 44-year-old laughs to 9honey Celebrity that it’s not necessarily intentional to star in such polar opposite projects one after the other.
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“It’s just really chance, you have no control over what people ask you to read and look at and consider,” he says.
“Sometimes you receive something and it doesn’t feel right and so you say, ‘No’, but often, I’ve been very lucky, and people have asked me to do a wide array of things.
“I don’t know how I choose – it was I needed a job?! And it was great, it was a wonderful opportunity.”
Black Doves drops on Netflix on December 5.
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