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Soho House, London, a mid-September afternoon. For two days, Helen Mirren, 81, and Pierce Brosnan, 73, are hosting the international press here, one appointment after another. Shortly before it all begins, Brosnan emerges from his interview room, dark blue suit, light blue shirt, strolls down the corridor, and calls out as he passes: “Sorry, I need to stretch my legs.” Five times before, PR assistants had requested that no questions, absolutely no questions, be asked about James Bond. The search for the next 007 has preoccupied newsrooms and the internet for years, currently more than ever. Yet, in his last interview with GVM, former 007 Brosnan had jokingly suggested that he could imagine playing a Bond villain himself.
This afternoon, the conversation turns to other villains: the blood- and revenge-obsessed characters from Shakespeare’s history plays and their modern-day counterparts, the Harrigan gangster family from “MobLand.” The second season of the Paramount+ series tells the story of the bloody power struggle between rival London crime clans, with Mirren as the ice-cold puppet master Maeve Harrigan and Brosnan as her husband, the fragile patriarch Conrad. On the sofa, Mirren and Brosnan themselves seem like an old married couple; at least, they clearly enjoy playing one: when Brosnan compliments her, Mirren looks at him admiringly. When, at the end, an assistant rather firmly cuts off the conversation after the agreed-upon, but very brief, time, it is Mirren who politely apologizes: “Sorry, Pierce and I sometimes talk a lot, we just ramble on.” British understatement.
GVM: You both have played secret agents, a queen, a prime minister, and countless other character roles. What’s it like for you now, at a somewhat older age, to play a gangster couple who incessantly shout out crude, vulgar expressions like “fucking” or “cunt”—which would be a very polite translation of “asshole”?
Helen Mirren: (laughs) I can tell you: It’s sooooo liberating.
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Pierce Brosnan: (laughs too) You can really swear very well.
Mirren: I don’t know exactly what it is that makes me so good at it.
GVM: If I may say so: They both swear like beer delivery drivers.
Mirren: (laughs) Yes. People are often very shocked by it. What do you think about swearing in general, Pierce, I mean, even by children, for example?
Brosnan: Well, that will never completely go away, swearing is just so much fun.
Mirren: Yes. But why is it that these swear words have this power?
Brosnan: Because these swear words compress emotions into a concentrated form. As a child, you’re always told not to swear or curse. And if you grew up in Ireland, like me, then the entire weight of the heavens rested on your shoulders – woe betide you if you did.
Mirren: Really? My parents never swear, not at all. When I started acting, I was quite shocked because there was constant swearing. It took me a while to realize that the C-word, in particular, was used more for comedic effect. Like, “Oh, come on, don’t be such a stupid old cunt.”
Brosnan: Ha ha ha. (laughs a deep, booming laugh)
Mirren: What are you laughing at? That’s how it is in our acting world. The term is used rather casually. Cunt is a great word.
Brosnan: Yes, but woe betide you if you say it in America – oh my goodness. They’ll lock you up immediately.
Mirren: Yes, then they are genuinely shocked.
GVM: Aside from the swearing, shootings, and violence, “MobLand” often comes across more like a very dark marital comedy. For example, when Conrad says about his adult, scheming son, “I did wipe his ass, damn it,” to which Maeve dryly replies, “No—you certainly didn’t.”
Mirren: I like that you chose to quote that particular scene. Conrad claims he used to wipe his baby son’s bottom, and his wife contradicts him because she, meaning me, did that back then—or the nanny, or whoever. Anyway, not him. They’re constantly putting each other down.
GVM: What actually holds this curious power couple together? Love, power, habit – or mutual respect?
Brosnan: All of that together.
Mirren: The two of them realize that each of them has a unique self-perception, their own fantasy about themselves. And they are the only people who each know the absolute truth about the other.
Brosnan: This dynamic between the two of them arose from a collaboration between the screenwriters and us actors. And this journey will continue; we’re already waiting to step onto this stage again for season three. The only problem is, none of us currently have any idea where this story will lead. Sometimes the whole thing feels like a fever dream of a story with neither a beginning nor an end. Nevertheless, it’s become a familiar world for me because I get to work with Dame Helen in it. I’ve observed her from a distance for so many years now—her magnificent acting, her special feel for characters. Then to be on set with Helen every day is pure joy.
Mirren: For both of us, that’s one of the best parts: reliving this ridiculous, yet strangely tender relationship between our on-screen couple again and again. And hopefully portraying it so authentically that the audience says to themselves, “My God, my parents were exactly the same”—well, something like that anyway.
GVM: But this marriage between Maeve and Conrad is a bit too extreme for that. It seems to be based on an uncanny complicity, like that of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, whom you, Dame Helen, have already played. Are Shakespeare’s history plays the archetype of the modern gangster series?
Mirren: Yes, absolutely. Although Maeve is a significantly better role than Lady M.
Brosnan: Ha ha ha.
Mirren: Lady M is okay, and, because I’ve already played her, I understood very early on that Maeve is like Lady M.
GVM: In the second season, Maeve’s unscrupulous behavior is actually described at one point with a Shakespeare quote: “The poisonous noise of a jealous wife / Poisons more than a mad dog’s tooth.”
Brosnan: Yes, the Shakespeare references were very clear in the script.
Mirren: How wonderful that you noticed this incredible quote from Shakespeare. Who exactly says that in our series?
GVM: It is the veterinarian whom Maeve, in a fit of scheming, summons to have her husband’s perfectly healthy beloved dogs euthanized. Whereupon the vet quotes from Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.” In this, Maeve is indeed no different from Lady Macbeth, who initially considers her husband effeminate, goads him, and accuses him of being too full of the “milk of human kindness”…
Mirren: That’s the strength of our wonderful writer Jez Butterworth, that he simply puts this great Shakespearean quote into the veterinarian’s mouth. In season 1, Maeve was very suspicious because her husband Conrad had given up the gangster life, no longer wanted to be a criminal.
Brosnan: Mmh.
Mirren: The gangster empire they had built was beginning to unravel. Conrad, on the other hand, just wanted to sit back, go fishing, and spend his days relaxing by the fireplace with his dogs and drinking whiskey. She, however, had to stay in the game, otherwise she would feel dead inside.
GVM: Are the swearing and shooting married couple villains or heroes?
Brosnan: They are the heroes of their own story. They have extremely strong egos. They are inextricably linked – mentally and emotionally. And in a world of revenge and violence, they are fearless. They are like Bonnie and Clyde.
Mirren: Whether they’re villains or not is essentially irrelevant to how the audience sees them. The audience understands that these two aren’t good people. On the other hand, they’re fascinating, energetic, interesting, and even funny people whose story you enjoy following. The usual division of “the good guys” and “the bad guys” doesn’t exist in “MobLand.” As far as I can tell, there aren’t any good guys in this show at all. They’re all bad. Of course, this show is raw in a certain way and geared toward a wider audience. But it also contains elements of elevation.
Brosnan: It’s a form of Jacobean drama.
GVM: You mean the style of Jacobean revenge tragedies, which tell of power, betrayal and violence within a family, but in a stylized, theatrically exaggerated way?
Mirren: Yes, and if one appreciates this form of exaggeration, the literary foundation inherent in this language and the dialogues of Jacobean storytelling, then the work is a great pleasure for us actors.
GVM: In your industry, age discrimination has been a frequent topic of debate lately. At least you two seem to be in higher demand today than you were 20 or 30 years ago. Besides “MobLand,” you both appeared together in the crime comedy “The Thursday Murder Club,” Helen Mirren will soon be seen as Patricia Highsmith in the film “A Talent for Murder,” and Brosnan will be in the remake of “Cliffhanger” next year. Why are things going so well for both of you right now – and what have producers overlooked about older actors for decades.
Brosnan: To be honest, I never think about questions like that. (laughs)
Mirren: We just do our thing. But it’s true, there’s a better understanding of female roles today; a lot has fundamentally and dramatically changed in the last 30 years. The understanding of the diversity of human experience has broadened in films in general. This isn’t just about the fact that we’re all getting older and that this process is now a more frequent theme in films.
GVM: Of your films from recent years, a surprisingly large number deal with or touch upon the themes of aging, dementia, illness, and mortality: “The Thursday Murder Club” is set in a retirement home, in “Goodbye June” Helen Mirren portrays a dying mother with cancer, and in “The Great Lilian Hall” Brosnan plays the lover and neighbor of an actress with dementia. A remarkable range of difficult topics that were previously avoided in films.
Brosnan: However, the internet has also contributed to this, and the way we interact with each other today on Instagram and other channels. A completely different arena has been created, a different platform for how we interact with each other.
Mirren: Yes, absolutely. You’re right. And that’s not just about women’s roles or aging. This broadening of perspectives applies to many other topics as well, such as people who are disabled in one way or another. This is most evident when it comes to the issue of skin color. If you watch films from the 50s, 60s, or even the 70s today, you basically only see white people. A lot has changed in more ways than just that. The way humanity is portrayed in films has broadened enormously in the last 20 years.
Regarding the people
Helen Mirren, born on July 26, 1945, in London, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of 19 and has appeared in over 80 films and around 20 television productions since 1967, including “Prime Suspect.” She won an Oscar in 2007 for “The Queen.” Pierce Brosnan, born on May 16, 1953, in Drogheda, Ireland, studied at the Drama Centre London and has acted in over 75 films and more than a dozen television series, including “Remington Steele” and the James Bond films (1995–2002). Both can currently be seen in ten new episodes of the second season of “MobLand” on Paramount+.
