Tom Hiddleston, Vol. VII

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1:07Is it Avengers Doomsday the Musical?

1:12Never say never. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Hey guys, it's Josh. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Today on the show, it's Tom Hiddle. He is back on the show and in the Night Manager, season two on Prime Video. Check it out and check out this amazing conversation taped live at the 90 Second Street Y, our home for live events in New York City. So happy to start off the year just right with a perfect guest, perfect show, perfect audience. Tom is so eloquent. As I say in this conversation, he is as eloquent as they come talking about his career, about acting, about what motivates him.

1:57It seems like he has an encyclopedic knowledge and memory of lines, of passages, that is on full display in this very emotional, sweet, fun night at 92nd Street Y. So I know you guys are going to enjoy it. As always, remember, patreon.com slash happy say I confused. That is your home for all things Happy Say I Confused. Early access, merch, you can ask guests questions, early access to our live events, of which we're going to be doing a lot this year. Check Check it out, patreon.com slash happy, sad, confused. Okay, I'm not going to give much more preamble except to say Tom Hiddleston always delivers on screen and in podcasts.

2:36This is his seventh time on Happy, Sad, Confused. He is, he's a gem. Enough said. And my thanks to the amazing crowd that came out in New York City, to 92nd Street Y. It's going to be another great year of live events. And just to remind you guys again, Night Manager Season 2, Prime Video. Check it out. I've watched the whole season. It's fantastic. It took about 10 years to get the second season the way it was worth it. You'll enjoy it, and you'll enjoy this conversation. Here you go. Hi, everybody. How's it going? Welcome, everybody. My name's Josh Horowitz. Welcome to a live taping of Happy Second Fuse, the first one of 2026.

3:15Thank you for coming, guys.

3:20I can't think of a better guest to kick off the new year than the one and only Tom Hiddleston. Are you ready to bring him out? What can I say about Tom Hiddleston? He is one of our greats of stage and screen. He is as eloquent as he is talented. Last year was his year of dancing on screen. And on stage, I should say, too. Yes, Much Ado About Nothing and Life of Chuck. If you haven't seen Life of Chuck by now, check it out. Amazing. And this year is a year where we get to return to some favorite characters of his. Later on in the year we're going to get to see Loki back in Avengers Doomsday. We're very excited about that.

4:01But we also have to give it up for the one and only Jonathan Pine. Ten years since the Night Manager, of course, out of the brain of the late, great Jean Le Carre, we finally have a second season and it is worth the wait. This new one is fantastic. I've been privileged enough to see all the episodes. You are going to love it. It debuts. Don't be jealous. It's okay. You'll see it very soon. It debuts on Prime Video on January 11th. Without any further ado, let's dive right in with the one and only Tom Hiddleston, everybody!

4:49Good evening, everybody. Happy New Year. Welcome back, Tom. Good to see you, buddy. Thank you very much. It's lovely to see you. How were the holidays? Have you been binging? Did you watch Stranger Things? Heated Rivalry? What did you consume your... I had to mention it, sorry. Not so much. I saw a couple of movies. I think we were just talking about... I saw F1, which I enjoyed enormously. I thought it was fantastic. it was kind of bowled over by the cinematography actually, really brilliant and The Smashing Machine, which I loved and was really surprised by I thought it was a very tender quiet film with a very tender, quiet performance from Dwayne Johnson It's amazing to see somebody like that take risks he doesn't have to do that kind of thing he can do the blockbusters till the end of time It was a wonderful movie I'm trying to think of what else Do you have a holiday tradition film?

5:51Is it like Elf? Is it the holiday? What's the ultimate holiday tradition film for you? Like Die Hard. Yeah.

6:06Canonically a Christmas movie. Let's end that debate right now. It is a Christmas movie. Of course. It closes with Let It Snow. It's a Christmas movie. It's up there. It shares the top 10 Christmas movie number one slot with a Muppet Christmas Carol

6:27It's hard to beat Michael Caine and a lot of Muppets You just cannot use like the lamb not the rat like the lamb not the rat It's classic. It's classic Yeah, have you wait were you in a Muppet movie? Did you share some time with a Muppet at all? That's a deep cut Josh. Right? I know you're... Muppets Most Wanted. I thought so. A quite extraordinary day on set. I shared the screen with Tina Fey, the great Tina Fey, Danny Trejo, Jermaine Clement, Ray Leota, and Kermit the Frog.

7:12That's like that old SNL bit, the Jeopardy, who are five people that have never been in my kitchen. Amazing. Well, we've run out of time. We can't talk about the night manager. We're just talking about Muppets. Let's talk about the night manager. Congratulations, man. I speak for everybody here. We love this series. We're so thrilled it is back. It took a minute. It took more than a minute. It took a 10-year minute. Why the... I mean, you want to get it right, but in a nutshell, why do you think it took this long? Because there was a will right from the beginning. There was a will. So it's a really interesting story, actually, which is we made the first one knowing full well that John le Carre had written a novel called The Night Manager in 1993, and he had granted his consent for us to adapt it.

8:03And it was clear that we were We're going to adapt the novel and it will be complete. And as we were making it, there were no plans to develop a second season. And we opened the Night Manager at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016 in February. And it was an extraordinary night. It was the first time we had presented anything to a viewing public who were not part of the creation of the show. And all of us were there. Susanna Beer, the director, Hugh Laurie, Elizabeth Debicki, Olivia Colman, Stephen Garrett, Simon Cornwell, Stephen Cornwell, who were Le Carre's sons, who produced The Night Manager, and Le Carre himself.

8:47And we went back to the hotel afterwards, excited and thrilled with how it had been received. And we sat down, and Le Carre himself leant across the table with a twinkle in his eye and said, perhaps we might make some more. And we all thought, okay. But there's no more novel. There's no second book. And so there began a process of beginning to roll our sleeves up and think about how we might go about it. And he had many ideas. And what was complex about it was that every time the world events were moving faster than the process of development. And I always felt that, we all felt the night manager was resonant with the contemporary world, that you could feel that the world that we all live in was the world they inhabit.

9:42And actually what happened is we went through the pandemic. And David Cornwell, John Le Carre, David Cornwell is his real name. He and his wife got rather ill and sadly died in 2020. but they had community, Le Carre had communicated his profound trust in his sons and a committed belief that there should be more night manager before he died. And actually I was at the memorial service, an extraordinary service in his remembrance, and his son Simon and Stephen, at that, it felt completely appropriate. They said, you know, dad loved the show and he would love us to do more, so let's keep talking. And it was an amazing way to, for him, a legacy for him to leave all of us, I suppose.

10:39A tiny part of his extraordinary legacy. Anyway, cut to, not long after, David Farr, our great screenwriter, had a dream, genuinely. And it was a dream where there was an image of a black car driving through a remote hillside towards a young boy. And it was basically a dream about Teddy, Teddy Dos Santos, played by the great Diego Calvo. And where he places himself in the story, and he wrote to Simon and Steven and said, I've had this idea, and it's about going back to Columbia, which is where the novel is set. and he wrote to me and we started to think about where this became a really exciting idea and we started to develop it and he went away and worked on it and then, you know, it takes time to develop six hours of series and to cut a long story short we knew we wanted to meet the bar and clear it and we set a high standard for ourselves And if we're going to go again, it had to be better.

11:47It had to be bigger, braver, bolder, deeper. We had to risk more. It had to cost more. And in terms of spirit, you know. Tom saying his fee went up all lots. No, I get it. And I can be not the first, but the first at least here on stage to say, you have succeeded. The show is fantastic. It is. Thank you. And the good news is we'll get to this, to tease this, but you're going to make more. I'm not going to have to wait. 10 more years for a third season. No, no, that's going to come sooner. So.

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15:52You allude to this. Look, it is grounded in a different time. Ten years have passed. Who has changed more in the last ten years, Jonathan Pine or Tom Hiddleston, would you say? Oh, I don't know. Probably Tom Hiddleston, I would think. But then, that's the great thing about the 10 years, is the more we realized it would be 10 years, the more we lent into it. There have been 10 extraordinarily complex years in the world. We've all been through them. and we have you know there's been so much has happened which you know the world in some senses is more fragmented and uncertain or perhaps that's just a point of view but there have been so many political changes, cultural changes environmental changes untold international conflict a pandemic and we kept imagining if you work at the center of the intelligence community, those 10 years are going to have been complex.

16:50And I love the idea that Jonathan Pine, at the end of season one, he's been, a fire has been ignited in his heart by Angela Burr, played by Olivia Colman. And that fire will not be extinguished until the end of his lifetime. And he's seen behind the curtain. He's a field agent now for the intelligence services for MI6. And there's no going back. And so there's a desire to understand the world as it really is, not the world as it appears to be. And there's that amazing line, a man's life expands in direct proportion to how much truth he can stand. And Pine wants to know the truth. And that's a great thing I admire about him, which is many of us probably would be happy not knowing all the truth.

17:43Wistful ignorance sometimes. Yeah. And he just wants to understand the world. And so the fact that it's been 10 years, he's older, he's wiser, he's curious, he's got this sharp desire, a keen curiosity to understand. But also trauma. I believe it. Trauma from the first season. They were that experience. He nearly died several times. People he trusted and loved died and nearly died. a woman he loved when it was in extreme danger. Another woman died. He had to kill two people to defend the cause. And these are traumatic events and those traumas haunt his nightmares. Richard Roper haunts his nightmares, literally.

18:31And so that was an interesting psychological starting point is to see this man who's got more scars on the inside, more scars on the outside, with greater courage, greater competence and more trauma, more vulnerability. And that tension between his competence and courage and his vulnerability, really. Georgie Banks-Davis, our amazing director, and I used to talk about, at the end of season one, Richard Roper, played by the great Hugh Laurie, is delivered to his captors. The dragon has been slain.

19:10But the dragon slayer can't go back. and a dragon slayer is only defined by the presence of dragons. And in a way, Pine needs the dragon. Otherwise, who is he? And what a fascinating character, psychologically, to play. It's actually, I think, he feels most alive when he's at his most peril, in the most peril, in the most danger, in the most jeopardy. The closer his feet are to the fire, the more alive he feels, which is an interesting human characteristic and I'm not sure it's one we all share. I think a lot of us in danger will be like, get me out of here now. And I think he feels, so I find him fascinating.

19:54I love the character. I love and admire his moral courage. I want to be honest about what the night manager is about, really, it's about arms dealing and always was and that Roper is selling standard and chemical weapons under the counter to the highest bidder and profiting in the millions and the billions and lives a lovely, charmed life that is paid for in blood and death. And Le Carre called him the worst man in the world. Of course, he's Hugh Laurie, so he's the most charming man in the world. Helps, yeah. But that's the pleasure of him, is that you sort of love Roper, And yet, you're reminded occasionally of his cynicism, and Pine must resist it.

20:44Right. And there's still this sense of Pine has this extraordinary capacity for sacrifice and risk at great personal cost because he believes that people should not make money from the bloodshed of innocent children. and you know when you put it like that you think well that's an easy thing to stand for but when you're in so deep as deep as he is so I find his courage extraordinary and his curiosity inspiring and yet I know I probably couldn't do it. I love hearing about you talked about having a bit of relationship with the late Jean Le Carre I mean I grew up my dad was a huge Le Carre fan so I have such fondness for everything related to him, but you've had this experience throughout your career where the source author validates your work in some ways.

21:39Recently, Stephen King, who often doesn't come out and show up at a premiere, showed up for Life of Chuck. I would imagine you interacted a bit over the years with the late Stan Lee. These are bizarre but amazing pinch-me circumstances, I would imagine. Yeah, I am so, as you say them, it's like, I can't believe they happened. Did you share much time with Stan at all over the years? Yeah, I remember he turned up, I met him for the first time at the premiere of Thor in 2011. And he was such a gentleman, so kind, so generous, incredibly proud. I think he was so generous about what we created and yet it was his creation So yeah, really remarkable to have that

22:40Open-hearted I Guess generosity and hospitality like of course, you know Play look you play you know play Loki and this is you know He loved what we did and what Chris Hemsworth had done and And yeah, to be sitting next to Stephen King at the world premiere of The Life of Chuck was completely surreal. Mark Hamill was there too. That was also insane. Yeah, I was like, what is going on? No, it's amazing to have their blessing. And Le Carre was really, it was extraordinary. It was very meaningful to me that he approved of what we had done. it was really all I cared about I think I've told this story before but before we started making the first season there was a dinner we had with him and we were all about to go away to Morocco where we shot a lot of the first season actually I hadn't been sat next to him at the end of it, sort of around tea and coffee time I went up to him and pulled up a chair and said David, as I said his name is David Cornwell is there anything you would like me to know before I start and he said, and lent him with this kind of conspiratorial mischief, of course, Tom, by now you will have guessed, Jonathan Pine is me.

24:04And now he must be you. But there was an exhortation to take it, own it, possess it, pour yourself into him with all your passion, all your commitment, and all your vulnerability, all of your curiosity, all your courage, he's yours now. And I took that and ran with it. And then when I saw him afterwards, to know that he had loved it, that he approved of what we've made, was major. And I used to run into him. It was an amazing thing. We lived not far from each other in London. I used to run into him in the local park training my puppy. You know, he was on his morning constitutional and I would run into and he would be doing his morning walk and I'd be trying to teach my dog how to sit and heal and, you know, work on the recall.

24:57And we would have these extraordinary conversations about world events. I get these hot takes from John Le Carre. It's a perk of the job, to say the least. Yeah. I have a silly but real question related to taking on this role way back when and I've and I've joked with you I poked with you as I have with many actors about the whole James Bond of it all But like when you take on a role like this and it's offered to you Do you think about like oh wait? Is this gonna help or hurt my James Bond chances back then because? Because that's real isn't it? I mean that I mean you were on that list you store on those lists like Honestly at honestly at the time I was I I just I I just read the script and I was like, I've never played a part like this before.

25:44And it was so, I just knew, it sounds crazy, but I was like, I know how to do this. And it's interesting because it's, at that time in my life, I had done a lot of, I hadn't done much contemporary work. As in, I hadn't done lots of stories set in the contemporary world and a lot of period, a lot of elevated genre stuff and the fact that this was contemporary and was a thriller, I know of course there's the comparisons but it was I just understood it I thought this is so I think it was the character himself the tension between his exterior and his interior that as presented to me in that first episode of the first season on the surface, immaculate, charming, collected, capable, calm.

26:44Like all great hoteliers, a great actor. So think about it next time you're staying in a hotel. But also he had been a British soldier in the army.

26:59So there's this tension between on the exterior, there's the still water, a kind of effortlessness, an immaculate, pristine face, and inside a heart that's on fire with sort of moral courage and private vulnerability and solitude and and pain and trauma. You know, the way Le Carre described him was, he was the son of a cancer-ridden German beauty and a British sergeant killed in one of his country's many post-colonial wars. A graduate of a rainy archipelago of orphanages, foster homes, and cadet units. A sometime army wolf child with an even rainier unit in Northern Ireland. a caterer, chef, hotelier, itinerant, collector of other people's languages, perpetual escapee from emotional entanglement, self-exiled creature of the night, and sailor without a destination.

28:13Who doesn't want to play that guy?