This is how Guy Pearce became Kim Philby, the great traitor of the 20th century

Kim Philby moved like a fish to water among the British upper class.

Elegant, charismatic, seductive.

He was a member of MI6, headed the UK's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union and became the liaison between the British embassy and the American CIA's forerunner agency.

But for decades, Philby had also been passing precious information to the Soviet enemy.

Later it was learned that even Stalin entrusted him with the mission of assassinating Francisco Franco.

In the midst of the Cold War, his work was essential, and the discovery that Philby had been a double agent with strong communist beliefs was a blow that created a serious crisis in British intelligence.

His life has been the meat of stories halfway between reality and fiction.

which Movistar Plus+ opens on April 13.

“Philby is a very difficult character to describe.

On the surface, he is extremely charming, attractive, relaxed, and with a very peculiar warmth.

But looking at this story, and knowing the story, it is clear that there was much more”, said Guy Pearce (Ely, United Kingdom, 55 years old) in a video call interview with EL PAÍS at the end of November.

Pearce puts Philby's face and gives the reply to Damian Lewis, who plays Nicholas Elliott, another prominent agent of the British intelligence service who is assigned to keep a close eye on his friend and extract a confession from him.

However, in the series Elliott is the one being interrogated after a meeting between the two spies in Beirut ends with Philby absconding to Moscow and Elliott's loyalty comes under suspicion.

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“I think anyone who has been a spy or a double agent or has been involved in espionage should be considered fickle to say the least.

What made Kim Philby able to not only go as far as he did and work as well as he did is that he was able to keep a good number of balls in the air and offer one thing to one person while offering another to another. another person.

You could say he was exceptionally hypocritical, but I suppose that's the spy's duty, to show up in one part of the world pretending to be one thing and show up in another part of the world pretending to be another.

It's hard to describe someone like Philby, unless you're in his head,” continues the actor, offering lengthy, thoughtful responses about a complex role that he speaks passionately about.

Guy Pearce, in an image from 'A spy among friends'.

Pearce knew some of the history before embarking on the series.

He knew the so-called Cambridge Five, five British spies recruited by the Soviet Union who leaked information from World War II to the 1950s and 1960s.

In that group are, in addition to Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Donald Maclean, whom Pearce mentions in the interview.

He also knew that, in the fifties, Philby had come out of the interrogations he was subjected to when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected.

“The audacity of this man was extraordinary.

As an actor I think of the adrenaline, the emotion that must exist in such a life.

He believed in communism and was contemptuous of the British ruling class of which he was a part.

He had a dual personality.

He did not want to give up certain elements of the British class system even when he moved to Russia from 1963, and at the same time felt that the world would be a better place if it were governed by communism.

It's fascinating, really fascinating."

Actor and character are nothing alike, at least according to Guy Pearce.

“He was someone with charisma, a scholar, and he handled himself very well in a room full of people.

I'm not like that at all, I feel anxiety in front of a group of people.

Interpreting him convincingly was a challenge for me, someone with so many edges, that access that he achieved to any place, that self-confidence… ”.

The interpreter also reflects on the multiple betrayal of his character, with a professional and a personal side that caused a lot of pain to those who believed they were his friends.

“But don't forget that there were people who died because of what he did.

It was a betrayal on many levels.

Our series delves into the idea that the British ruling class functions in a way that they think they don't have to question themselves."

And he continues:

“The humiliation that Philby must have caused in the ranks of the intelligence services pales in comparison to the people who died because of him.

But I think if you asked someone in MI6 what was worse, they'd probably say the humiliation it caused them.

They would have preferred to take Philby to a country house with his family and have him say nothing ever more than expose the MI6 vulnerability this man demonstrated."

Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce, as Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby, in 'A Spy Among Friends'.

Damian Lewis carries a good part of the weight of the series in the role of the betrayed friendly spy and through his interrogation the plot

develops, with

Lewis shot the series a few weeks after his wife, the also actress Helen McCrory, died.

“I worked with his wife 20 years ago on

”Pearce recalls.

“I went into this shoot being very aware of what it was going to mean for him, and he proved to be much more resilient and much more positive than I thought he would be.

Damian is a tremendously intelligent guy, very sensitive.

I told him that I'd known Helen years ago and gave him my condolences, and he told me that he didn't want to wallow in it while we were doing our job and that Helen had made it very clear to him that if she died, she wanted him to carry on with this job because It was a very good script and it was worth doing.”

What is it about spy stories that fascinates so much?

Guy Pearce is intrigued by the fact that someone can pretend to be someone else when they really belong to someone else.

“They risk their lives, spies enter another country and another culture and political climate and infiltrate for information with their lives at risk.

When we see these stories we are fascinated because it seems to us that these people are like any other, but there is something mythical and something intriguing about their world that draws us to it.

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