He may play a Duke in The Gentlemen, but Theo James isn’t convinced he’ll be acting opposite a Duchess in Season 3.
Asked by Deadline whether the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, had been cast in the recently-confirmed third season of the Netflix show, he responded with a joke and wry smile, saying “Prince Harry?” before appearing to deny the news.
Of course, casting is in the gift of Gentlemen creator and showrunner Guy Ritchie, but James appeared to pour cold water on a role for Markle.
“I think that’s unlikely,” he said. “In reality, we haven’t even started Season 3. I want to concentrate on Season 2 – the thing that’s coming out right now. Season 3 will start to build, but we’ve still got a lot of building to do.”
Watch on Deadline
The casting saga started when it emerged that Prince Harry and Markle, who have been living in California with their children for the past six years, announced that they would be returning to the UK for an extended period of time.
News soon spread that Markle was in talks for a role in a high-profile show in Britain, and Deadline’s Editor-in-Chief, Nellie Andreeva, then scooped that the show in question was The Gentlemen, which shoots in London and various country estates around England.
Deadline’s Dish article noted that no specific role had been identified and talks were mainly hypothetical, coming before official confirmation of Season 3, which followed as the final Edinburgh TV Festival started last week. Rumors have continued to fly and Netflix’s UK scripted boss, Manda Levin, poured petrol on the fire last week when she refused to officially rule it out, saying cryptically: “All bets are off.”
Markle’s reps haven’t said anything at this stage, so it’s one to keep watching. Season 2 of The Gentlemen, which is set in the same world as Ritchie’s 2019 Miramax film begins streaming today on Netflix.
It starts a year after Duke-turned-crime boss Eddie (James) and Susie (Kaya Scodelario) join forces to work together in Bobby’s (Ray Winstone) criminal empire overseas. As they drive to expand their enterprise into new countries, the decisions Bobby is making seem to be increasingly unsound.
Italian plotline
A central plotline for the new season sees Eddie and Susie’s drug enterprise moving into the piazzas of Italy, encountering Italy’s aristocratic “old money” and the Italian mafia. James’ character falls for Benedetta Porcaroli‘s Bella. However, he wasn’t entirely convinced by the Italian job when Ritchie and co-writer Matthew Read handed him scripts.
“I was a little reticent at first when we started discussing the idea of Italy,” he said. “I like the idea of visiting a new place – tonally it gives it a different element cinematically – but my reticence was we’ve seen a lot of Italian mafia, and some of my favorite pieces of screen work are that.
“But in Guy’s realm, and with Bene and all the great Italian actors, there’s an element of class there and there’s a great romanticism to it, and that’s one thing we haven’t seen before: the romance of it.”
Porcaroli later expanded on her character, a countess and the stepdaughter of an Italian criminal. “She’s an Italian countess, and she enters in this world, but she’s not really interested in the business side of things,” said the actress. “She falls in love with Eddie, and she tries to deal with Susie – she’s scared and she’s very emotional in that sense. She’s a human creature who just tries to do her best, fighting between these many feelings that she feels.”
Scodelario, who plays Eddie’s tough business partner Susie, outlined the state of play as Season 2 begins. “They’ve had a very successful year,” she said. “They have expanded the empire really well. They’ve done it abroad – secured all these piazzas – and business is going well, and things are working with, not against her, finally.
“But she is starting to get a sense that he is becoming something that she can’t control anymore and what does that mean for business? What does it mean for her place within this empire? She is definitely starting to feel more insecure about that.”
She also noted that Susie’s criminal background, growing up as Bobby’s daughter, puts her at odds with the world of European aristocracy – and Eddie, who knows the world intimately.
“To me, fundamentally Susie and Eddie never quite works, because they will always have these different lived experiences, and they will always come from different sides of the track – and in places like Britain and Italy, those class systems are still very important,” said Scodelario. “They matter to heritage, to lineage.
“It’s all connected and it isn’t as simple as just choosing to step into that world – you can’t. It’s a space you must be invited into, and Susie is starting to understand that there’ll be certain spaces that she doesn’t belong in.”
James said Season 2 was a chance to better explore the dark path Eddie had chosen, as he goes from a former UN peacekeeper at the start of the show to a ruthless crime boss. Ritchie and James have both likened the story to that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather movies.
“In a way, through Season 1, I wanted him to go further,” said James. “I wanted him to take deeper risks and make bigger mistakes, but Guy’s feeling was of echoes of Corleone in the very first act of The Godfather – a civilian with a moral duty to his family, and he feels like he’s just trying to get out of a fucked-up situation. Ultimately, he learns that he’s quite good at the criminality side, and there’s an elixir to it and an allure.
“The reason to do a second season was there are elements that we hadn’t really fully touched on. We hadn’t plumbed Eddie’s character, and there was an ability to do that, and to look at the moral complications of power. In Season 2, it’s established that there are no apologies.”
Ritchie’s process
Multiple Gentlemen cast members have talked about Ritchie’s on-set process, which often calls on actors to learn new versions of scripts in the moment, or ad-lib to improve a scene. James said this had become ” the DNA of the show,” while Porcaroli noted with a laugh that, “That didn’t even change when we spoke my language.”
Scodelario added: “Within the first day it is terrifying and then slowly as the show goes on, you learn to trust it. You get good at it, and your brain patches in.”
She credited Ritchie’s process for encouraging actors to think on the spot. “The fact that Guy’s open to that is very helpful and really great for us, because we can discover as we go along what works and what doesn’t. We respect each other’s opinions within that scope, and that’s what filmmaking is.”
Vinnie Jones, who plays groundskeeper Geoff, worked with Ritchie on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch along with the upcoming action pic Viva La Madness, and was well aware of the showrunner and director’s quirky style.
“I settled the ship a little bit because I do tell other actors what to expect a little bit so they don’t get so nervous,” he said. “I just go, ‘No, it’s all right, it happens to everyone.’ If you are on the set and all of a sudden the director comes on feeding you lines, you could panic. And so we sort of say, ‘Don’t worry – this is how it works.’ It’s just Guy thinking on the spur of the moment. He just sees it and it comes to him.”
Jones recalled this was exactly how the famous “It’s been emotional” line from his character Big Chris in Lock, Stock came about.
“You’ve got to do it at the spur of the moment, and that’s why it’s inspirational that he can do it,” said Jones. “With me and Lock, Stock he just said, ‘What’s that thing you say when you leave?’ Well, ‘It’s been emotional’ has become one of the British icon sayings of movie history, which is fantastic. But I can tell you now, that was at four in the morning, and we were just going home… It was the last scene, and he just for some reason said, ‘What’s that thing you say?’”
Season 2 of The Gentlemen, which is produced by ITV Studios-owned Moonage Pictures and Miramax Television, launches today on Netflix.
