Nick Blood on his two latest very different roles, and the qualities he thinks have made him successful at what he does
Nick wears: denim jacket and jeans by Applied Art Forms; shirt by ISTO.; and shoes by Grenson. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber.
There was a time when Nick Blood thought he may be forced to sport an 80s ’tache on his wedding day. In the event he was clean shaven. “Thank God,” he laughs, “or there would’ve been a lot of Photoshop going on.” The uncharacteristic facial hair was thanks to his part in Joan, which is out this month.
The drama, written by Anna Symon for ITVX, is based on the memoirs of the notorious jewel thief Joan Hannington, who is played by Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner. It tells the story of a fiery and uncompromising woman in her 20s, a devoted mother who is trapped in a disastrous marriage with a violent criminal named Gary (played by Nick). When Gary goes on the run, Joan seizes the opportunity to create a new life for herself and her six-year-old daughter. “Through a guy that she met, who she started a romantic affair with, she got dragged into theft,” Nick explains. “She made and lost a hell of a lot of money. It’s quite an insane story really. Joan is quite a character in real life – most of the cast have met her.”
Nick describes his character Gary as probably one of the nastiest he has ever played. “I feel like I tend to get the nice guy, or the complete opposite end of the spectrum, just a complete bastard. This guy is… well, I’d probably use stronger language than that to describe him. And the true-life version of him, you know joking aside, the true-life version of him is probably even worse.”
Nick wears: jacket by Wax London. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber.
There’s a certain attraction to playing the bad guy, Nick believes. “I think with acting, the roles are more accessible where there are stronger intentions, and where there are more extremes to play,” he explains. “And in that character particularly, it was really satisfying to explore that. I’m very grateful to Richard Laxton, the director, because, you know, it is a role I don’t think I would ordinarily be seen for. I don’t think it’s what people immediately think when they see me, or you know, meet me – thank God – but he obviously has faith in me, and I hope I repaid that faith… .”
Beyond the opportunity to flex his acting muscles, an unlikely appeal was in fact that facial hair, or, more accurately, the costumes and sets. “The moustache was the main thing for me!” he laughs. “The whole aesthetic of it, because it is set in the 80s, so, you know, the costumes were brilliant. I love Gary’s vibe – you’ve got that nod to the 80s kind of flashiness, but also a little bit of the football casual look… I had sort of a Begbie from Trainspotting kind of vibe. The costumes and everything were brilliant, the guys did an amazing job on costumes. Although I did have to go around with the moustache for ages. Thankfully I had enough time off for the wedding that I could shave it off and grow it back!”
It was while filming this that Nick’s role in The Day of the Jackal, which will be coming to Sky Atlantic next month, came about. “I literally jumped straight from Joan to filming that out in Budapest,” he recalls. The drama, the biggest ever selling series to the global market from NBC and Peacock, is a reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s famous spy thriller novel and Universal Pictures’ award-winning 1973 film of the same name. Boldly updated and set in the present day, the series is written and adapted by Ronan Bennett, creator and writer of the critically acclaimed Top Boy, and directed by Brian Kirk, who is known for his work on Game of Thrones, Luther and Boardwalk Empire. It follows an underground group intent on eliminating a high-profile target (given the modern-day setting, this is not Charles de Gaulle as in the original, that’s as much as we know). When numerous attempts on his life fail, they resort to hiring the infamous hit man known as ‘the Jackal’.
Nick wears, Top: trousers and polo shirt by Wax London, Bottom: polo shirt by Sebago; and trousers by Oliver Spencer. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber.
“You’ve got Eddie Redmayne playing the Jackal,” Nick tells me. “It is just perfect casting for that role – as soon as you know who is doing it, you feel, oh yeah, you can completely see him in that role. He looks great in it as well; again, you know, the costume and the styling of this one is fantastic. There’s a little bit of a nod to the original, and you know, Eddie is not a bad looking guy, so he wears it very well! I am alongside Lashana Lynch, who plays Bianca, the British intelligence officer tasked with chasing down the Jackal. I’m kind of hired help for MI6, I work in police protection, Vince is my character’s name.”
Embodying this role was an equally appealing challenge, he tells me. “When it comes to character, I find as soon as there are spies or police, it can start to get very generic,” he explains. “I think things can get a little bit po-faced and lose the humanity. I often watch things and find myself going, well I don’t believe I would bump into that person on the street. It feels like they live in a slightly other world. In certain films or TV shows that’s a stylistic choice and is exactly what you want: a kind of a hyper reality version. But my intention with Vince was just to make him more human, and more relatable. And I was very fortunate with the creative team – the writers, producers, directors – that they gave us quite a bit of leeway to experiment and try different things out. At times try different lines out, and really kind of contribute to that creative process. We made sure that while you’re telling this incredibly exciting, heightened story of spies and assassins and so on, you are also then keeping it real and keeping it very human. That was kind of the high goal that I was aiming for, and you know, people will have to judge for themselves whether I succeeded… .”
In classic The Day of the Jackal style, Redmayne’s hitman rocks up in multiple European cities throughout the course of the series. Most of the filming took place in Budapest, though. “We were there on and off for six months,” Nick explains. “We did some stuff in London, we also shot in Croatia… and then some of the guys shot in Spain as well. When we were out in Croatia it was just at the end of the summer season. Pretty much everything was closed, but the weather was still nice… I’d jump into this freezing cold pool every morning or go down to the beach and have a little swim in an ice-cold ocean to get me started for the day. And then Budapest is just a stunning city. I was surprised to find that it’s a real hub for the film and TV industry. On our first weekend there I saw a friend that I hadn’t seen for maybe six or seven years, who lives out in LA, and we were in this bar, and she was saying hello to various different people, and I asked, ‘Oh are they on the film that you’re shooting?’ And she was like, ‘Oh no, they’re shooting this TV series, and they’re on that film…’.”
Nick wears: cardigan by Wax London; denim shirt and jeans by ISTO.; t-shirt by Wrangler; and necklace by CRAFTD London. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber
Travel is, Nick admits, one of the “great privileges” of his work. “I love it – getting to experience different places and different cities. And just getting to explore. Budapest has all these ancient baths and stuff, you have a day off and you get to go and chill in these incredible spas. That was lovely. You’ve got this incredible architecture and great places to eat, really good places to go out. One of the cool things there was that we got to see it in almost all the seasons really – you know, we were there and it was boiling hot in summer, and got see it through the autumn into winter, and then the springtime was starting to creep in, so that was an experience as well. When I picture Budapest, I don’t actually think of it as a summer destination, but it was roasting hot to start with. They have got a cool water park on Margaret Island, so I was enjoying that… I mean, it sounds like I wasn’t really working, doesn’t it! But it’s all about work-life balance – the yin and yang,” he grins.
This balance is just one of the reasons why he loves his work. “Mostly, I’m just very grateful that I get to do something that is my hobby and that I love as a job,” he tells me. “You have to stop and remind yourself, maybe when you didn’t get the role that you wanted, or you know things aren’t going exactly how you planned, how fortunate you are. You’ve kind of got to touch wood and thank your lucky stars that you get to do your passion as a job.”
Nick wears: denim jacket and jeans by Applied Art Forms; shirt by ISTO.; and shoes by Grenson. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber.
How did Nick come to be doing this? I ask. He remembers joining a youth drama group and loving hearing the audience’s reaction to his first performance. “I think probably people were laughing at us, rather than with us, but that response from the audience, it just set something off in me, and I knew from that moment forth that it was just something I wanted to do,” he recalls. “I was really lucky that at that time, there’s a guy called Paul Megram, who’s actually a magician by trade, he’s part of the Magic Circle, he took over that drama group, and he’s probably the best acting teacher I have ever had. We rarely ever used scripts, it was all improvising and devising, and it was just my obsession really from that age.”
That said, acting was not something he believed he could ever do as anything other than a hobby. “No one I knew went to drama school, you know, I wasn’t from a background where it was really a viable career path. That was a sort of fantasy life – not that my parents didn’t always support me and encourage me, but it took me a little while to work out how to do it. When I was at university, I met somebody that was going to the ITV Television Workshop in Bristol, and I auditioned for that and got in, and that was when I met people who were serious about acting and wanted to do this professionally, and some of them wanted to go to drama school. So that’s when I discovered the path that I could go down… I applied for drama school, and it all went from there, so I am very grateful for those little moments.” Perhaps best known for the seven seasons he spent in Marvel’s hugely successful TV franchise Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. playing one of the show’s leads, Lance Hunter, Nick’s other screen credits include Gus Howard (father of Sydney Sweeney’s character Cassie) in the hit HBO, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series Euphoria, Sturges in the BAFTA nominated Apple TV series Slow Horses, and Thomas in Close to Me (Channel 4/AMC), he also appeared in Danny Boyle’s Babylon (Channel 4), and the BAFTA and RTS award-winning Misfits (E4). “I’ve been one of the lucky few – from maybe six months out of drama school, I’ve not had to do any other job – lots of actors would recognise how much for privilege that is,” he says, talking about his career.
Nick wears: denim jacket and jeans by Applied Art Forms; shirt by ISTO.; and shoes by Grenson. Grooming: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes Management using Curlsmith and Daimon Barber.
So, what qualities does he think have made him successful at what he does? “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that before…” he ponders. “I mean, probably the best people to ask would be the directors I have worked with. But I guess the main thing is that I find people endlessly compelling. I just find people fascinating, and I think that is a big help. I love understanding people, I love chatting to people, and just figuring out how they came to be who they are. I could spend hours talking about something someone did, or they said, and why. I find people fascinating and hilarious. So often we’re all kind of faking things to a certain degree. And the ironic thing is that everybody else knows that we are doing that. I heard a quote, and I can’t remember who it is attributed to, but it was something like ‘the one thing we have in common is that none of us feel we have anything in common’. We all kind of feel that we’re the outlier, and that’s what unites us all.”
Since he spends so long studying everybody else, I think it only fair that he reveals a little about himself. So, what makes Nick, Nick, then? “Well, my guilty pleasure is buying clothes. I’m terrible. Jackets particularly, jackets and trainers. I’ve got so many jackets!” And what keeps him awake at night? “Everything, honestly. Last night I had the worst night’s sleep because we’re currently under construction here, so last night the thing keeping me awake was how I might arrange the loft space. If I had one wish, it would be just to sleep. My wife is the exact opposite of me – she can just sleep anywhere; she just closes her eyes, and she sleeps. And I’m there and my brain just whirs and whirs and whirs. So, I would say absolutely everything, but at the moment it is how to arrange a loft space. The perfect shelving units for a loft.” That’ll be for storing all those jackets and trainers, I expect.
