'Slow Horses' stars Gary Oldman and Christopher Chung, along with writer Will Smith and director Saul Metzstein break down the climactic scene where the character of Roddy Ho drives a bus through a house. They joke about convincing Apple to include the scene in the show and figuring out how to pull it off without using any VFX.
Variety Making a Scene presented by HBO
Variety Making a Scene presented by HBO
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00:00It's not every day that you get to see where a bus comes through a house.
00:07So, it's certainly, um, it was certainly unusual.
00:11Woo!
00:11BOOM!
00:12BOOM!
00:12BOOM!
00:13BOOM!
00:13BOOM!
00:14BOOM!
00:14BOOM!
00:15BOOM!
00:15BOOM!
00:16BOOM!
00:16BOOM!
00:17I think it was a first for everybody.
00:20You know, something like that brings the whole production in one spot for something so ridiculous, but fun.
00:26And everyone's like, yeah, it's wonderful.
00:29I brought my family.
00:30Yeah, exactly. Will brought his family.
00:33We had picnic tables.
00:34Picnic tables.
00:48Hi, I'm Will Smith. I'm the writer and executive producer on Slow Horses.
00:51I'm Saul Metzstein. I'm the director of the third season of Slow Horses.
00:56I'm Gary Oldman. I play Jackson Lamb.
00:58Hi, my name's Christopher Chung, and I play Roddy Ho, and this is Variety's Making a Scene.
01:03Have a happy new year.
01:05No thanks, mate.
01:08Lamb's gone off to the house to go and get Standish.
01:10And then Ho's noticed a car that's followed Lamb up the track down to the farmhouse.
01:14And then Lamb sees him coming, and he knows that his bad guy's coming to kill Standish.
01:18And so that's when he retreats and hides, puts Standish in a cupboard, gives Sarah a gun.
01:23He could try and overpower them as they come in the house.
01:25He sets a trap so that the door's going to blow up when they kick it in.
01:30Meanwhile, Ho hears shots after these guys have gone into the house.
01:34And he's like, my God, I've got to do something.
01:35The Ho's old cavalry's on its way.
01:38For reasons best explained by Ho, he decides to start up an old bus and drive it through the side of a house,
01:46by which time Lamb's killed the bad guys.
01:48What I love about this scene is you don't need it for the story, but you need it for the show.
01:55In effect, what Roddy does, he drives that bus through,
01:59and it has no impact on what Lamb is trying to do in terms of rescuing Standish.
02:04It's a moment in the book as well, which we all really wanted to keep,
02:07but it's a lot easier to write it in the book and write it in the script
02:09than it is to actually drive a bus through a house, which I'm sure Saul can talk us through.
02:15Will is slightly underselling it because the bus has an important feature early on in the script,
02:20which is that it's the thing that allows Ho to find out where Standish is getting kept.
02:26And I think one of the nice things is the bus smashing through,
02:29even though, as Will says, it doesn't do anything useful whatsoever,
02:32it actually gives an ending to that story about the bus.
02:36So it has no practical purpose like Ho, but it has a lot of dramatic purpose.
02:43The scene prior to me getting in the hot rod with Lamb, before we walked to my sexy car,
02:52he's just clearly told Shirley and Marcus that they're fired.
02:56And for him, I think it's about owning that he's the best of the bunch.
03:01And this is why we don't let him in the field.
03:04He's so hyped up on Iron Maiden that he's like, yeah,
03:07like he can still hear the music in his head as he drives through.
03:12I love that in his head, that's who he's competing against.
03:15And is that still in there? You do say at one point, you know, what would Alexander do?
03:19You're like, this is my moment. How am I going to save them all?
03:24What would Alexander the Great do?
03:26We didn't use it, but we do have that bit of you driving, shouting, I am war.
03:30Oh, yeah, of course.
03:32I think a lot of the decisions we make, how we cut the thing,
03:36is to do with sort of who you're following and you kind of generally follow Lamb or River,
03:41because in a way, you know, it all revolves around Lamb and his terrible relationship with all these people.
03:46And River's the one who is probably closest to the audience member.
03:50You're sort of watching aghast at whole rather than ever feeling you're the same guy as whole.
03:55So sorry, Chris. He thinks that he's saving the day.
03:59When you finish the episode, he feels like he's really, he's saved Sarah,
04:03he's saved Standish and he's the one who's brought the whole thing to a close because they leave the house.
04:08So everyone else thinks it's pointless. But to him, he's actually the hero.
04:13Well, to Lamb, it's pointless because I've already done that, already saved everyone.
04:18You didn't bring Roddy along for his skills in the field.
04:21You brought him along because he had wheels.
04:23Basically, I needed a driver. It's a ways out.
04:27It's outside in London. So I could have a kip.
04:30I could have a sweep.
04:39So there's two different buses. There's the outside bus, which we rented and didn't smash into anything.
04:45And then there's the bus that we smashed into the set.
04:49Firstly, the interior is a set, of course. The exterior is a location.
04:52But the wall that the bus hits actually is just a flat party wall of a house.
04:57The porch and everything was added on by us.
05:00And then in the inside, we designed the staircase so that there was a landing a few steps up.
05:06Because in a way, to me, the crucial bit of the whole joke is that Lamb and Whore are on the same eyeline, looking at each other.
05:13So we literally designed the stairs so that he can look at the idiot and, you know, give him his killer line.
05:19Can you talk me through your thinking here?
05:22Take out the bad guys.
05:24The bus is actually on rails because we could have got a stuntman to drive a bus into a set.
05:31But again, the important bit was to see that actually Roddy Whore is driving the bus.
05:36I mean, that's the joke. And I think if we had to swap him out, it wouldn't have been as much fun.
05:41Chris, it wasn't scary at all, was it, driving towards the wall?
05:44It wasn't scary at all, actually.
05:46He enjoyed every second of it. I could see it on his face.
05:50I've got it on my phone going through with Gary laughing next to me as it hits.
05:55It was amazing to watch.
05:57I set up a little POV, you know, of my own iPhone inside the bus so I could see what was going on for me, too.
06:03He was taking Polaroids of him in the bus.
06:07I don't know why. I actually have this in my wallet.
06:09I should have pictures of my wife and kids.
06:11I don't know what that says about me or us, Chris.
06:14When we were in prep for Series 3 and we had started discussing that, I am, you know, well, firstly, because it's in the book.
06:20And, you know, I've read the book before we went into Season 3 and think, oh, well, that's something that's probably going to get cut.
06:26It seems like, oh, it's going to be done by CGI. It's going to be too difficult.
06:29But they're never going to, like, you know, do that.
06:32And then when I saw it in the script, I was like, OK.
06:35And then Saul said, oh, no, you're actually going to drive a bus in the house.
06:38I was like, oh, shit. Like, oh, no.
06:41Like, that's going to be like, they're probably going to give me stunt driving lessons or something along the line of that.
06:48And it was getting closer and closer to the day.
06:51I was like, oh, I haven't really done any prep for this.
06:54And then it kind of came out that, no, it's basically like on track.
06:57So you're not going to have any control over where the bus is going.
07:00We planned as well to have some footage of the bus driving from outside.
07:06And we actually shot quite a lot of moments of Chris preparing what he was doing.
07:12But of course, once you get in the edit, you realize you want to set up early on what he's doing.
07:17And then you should have forgotten about it by the time it drives through.
07:20It's more fun, I think, to have the audience be with Lam's point of view and hear the noise and see the lights and think,
07:28what the hell is going on? And then to have it just come through.
07:37A bus really cannot accelerate that fast across a farmyard.
07:43So it would have been one of the most incredibly slow, tedious.
07:46And we're waiting for it. And we're waiting for it. We're waiting for it.
07:49So, yeah. So in the end, that didn't seem worthwhile.
07:53Wasn't there a tank of water as well, like a toilet?
07:55Yeah, the toilet. Clister of some pipe. Yeah, it's pouring down.
08:00It's just the SFX guys who make that stuff really enjoy it.
08:03That's the point. It makes it makes them very happy to smash things up and to fire water and all that sort of thing.
08:10I mean, I think if I remember correctly, Gary, you're on a blue screen, aren't you?
08:14You're not you're not actually there just as the bus goes to hit you.
08:17No, I was there. You were there literally as it came through.
08:20I couldn't I couldn't remember. Yes, I do my own stunts.
08:25It was my Tom Cruise moment. Like I say, it's not every day that you see where a bus comes through a house.
08:37So it's certainly it was certainly unusual.
08:48And your straight man, in a way, is ho behind the wheel of a bus.
08:53Can you talk me through your thinking here? Walk me through your thinking is a dream line.
09:01But it's the ripple of this confusion on your face before you say it is what makes it for me.
09:06And then it's did I get anyone? Yeah. No, we already did that.
09:10Did I get anyone? No, we already did that.
09:17Chris is also a master of never looking like he's saying a funny line as well.
09:21He looks absolutely like, you know, Lam says the disparaging line and Ho just never rises to it.
09:28He just never quite gets it, which is which is a lovely comedy duo that affect that.
09:35And also in the aftermath, there's absolutely no concession from Ho that he's made any kind of mistake.
09:39It's a good excuse for a makeover. He just basks in this like, you know, living in his own world,
09:44taking photos after the fact, like this is something really cool that I've done.
09:48I just drove a bus into this house.
09:50He doesn't actually have any awareness that what he's done is a huge screw up.
09:56Yeah, just another day at the office with Ho. Deliberate distraction using a bus driven by an idiot.
10:05Will actually gives space for Standish to also have a line.
10:09Hello, Roddy. Yeah, the hello Roddy, that wasn't in the script.
10:13One of the ways Will works is he gives a lot of space for the actors if they have a line or some other thing.
10:19So I think Saskia probably thought, well, what is my character doing then?
10:23And instead of forcing a bit in, you just find another way.
10:26So you make the big joke and then you make a secondary joke to get yourself out of the scene.
10:31And actually, I think it's quite sophisticated. It seems very casual.
10:35But Will is alert enough to know when it's worth adding something like that.
10:40I was watching it and just thinking, well, actually,
10:42this is the first time that she's seen Roddy since she was kidnapped and Roddy is there to rescue her.
10:47So it just felt like there should be a moment of connection between them.
10:50And it just felt like underplaying it with a hello, Roddy,
10:52after you've just driven a bus through the house would be fun.
10:56And, you know, Saskia is just amazing.
10:59So you can look at her with a little wave.
11:02I love hello, Roddy.
11:03The great thing about the show, I think, also is that you've got a scene where Lamb is rescuing Standish.
11:11And in a regular show, you would have the guy coming in as he does and all the rest of it.
11:16And he's got the gun and the thing and he's, you know, whatever the kind of,
11:20yeah, we got SWAT team coming in the thing.
11:23We got to get you out quick.
11:24And what the great thing about this show is that Lamb comes in.
11:30The first thing he's interested in is the sandwiches.
11:33Is that ham?
11:35The sandwiches in themselves is quite a complicated story.
11:39Firstly, I'm presented with a whole bunch of different kinds of sandwiches.
11:43It's a very specific sandwich.
11:45A slightly inept country girl would serve somebody and it involves far,
11:50far too much bread and slightly depressing ham.
11:54And so that's a whole decision.
11:55There's a whole meeting about that.
11:57Then later, there's a whole thing about Saskia's understanding of it,
12:02which is that her character wouldn't eat whatever she was presented with by kidnappers
12:09because she is trained as a spy.
12:11She's intelligent.
12:13So then it becomes a whole thing.
12:14The sandwich is not going to be eaten.
12:17So it'll be left there.
12:18And also in the way the girl offers the sandwich to Standish,
12:23makes Standish immediately know the girl's an amateur.
12:27And so again, it's like the bus story,
12:29which is that Lamb eating the sandwich and then going,
12:32how long has this been out for?
12:34It's actually a combination of a whole separate story about a sandwich,
12:38which some people is the main story,
12:42but it's all thought through.
12:44And because I eat a lot in the show,
12:46noodles, Jaffa cakes,
12:49I'm always stuffing my face with crisps or chocolate or whatever it is.
12:54That conversation that Saul was just talking about finds its way to me
13:00because then the prop man, Harry will come and say,
13:04stand by props.
13:05Harry will come and say to me,
13:07all right, sandwiches,
13:10farmhouse.
13:11They're like doorstops.
13:13Yeah, and I go, what?
13:15The thick bread.
13:16Yeah, doorstop.
13:18And then, you know, ham and cheese.
13:20Yeah, ham and cheese.
13:21And so that whole sandwich saga goes through all these different departments.
13:28The story of the sandwich,
13:30Catherine's relationship to the sandwich,
13:33what the sandwich is going to be like because I'm the one who's actually going to put it in my mouth.
13:39And it all comes down to, and it's a moment.
13:44It was a very important moment that when he says,
13:46how long has this been out for?
13:48Because it's an end for that scene.
13:51Because the scene in itself doesn't have a natural ending until Gary's delivery of how long has this been out for?
13:58And of course, it's because it's also so lamb because the thing he cares about is what he's eating.
14:05That's that. And it's just because these things all, when it works well, it all ties together really nicely.
14:10That's, that's, and it's sort of, it's very satisfying in the edit when you realize that that conversation you had six months earlier about a sandwich has ended up in Gary opening a classic line.
14:22MI5 killed their sister over.
14:24Well, I'll not go down easy.
14:25So maybe it was an accident.
14:28How long has that been sitting out?
14:29Can we just praise our designer and, you know, our set dresser and their entire teams?
14:37They built a house in the studio and the detail and the storytelling and all of the props and all of the dressing was, it's just astounding.
14:44It's a level of insanity.
14:46I mean, you sort of, you open cupboards in the set and you find the kind of things people would have in these cupboards of bits of set we're never going to see.
14:54I mean, I think it turned out better than I, than I could have even imagined it.
14:59One of my favorite, I mean, the only moment that, like, I think probably no one will get the POV of is, is when I actually drove the bus through the house and getting to see Gary and Saskia's face.
15:12Because I think the turnaround was on me there.
15:14So that moment for me will live in my mind forever.
15:18Absolute utter shock from both of them.
15:20It's one of the things that was talked about the whole way through the shoot, right, you know, driving the bus into the house.
15:27And it's when everyone kind of heard that was the day that we were going to do it.
15:31Every department was on set that day, all around, just to watch something drive into a structure.
15:38I brought my family.
15:39Yeah, exactly. Will brought his family.
15:42We had picnic table.
15:43Picnic table.
15:45I just think we're very lucky.
15:47We really should thank Apple and production for letting us do it because there are there are plenty of places I think that would have looked to that and gone.
15:54It's going to cost this much.
15:55You don't need it for the story.
15:57It's an indulgence. Cut it.
15:59And they completely get that that is the show and let us do it and love it.
16:05So, so it's great.
16:06It wasn't, it wasn't a fight to do, which is amazing.
16:08We just got asked whether we really wanted to do it.
16:12And every time we kept saying yes.
16:14Yeah, we did. We were asked, are you sure you want to do it?
16:16And we're like, yeah.