The actor Saskia Reeves was born in London in 1961; her father Peter Reeves was an actor, singer and lyricist. Since her 1990 film debut in Antonia and Jane, opposite Imelda Staunton, she has worked extensively on stage and screen. Her television credits include Luther, Spooks, Wolf Hall and the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert’s Dune. This month she stars in both the fourth series of the fabulously seedy London spy drama Slow Horses on AppleTV+, in which she plays office administrator and recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish, and a film adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir of alcoholism and redemption, The Outrun, with Saoirse Ronan.
I can’t remember a drama for which the phrase “eagerly awaited fourth series” feels more honestly appropriate than Slow Horses. Did you imagine it would be such a global hit?
No, we got together in 2020 and then we had to deal with lockdown. I kept telling myself: don’t worry, they are going to make this happen, because Gary Oldman’s in it, and Kristin Scott Thomas is in it. They weren’t going to let that go.
Did you know Mick Herron’s novels [on which the series is based]?
No, I read the first one over a weekend with the scripts that were sent. And I was just so delighted to have the chance to play a woman of a certain age, and to have the chance to show her in all her colours. I feel quite passionate about that.
There’s a wonderful sense of all of you as actors, like the world-weary characters you play, having seen it all before. Is that how it feels?
It is. I mean where else could you find yourself in a taxi between Jonathan Pryce and Gary Oldman? Gary likes to think of it as the perfect rep company. And it’s true. You know, I don’t know what it’s like to be in MI5, but I know a bit about, say, how it might feel to be someone in a job who’s a bit long in the tooth; someone for whom the career hasn’t always gone the way they wanted it to…
It’s also a memorable satire of British institutions in the dog days of the last government. That sense of behind-the-scenes decay and paranoia – and, in the case of Gary’s character, Jackson Lamb, flatulence. Were you conscious of the grim political world seeping in?
I don’t think it’s seeping – it’s all very much there in the writing. I think there’s a familiarity from when we watch the news, but also that sense of things never working. Like a few months ago when Microsoft went down, and suddenly everybody was like, what happens now?
Beginning with your starring role in David Nicholls’s TV series Us, and now also your beautifully judged performance as the mother of Saoirse Ronan’s character in The Outrun, you seem to be having a great career moment. You are no doubt experienced enough to know to seize such moments?
I think it’s important as you get older to put yourself slightly outside your comfort zone as often as possible, and to keep doing that. David Bowie described it well: when you are floating a bit, when your feet can’t quite touch the bottom, that’s when you are at your most creative.
I was reading an obituary of your father, Peter Reeves, in The Stage, from last year. He had a long stage career – he starred in the hit musical comedy revue Pieces of Eight alongside Kenneth Williams and collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber – inevitably not always as successful as he hoped. Was he an inspiration to you?
Yes, very much. But he didn’t encourage me when I was younger; it was my mum who was like, “Why don’t you and your sister try this improvisation workshop?” Whereas I remember my dad saying to me once, “There are twice as many roles for men as there are women, and there are twice as many actresses as there are actors. You do the maths.”
Did you grow up watching him on stage?
Yes, I remember when he was in the original production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I loved to go backstage; I must have been about 12, staring at these beautiful boys. He took me to see everything; kabuki at Sadler’s Wells, Marcel Marceau, Jacques Tati films. It was part of our fabric. But I knew it was going to be tough. On the wall of his study was a little [motto]: “You may have talent, you may have luck, but what you need is perseverance.”
He must have been proud of how things turned out?
He was. There was a time he used to give me lots of notes after shows. “You’ve got to find your light, Saskia. You’re not finding your light.” But I remember he saw me in the play Separation at the Hampstead theatre [in 1987] with David Suchet, which was a big success for me. And I met him in the bar as usual afterwards, waiting for his comments. And he looked at me and said, very gently, “I don’t know how you did that. I have nothing to say.”
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You were saying there were times you hadn’t expected there to be such substantial roles for you in your 60s. Streaming series like Slow Horses must have helped in that regard?
It’s getting better. It’s not there yet, because, you know, art reflects society. Which is why it’s good to have the opportunity to play a woman who is struggling to have her voice heard, who disappears into the fabric of the building because her hair is grey, who isn’t regarded as her sexual self any more – and yet show her to be someone vital and important.
You and Gary Oldman make a terrific double act – like an old married couple, just about hanging in there despite everything. What is it like to be the straight woman to Jackson Lamb’s wild excesses of behaviour?
I’ve wanted to work with Gary for years. He was important to me as I was developing as an actor, seeing him always being so original and different. So it’s fantastic fun. And, of course, [my character] Catherine is very quick-witted. She’s no slouch. She can give as good as she gets, and he knows that. And she has got a sense of humour. If she only allowed herself to chill out a bit and show it…