As part of Variety’s “Making a Scene,” presented by HBO, the “Slow Horses” cast and crew, including Gary Oldman, Christopher Chung, director Saul Metzstein, and writer and executive producer Will Smith, broke down the show’s dramatic scene in which beloved character Roddy Ho (Chung) drives a bus through a house.
In fact, witnessing Chung crash this bus through a house was so eagerly anticipated by the cast and crew that operations set up picnic tables for everyone to watch, and Smith even brought his family to observe.
“Something like [crashing a bus] brings the whole production in one spot for something ridiculous but fun,” said Chung. “It’s wonderful.”
Related Stories
The British spy thriller based on Mick Herron’s novel of the same name, “Slow Horses” follows a group of disgraced MI5 agents known as the “Slow Horses,” who are reassigned to a dumping ground department of MI5 called Slough House and are determined to get back into the game.
Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the slovenly (yet effective) head of Slough House. Each season of the series follows a book in Herron’s Slough House series, which helped a few actors during prep time.
Having read the book before filming Season 3, Chung said he expected the big bus moment to be cut altogether or replicated by CGI due to logistical difficulties.
One of the earliest concepts for executing the scene involved footage of the bus driving from outside. However, during the editing process, Metzstein realized this would have made for a slow, tedious sequence because buses cannot accelerate fast enough across a farm yard.
“It’s more fun, I think, to have the audience be with Lamb’s point of view and hear the noise and see the lights and think, ‘What the hell is going on?'” Smith said.
Ultimately, the scene required the team behind “Slow Horses” to implement a number of physical elements, such as a porch and staircase landing, for optimal shooting.
“As you can imagine, it’s quite technically painful. There’s two different buses. There’s the outside bus, which we rented and didn’t smash into anything. And then there’s the bus that we smashed into the set,” Metzstein said. “There’s a whole lot of things that we had to do to make it work…because in a way, to me, the crucial bit of the whole joke is that Lamb and Ho are on the same eye line looking at each other. We literally designed the stairs so that they can have that perfect look. He can look at the idiot and give him his killer line.”
One of the most important aspects of the scene itself, Metzstein explained, was having the audience see that Ho is the one driving the bus. The director credited actor Chung with never looking as though he’s attempting to deliver a comedic line, highlighting how the actor’s reaction to Lamb and the subsequent dynamic between the two actors made for an excellent comedic effect.
Following the crash, Lamb delivers the subtle but now iconic quip, “Walk me through your thinking.” A phrase Oldman called “a dream line.”
Chung said one of the most fun parts of playing Ho is the way his character is able to bask in his own world without any self-awareness of his mistakes.
The scene also included an improvised line from Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves) in which she says “Hello, Roddy” upon encountering the bus. Metzstein said Smith tends to give his actors the space and freedom to discover these moments for their characters.
Smith praised the design and set dressing teams for building a house within the studio, and Chung said that this scene turned out better than he could have ever imagined.
“I just think we are very lucky; we really should thank Apple and production for letting us do it,” Smith said. “Because there are plenty of places I think that would’ve looked at that and gone, ‘It’s going to cost this much, you don’t need it for the story, it’s an indulgence, cut it.’ And they completely get that that is the show and let us do it and love it. So it’s great. It wasn’t a fight to do, which is amazing.”
