When Doves fly

Black Doves director Alex Gabassi takes DQ into the world of Joe Barton’s Netflix spy series, discusses partnering with stars Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw and reveals how he was influenced by neo noirs and screwball comedies.

When director Alex Gabassi watched Giri/Haji, writer Joe Barton’s 2019 crime drama set between Tokyo and London, he instantly recognised a project he would have loved to have been involved in.

So when he received a surprise offer to partner with Barton, star Keira Knightley and Giri/Haji producer Sister on a new spy drama called Black Doves, “I immediately said yes,” Gabassi tells DQ. And with Ben Whishaw, Sarah Lancashire and Kathryn Hunter subsequently joining the project, “that was a dream team I could play with in many ways.”

Launching on Netflix today and set against the backdrop of London at Christmas, Black Doves is pitched as a sharp, action-filled and heartfelt story of friendship and sacrifice. Knightley plays Helen Webb, a quick-witted, down-to-earth, dedicated wife and mother – and professional spy, who for 10 years has been passing on her politician husband (Andrew Buchan)’s secrets to the shadowy organisation she works for: the titular Black Doves.

When her secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is assassinated, her spymaster, the enigmatic Reed (Lancashire), calls in Helen’s old friend and assassin Sam (Whishaw) to keep her safe. The pair then set off on a mission to investigate who killed Jason and why, leading them to uncover a vast, interconnected conspiracy linking the murky London underworld to a looming geopolitical crisis.

Hunter plays Lenny Lines, a sinister underworld figure who calls upon Sam to repay an old debt and complete an outstanding mission, while Omari Douglas is Michael, Sam’s love interest.

The series is characterised by Barton’s “rhythmic” dialogue and standout performances from the central duo of Knightley and Whishaw. For lead director Gabassi (The Crown, The ABC Murders), making Black Doves was an “interesting process,” as filming began without a full set of scripts, owing to the fact the series evolved through the writing process from “a straightforward spy thriller,” driven by Helen’s motivation for revenge, to an exploration of the relationship between Helen and Sam once Whishaw joined the project.

“As Ben came into the process, Joe started writing with Ben in mind, so that’s why you start getting these dynamics between the two, which sends you off from that straightforward path into a more interesting relationship dynamic,” the director explains. “For me, for all of us, we didn’t quite know what the tone would be, because we didn’t know where we were going to land at the end. So we were always making every scene count. Every scene was very sculpted individually. Thankfully we got there somehow.”

As a result, episode one introduces Helen – and exposes her past as a spy – before the story takes on twists, turns and flashbacks to reveal Sam’s background and the relationship between the pair, as Sam is tasked with completing some historic unfinished business alongside the plot to uncover Jason’s killer.

“You see that episode one sends you along a path and then episode two slightly skews that path. [Episode] three does it again, and then you pick up in four and five and six, where obviously we have to resolve that,” Gabassi says.

“Sister, [executive producers] Jane [Featherstone] and Chris [Fry] were lovely in giving me freedom to experiment, and I love that. We could experiment with ideas. The thing about Joe is that he will give you a very precise dialogue which has rhythm, and the delivery is beautiful, but he’s not going to give you the precise instruction about what the scene should be. So it’s up to us to put in the subtext and the rhythm we want. I also think for Keira it was very refreshing to sit in a place where she could say, ‘Can I?’ and [we could say] ‘Yes, do it, let’s see what it is,’ instead of telling her what to do.”

That the series spends time building the backstories of its protagonists means Gabassi believes Black Doves stands apart from other spy thrillers “that are basically intricate plots you have to resolve.” Across its six episodes, the series is able to introduce more elements of Helen and Sam’s personal lives and their attempts to keep the personal and professional separate.

Gabassi says he didn’t go to other spy series for inspiration. Instead, he looked back to the 1970s and the works of director Alan Pakula and, in particular, his 1971 feature Klute, a neo-noir about a small-town detective searching for a missing man and the New York prostitute who might be the key to the case.

“I started going, ‘OK, what attracts me in Klute?’ for instance. Is it those massive close-ups of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland and the idea that she has a double life? But at the same time, I was very attracted to something like The Parallax View as well, just for the sense of how they presented Seattle in a way that is very graphic, but also made the characters feel very anonymous,” the director says. That idea also informed the way he would shoot London for Black Doves – “99%” of the shoot took place around the capital city – by developing with DOP Mark Patten a clean aesthetic that would deliver a sense of depth to the screen.

“Instead of having the London usually you do – the cool glass, a bluish cloudy landscape – I was like, ‘You know what? I just want colour.’ Maybe it’s my Brazilian side. I don’t know. So every time we found something like that, I would ask Mark or my production designer [Laura Ellis Cricks] to add a red light in the back or something that allows you to have that depth more emphasised, but also give a sense of fun as well,” Gabassi says.

He also sought to foster a sense of chemistry between Knightley and Whishaw that is best recognised in 1940s screwball comedies starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, while also telling the actors he would preserve their relationship on screen by favouring “the two shot” as opposed to singular close-ups.

“I wanted very early on to establish a sense of language that we would allow these characters always to be in the frame together,” he adds. “The dynamic [between them] then had to do with the performance and my direction rather than the edits later.”

Gabassi didn’t like to give his cast too much direction on set, instead implying how they might perform a scene through conversations and questions he asks his actors. For example, “they do it [film the scene] and then I go, ‘That was good. How about this?’ and then imply, ‘Maybe it’s not your fault, it’s hers.’ I just say things like that. And they’re like, ‘Oh,’ and then we’ll see what lands.

“Actors, at least the ones I’ve worked with, tend to love this. It is more of a theatre experiment. The only thing that really takes us back to the real world is the time consumption. You look at your AD, and then you’re like, ‘OK, OK, moving on.’”

One of his “greatest pleasures” working on the show was filming a scene of dialogue between Knightley, Whishaw and Lancashire while they were sitting inside a car. Instead of filming coverage of each of them and cutting it together in post-production as might be the typical formula, Gabassi instead wanted to focus simply on the actors’ faces and “not be flashy all the time.”

“I remember Sarah in that particular scene said, ‘Shouldn’t I be looking at her [Knightley]?’ I was like, ‘Well, your face is so wonderful here. Just imagine the car is moving and you’re looking at the landscape.’ It’s that kind of lovely trust the actors have in you, then you knew you could push those places to make a twist in the idea of the usual conceit of those scenes.”

The series is also notable for some blazing action sequences, not least Helen’s brawl with two assassins in episode one and a gunfight inside a nightclub. From the outset, Gabassi wanted these scenes to be as “visceral” as possible.

“Sometimes you do see scenes that are too edited and too full of music, and I just didn’t want any music. I wanted them to feel real but painful, and I also had this idea that I wanted Keira to do a jiu jitsu move. That first scene had that,” he says.

He also wanted fight scenes to contain a sense of escalation for the audience, while remaining rooted in authenticity. That idea was manifested when Helen’s role as a mother comes into play as she’s fending off the threat of the assassins in the home of her former lover.

“It wasn’t in the original script, but what about her kids? What about her family? The kids would call and say, ‘Mummy, where are you?’ That’s how this scene came about, because we needed to put some domesticity into that,” Gabassi says about an inconvenient phone call Helen answers while laying in wait for her attackers. “For me, that also adds a bit of quirkiness, but because she’s so good you still believe she would have done that in that way.

“You’re also going to see a very similar visceral fight with Ben in episode three. I’m very proud of that and very proud of Ben for going all the way. It was really lovely.”

With the show set against the fairy-light glow of London at Christmas, Gabassi hopes viewers will settle in for a thrilling, propulsive but characterful ride across six hours of drama to ring in the festive season.

“This is a great series to watch during Christmas,” says the director, who is represented by Casarotto-Ramsay. “It has some very interesting issues that talk about double lives, second chances, and identities that you have to hide in order to actually be yourself, but under the guise of a very compelling spy thriller.”

tagged in: Alex Gabassi, Ben Whishaw, Black Doves, Joe Barton, Keira Knightley, Netflix, Sister