Gemma Arterton revealed what it was like sharing the screen with Rafe Spall as the five-part espionage drama Secret Service premieres tonight on ITV at 9pm.
Arterton, who leads the cast opposite Spall, said of her co-star: "He's great. He's cut from the same cloth as me. He's a great actor, very playful. He loves improvisation the same as me. It was very easy for us to have that naturalness and when needed, it's there if you need to go in for a big scene, which we do."
The pair play Kate and Stuart Henderson, a married couple at the centre of the adaptation of ITV News anchor Tom Bradby's best-selling novel. The drama follows Kate, a senior MI6 officer who heads the Russia Desk at the Secret Intelligence Service, as her undercover operations expose evidence that a high-ranking politician may be a Russian asset.
The stakes are immediate: Kate is drawn into a race against time to uncover the politician's identity and save her agent, while also trying to keep her marriage intact because Stuart does not know the nature of her operations. That domestic tension sits at the heart of the five-part series and shapes much of the onscreen chemistry between Arterton and Spall.
Arterton said the creative balance between scripted scenes and spontaneous moments helped deliver that chemistry. "Only in small sections because the script was so brilliant and I didn't feel we needed to embellish it in any way," she said, describing how the actors used improvisation sparingly. She added, with a laugh, "I think Rafe can't help but improvise! It's in his DNA!"
That mix — a strong script with occasional improvisational flourishes — is the precise quality Arterton argued made their interactions feel lived-in rather than performed. "He's great. He's really great fun and a proper lovely guy to be around," she said, summing up both Spall's temperament and the working relationship the production relied on.
The series was adapted from Bradby's novel and places personal life at the centre of its spy story. Arterton has said she researched the role by speaking with a former head of the Middle East desk, and that she was more interested in how intelligence officers live their lives than in the day-to-day job of working for MI6. That focus on the private cost of public secrecy informs the couple's portrayal on screen.
For viewers tuning in tonight, the question at the heart of the publicity — whether Arterton and Spall's rapport carries the show — has a clear answer on offer: Arterton credits both the quality of the script and Spall's instinctive playfulness for the show's naturalness. The work of adapting Bradby's novel gives the actors a strong foundation, and the occasional improvisation is presented as an enhancement, not a patch.
Secret Service opens at 9pm on ITV, and its central conceit — a senior officer balancing a secret life with marriage while pursuing a possible Russian asset — will be the measure by which audiences judge the partnership Arterton describes. If her account is anything to go by, viewers should expect a performance built on mutual trust, a tightly written backbone and the kind of small, unscripted moments that make espionage dramas feel human.
