Eddie Redmayne Found the Quiet Beauty of Traveling By Playing a Euro-Hopping Assassin

13.11.2024 - 12:19 / cntraveler.com / Marilyn Monroe

With his return to television in The Day of the Jackal, Eddie Redmayne got to multiply the stamps in his passport collection—or, at times, he pretended to. As the world’s most notorious assassin-for-hire, Redmayne's Jackal treats Europe as his playground, hopscotching across borders like stepping stones. “For me, one of the elements of the original Frederick Forsyth book and Edward Fox movie was a celebration of Europe,” the 42-year-old actor tells Condé Nast Traveler of the 10-part series based off of the 1971 novel and 1973 political thriller. “You could sit in your living room and dream of those places and the romance of the hidden elements of these parts of the world.”

Primarily filmed in Hungary, Croatia, and the United Kingdom, the locations portrayed on screen stretch to every corner of the European continent (and, spoiler alert, beyond!), including Munich, Belfast, and Tallinn, among others. “There are films or programs that I watch and I go, ‘Oh god those locations look like they must be fun, like certainly all the White Lotus scenery,” the Oscar winner says of his own set-jetting inclinations. “And I got my little moment of a taste of it with this project.”

Like his mysterious character, Redmayne also found himself torn away from his own family, wife Hannah Bagshawe, daughter Iris, and son Luke during production. But that simply meant more creative family vacations to his filming locations, and even an impromptu family vacation to Venice. Ahead of the show's US premiere, Redmayne chatted with us about his on- and off-screen Euro-hopping adventures while filming The Day of the Jackal. Eddie Redmayne also executive produced the series; the first five episodes debut on November 14, and the remaining five drop weekly on Thursdays, from November 21 to December 19.

“The Jackal is like a peacock,” says Redmayne of his character, who he found in part by visiting a Viennese tailor.

How did you prepare for the precision needed to portray this sharpshooting secret assassin?

The Jackal is like a peacock, with a ruthless flâneur quality innate in his DNA. Before we started shooting, our costume designer, a wonderful woman called Natalie Humphries, asked if I wanted to go to Vienna for a costume fitting. I was like, “I love the idea—that's the most Jackal thing I've ever heard!” We went to this outfitter called Knize, a tailor that was set up in the mid-19th century. The building was designed by the famous architect, [Adolf] Loos. They have the logs there of the measurements of the Prince of Wales in the mid-19th century and they’ve dressed Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Laurence Olivier and all these Austrian barons. We were there to find the clothes for these characters that the Jackal played. But