BAFTA nominee Jason Isaacs is a true Hollywood legend in the upcoming biographical series Archie. After previous memorable turns in the Harry Potter franchise, The Death of Stalin, and, more recently, The Crowded Room, he’s set to embody the great Cary Grant, one of film history’s most iconic leading men with films like North By Northwest and In Name Only. A new image courtesy of Empire Magazine spotlights Isaacs‘s transformation into Grant for the series, which took hours in the makeup chair and a lot of research to get right.
Archie, based on Grant‘s birth name Archibald Alexander Leach, recounts the rollercoaster life of the iconic actor from a troubled childhood to the pinnacle of stardom with all the bumps in the road along the way. Isaacs plays Grant at multiple stages of his life and the image shows him at a slightly older age with gray hair, glasses, and a sleek and stylish dark gray suit while he stands next to his car. According to the star, it wasn’t easy to capture Grant’s look, especially considering the changes in age. He said it took around five hours each day just to prepare, saying “I play him in his eighties, so that’s lots of prosthetics. When he’s much younger, there’s lots of architectural things pulling me up with hooks and strings.” The image has a powerful air to it which Isaacs also had to take time nailing down to accurately portray Grant’s presence.
Playing Grant was a very research-heavy role according to Isaacs, who did everything he could to understand him at a fundamental level from watching films to readying biographies and chatting with people who knew him. While digging through the legend’s extensive filmography helped him understand Grant’s magnetism, Isaacs told Empire that he got the most out of speaking with Grant’s ex-wife Dyan Cannon and his daughter Jennifer Grant. “I’ve always found that you never get a fuller picture of someone than by talking to the people who love them, or who had their hearts broken by them,” he added. Familial connections figure to be a big part of Archie as Grant was married five times, though his relationship with his adulterous father, and loving mother, and the lie between them particularly shaped much of his upbringing.
Who Else Creates and Stars in ‘Archie’
While Isaacs is the main attraction of Archie, he has a talented cast around him including Harriet Walter, Kara Tointon, Laura Aikman, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Ian Pulston-Davies, Ian McNeice, Jason Watkins, Lisa Faulkner, and Niamh Cusack. The trio of Calam Lynch, Dainton Anderson, and Oaklee Pendergast will portray Grant at other stages of his life as well. The four-part series hails from Philomena writer Jeff Pope and director Paul Andrew Williams with both Cannon and Grant on board as executive producers and Rebecca Hodgson producing.
Archie is a collaboration between ITV Studios and Britbox International. It’s expected to be released on ITV and ITVX in December 2023 before arriving on Britbox in the U.S. at a later date. Stay tuned here at Collider for more information on the upcoming series.
via Collider