'It’s thanks to my late wife, Cassie': Pierce Brosnan on making it in America
Perce Brosnan at the MobLand premiere at SVA Theater in New York. Picture: Theo Wargo/Getty Images.
Pierce Brosnan can still vividly remember his first trip to America and his first audition there for an acting role. After landing some work in London - including a Tennessee Williams play - his late wife, Cassie, had encouraged him to give America a go. The audition was for a TV series, blending romantic drama and detective procedural, called .
The young couple, both actors, had taken out a loan and taken on a gamble. It wasn’t long before they jetted to the US in the hope of finding further success. On the way to the audition, disaster almost struck when the car he’d rented broke down, he says now.
“It’s thanks to my late wife, Cassie, who said: ‘You have to go to America’. ‘How are we going to go to America? We just bought this house in Wimbledon’,” Brosnan recalls telling her. But Cassie, who sadly died from cancer at the age of 43, felt it was the right move.
“She’d been in For . I'd done a mini series which I got about the Irish potato famine [ ]. I was the unknown, but I was the lead,” remembers Brosnan. “She said: ‘You’ve got to go’. (We) Went to the bank manager, got a 2,000 pound overdraft, hopped on Freddie Laker with our sandwiches, and I got , my very first interview. Drove across Laurel Canyon in a lime-green Pacer. It blew up on the way down the hill. I got there in a sweat.”
quickly cemented the Irish actor’s status as a charismatic leading man, and it was no time at all before media observers began speculating about him becoming a future James Bond. The opportunity to don 007’s tuxedo initially eluded him as he was contractually tied to Remington Steele, but years later it would come his way again. He would play the iconic sleuth four times - in and .
Now aged 71, Brosnan is relaxed and philosophical as he remembers those big breakthroughs early in his career. He cites being cast in Tennessee Williams’ as a big confidence booster as a young man. “Working with Tennessee Williams on one of his last plays, magnificent,” he says. “He wrote a little scene for me on the Savoy Hotel note paper. That gave me great faith in myself as a young actor.
“There's lots of turning points: Bond. Getting James Bond after , not being able to get out of the contract, losing it, taking the blow, you move on and don't get bitter. You know, it's all a game.”
Now Brosnan is back playing in one of his grittiest roles yet. He joins a star-studded cast including Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren and Paddy Considine in , the new crime series from Guy Ritchie for Paramount+ The series centres on a turf war between two rival crime families that threatens to uproot empires and destroy lives. At the heart of it is Harry (Hardy) a street-savvy fixer who works for Conrad Harrington (Brosnan), a violent Irish criminal kingpin.
“Last summer, these five scripts came to me, this series with Guy Richie,” says Brosnan. “I adore his work and the landscape of movies that he has made, the characters that he's created. I read it, Ronan Bennett [ had written it, and I said: ‘Yes, I'm in’ because I wanted to come back to England. I wanted to work here in Europe. And then it developed from there. Helen Mirren and I were making the . She said: ‘Have you read it? Do you like it?’ I said: ‘I do’. She said: ‘I’m going to read it. If you're in it, let's go do it’. She jumped on board, then Tom Hardy, and we were off to the races. And then the scripts were written by Jez Butterworth [ ]. He came on board.
“You have these two great writers and this amazing character who is kind of mangled, brutal, cunning and an Irishman who has come out of the wilds of Ireland.”
Harrington is a man used to casual violence to meet his ends and protect his empire in the long-form series, which will run to ten episodes. Is he one of the darkest characters Brosnan has played?
“Oh yes, he is dark. I mean, there are aspects of him which really surprised me, and as the scripts came in, there are moments which made me draw a breath. But that's what makes it so exhilarating, and that's what makes it so entertaining. You have to play it with humour, you have to play it with a certain knowing.
“It's exhilarating work, and it gets you out of bed at five in the morning, and you go there with all your performance in hand, and you deliver it. I love this format. I've done one other show like this, called The Son, which was a Western, and I enjoy it very much. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you alive, and it pays the rent.”
Though he will forever be associated with Ian Fleming’s globe-trotting agent, Brosnan has always mixed up his roles - even at the height of his James Bond success. He starred opposite Rene Russo in a hit remake of and took to comedy with Robin Williams in . He worked with director Tim Burton in and Edgar Wright in . He had a blast in as one of three men - along with Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard - invited to an eventful wedding on a Greek island.
As a boy, the Navan man stayed with his maternal grandparents while his mother, who worked in the UK, would come home to visit. He moved to the UK to be reunited with his mother at the age of eleven, but has always been proud of his Irish heritage. It comes as no surprise to discover he keeps a keen eye on Irish acting successes - including Cillian Murphy’s recent Oscar win for .
“Saoirse I adore. Cillian has been constant and brilliant and luminous. They all are. They carry that lovely alchemy of our ancestors and the landscape of our lives and where we come from and the history of our people as artists, storytellers. So, yes, that's always with me, the sensation of where I come from.”
- launched on March 30 exclusively on Paramount+ with episode one, followed by one new episode airing each week
