Nonetheless, the finale cues up a handful of questions to be answered in a hypothetical second season. What the hell is going on with Conrad and Maeve? And will Kevin (Paddy Considine) have the balls to actually usurp his dad? All that discussed, and more, below.
GQ: I know that you’ve been an avid painter for decades, and I can think of few better locales to sit down and paint than in the rural Cotswolds.
Pierce Brosnan: I’ve been making linocuts, so that occupied my days when I had time off. One of the joys of making MobLand was that I had time off, which was very good. So the linocuts occupied some of my time — between that, and golf, and seeing my family. One of the reasons for saying yes to this job was to go home to London, to be back where it all started for me.
A lot of the show seems to play with the idea of generational trauma, and the sins of the father. I wonder if you ever think about how Conrad might’ve been as a father when his kids were growing up.
Oh, yes. None of this was ever discussed, but there is mental and physical abuse rife within this family, and certainly within Conrad’s world. And that perpetuates itself through the bloodline, and the harsh consequences of the lives they live as outsiders, as gangsters, as men of violence.
One of the prison sequences is that emotionally charged scene with Paddy — the confrontation between Conrad and Kevin.
I haven’t seen the episode. [Laughs] We’re going to watch it this Sunday night with my wife and our son, Dylan, who’s been visiting with us. They’ve been hugely engrossed with it. I don’t think I’ve had such a response to work like this in a very long time.
Paddy is just mind-blowingly great. There’s something very human and tangible, and he has such a diversity of emotions and characters… All I know is the scene with Paddy in the prison is powerful because we were separated by glass, and the writing of Jez [Butterworth’s] is so deeply founded in emotion. He leaves a paper trail right up to that moment, where my son rises up from the ashes of abuse, and the shabby, dark blows of persecution, and assault, and rape. Conrad is somewhat adrift with it all. He’s trying to piece it together. He has certain mental frailties. He’s cunning, he’s brutish, he’s charming, he’s malevolent, and he’s a nervous dog. Nervous dogs bite.
Towards the end of their conversation, Conrad taunts Kevin about his affair with Kevin’s wife, and makes a comment about her private parts. And you do this insidious, taunting tongue flicker. Was that in the script? Where did it come from?
[Laughs] A perverse and warped sense of cruelty. He has very, very little faith in his son. The only one that shines is Seraphina. He and Maeve were so young when he was born, there’s a certain sense of resentment, and a life lost, within his dreams of what he wanted out of life. He wanted to be better than a petty car thief, some sheep shagging fellow from the back waters. There’s a great deal of shame, and this lack of self-worth, which comes out in bravado. And he knows that Maeve has him. He knows that his back is to the wall, in certain circumstances. But they love each other.
I was going to ask what you made of their dynamic, because it is so complicated. They’re constantly vying for power, and kind of stabbing each other in the back — but there is love there.
