‘Archie’ Brings Cary Grant’s Chaotic Offscreen Life Into Focus — Plus, Watch Sneak Peek (VIDEO)
“You can’t create a character like Cary Grant,” says Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jeff Pope (Philomena) of the Hollywood legend, the subject of BritBox’s four-part biodrama Archie. The debonair actor’s ascension from an impoverished English lad, born Archibald Leach in 1904, to movie stardom in films like The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, and North by Northwest is dramatic enough. Add to that Grant’s startling discovery when he was a rising star in the 1930s that the mother he thought had died when he was a boy was actually living in a mental institution and you have, according to Pope, “some story that Dickens might have created.”
Starring Jason Isaacs — who donned prosthetics to give him Grant’s dimpled chin — the series jumps between three timelines: the ’60s, when Grant wed the much-younger Dyan Cannon and gave up acting to raise his only child, Jennifer; the ’80s, when he toured in his audience Q&A show, A Conversation With Cary Grant; and his earlier life. (He was even considered for the role of James Bond, as the exclusive clip above shows.)
Isaacs, who portrays Grant from middle to old age, is one of four actors to tackle the role. Among the supporting cast: Emmy nominee Harriet Walter (Succession, Ted Lasso) as Grant’s mother, Elsie, in her later years. “Dyan opened the door to me on Cary’s upbringing,” Pope says, “because Cary had told her his innermost secrets and she’d met Elsie.” The writer and an executive producer of Archie became interested in the actor after reading Good Stuff, Jennifer’s memoir about life with her father, on a plane. Cannon’s book, Dear Cary, also provided source material for the series.
Archie aims to show the impact Grant’s traumatic childhood had on him, from his early days as a performer, when the teenage Archie started out as an acrobat in vaudeville, to long after Cary Grant became world famous. Several notable names from Hollywood’s Golden Age pop up in the series: Mae West, Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and even Randolph Scott, with whom Grant cohabitated and was rumored to be intimate. In fact the line Pope says took the longest time to write was Grant’s response when Cannon asks him if he’s gay.
“We didn’t want to say definitely no, nor did we want to say definitely yes,” says Pope. Grant ends up equivocating by replying, “I have loved a lot of people. Married some of them.”
In fact, he wed five times, experimented with LSD, and had a reputation as a control freak. “He needed to control everything in his life,” Pope says, “even down to the parting in his hair, which was so precise. His clothes were immaculate, and he wanted his interactions with people to be similarly controlled and immaculate.”
That’s one explanation for Grant’s pursuit of Cannon, who was 33 years his junior and wanted marriage and a family from the reluctant star. “She was a fantastically attractive woman, but I think what really attracted him to Dyan was she had this thirst to learn, so she was kind of like a sponge,” Pope suggests. “When he said, ‘You should read this,’ she’d say yes and she’d read it voraciously.”
Although Cannon and Jennifer Grant have executive producer billing, Pope says his goal was to give viewers a balanced portrait of the icon, noting, “It’s not a piece that tries to airbrush the more difficult parts of his life.”
Archie, Series Premiere, Thursday, December 7, BritBox
This is an expanded version of an article from TV Insider’s December issue. For more in-depth, reported coverage devoted to streaming shows from the publishers of TV Guide Magazine, pick up the issue, currently on newsstands, or purchase it online here. You can also subscribe to TV Insider Magazine here now.
