EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman was awarded a knighthood Friday in King Charles’ Birthday Honours. In an exclusive interview conducted ahead of the official announcement, the star told Deadline: ”It’s actually sort of mind-boggling. I’m gobsmacked.”
During our interview, I joked that he has served Queen, King and country as Gary Oldman and onscreen in such roles as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, which won him his Academy Award in 2018; and as fictional British intelligence officer George Smiley in film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; and as the Falstaffian Jackson Lamb in Apple’s Slow Horses.
“Yeah, I’ve served the crown,” he said laughing down the line from his home in Palm Springs.
Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in ‘Darkest Hour’ (Focus Features)
Focus Features
Many of his greatest screen roles were filmed in the UK, including Sid and Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and the Harry Potter movies.
In an official statement released to coincide with news of his knighthood, Oldman commented: “To be included in the long lineage of extraordinary actors, artists, and others who hold this title fills me with indescribable humility and pride. It is emotional, humbling and flattering all at the same time to be recognized amongst them.”
Oldman told us that he was referring to the likes of Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Michael Caine and contemporaries Sir Daniel Day-Lewis and Sir Kenneth Branagh, among others, and that he also had in mind acting giants like Lord [Laurence] Oliver, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench.
When his Slow Horses co-star Jonathan Pryce was knighted in 2021, Oldman told how he saw him on the set and offered his congratulations. “And he looked at me and he said, ‘Oh, yes, yes. I’ve been elevated.’”’S
Oldman said that when he once chatted to Hopkins about his knighthood, and the Silence of the Lambs legend noted that he only used the honorific prefix when he’s in the U.S. “Tony said that he only uses it in America because they expect it,” Oldman added. “Actually they’re rather offended if you don’t use it.”
Only those closest to Oldman have been “in the know” about his knighthood, he said. His longtime business partner and manager Douglas Urbanski, he said, “has already started calling me SG, as in Sir Gary.”
Or, Sir Gary of Palm Springs, I suggest. He liked the sound of that, he said with a gentle laugh.
Oldman still has a British passport and is a U.S. green card holder. He resides in the U.S. with wife Gisele Schmidt, a photographic artist.
Gary Oldman with his Oscar for ‘Darkest Hour’. Photo: Baz Bamigboye/Deadline
His thoughts soon turned to his late mother, Kathleen, who died at 99, three months after he received his Oscar.
“She was 99, and she was of that generation where, years ago, I remember her talking about getting the letter from the Queen when you reached a hundred,” he said. “And it was a thing that once you started to get up there in age, it was a thing that generation used to talk about. And my mum wanted that letter from the Queen.
“But yeah, I thought about her because I think she would’ve been absolutely chuffed with this. But in terms of just really processing it, I haven’t had a minute really.”
Oldman said he’s chuffed himself because Slow Horses has “really started to gather some momentum here in the U.S.” after four seasons. “I think it’s truly international now,” he said.
Gary Oldman with his mother Kathleen (Gisele Schmidt)
Season 5 on Apple TV+ starts in September. Season 6 is already in the can, and Season 7 will begin shooting in the UK.in late September or early October.
RELATED: ‘Slow Horses’ Season 5 Gets Fall Premiere Date On Apple TV+; First Look Photos Show Nick Mohammed In Guest Role
Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, Slow Horses is about a group of outcast MI5 domestic intelligence operatives under the leadership of Oldman’s Jackson Lamb. It has a contemporary London setting, but its bones are classic Shakespearean in its plotting, humor and fulsome character development. You can read Herron’s Slow Horses novels over and over, and it’s the same with the show. Each viewing reveals a deeper understanding and devotion to Lamb and his motley crew.
“That is truly the wonderful gift that keeps on giving,” Oldman marveled. “I just adore the hell out of it, and the people. It is just such a wonderful thing really to be part of.”
He suggested that perhaps the show has taken off because the characters are “people that we can relate to.”
Continuing his thought, Oldman said: ”We are so sort of contaminated with the idea of the spy world being and casinos and Aston Marti’s that I think it connects with people because the people in it are ordinary people who do heroic things, without any gizmos.”
Fellow Slow Horses castmates include Jack Lowden, Kristen Scott Thomas (already a Dame), Rosalind Eleazar, Saskia Reeves, Christopher Chung Kadiff Kirwan and Ruth Bradley.
Gary Oldman in ‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)
Apple TV+
Recently, he returned to the stage after a 37-year absence to star in and direct a production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the York Theatre Royal. He said that playing the role “holds a very special place, well, in a long career,” adding, “I’ve got the taste now, you see. So I think I’ll do some more.”
Although, he conceded, he has missed performing many of the great classical roles because ”there are many roles that I’m too old for now,” but there are still many more to conquer.
“So that would be something, and I’m looking forward to it. I realized how much I missed it because over the years, I read plays and considered doing them. … And I’ve just sort of been taken hostage by movies, and you look around and you think, ‘Oh, it’s 10 years since I was on stage.’ And then you turn around and go, ‘Oh, it’s 15,’ then it’s 20 years and so on.
But the theater conversation always has been there over the years. And so when I got there and got into that rehearsal room, I just thought: ‘Oh my God, I’ve missed this. I miss this so much.’ It wasn’t nerves, it was adrenaline and excitement. I missed that.”
Noting how he was born in New Cross and raised in other parts of South London, he said, “As we’d say in South London, I’ve got the flavour back.”
Oldman said that he’s still really British to the core. “When I work, my rider is very small,” he said. “I need a kettle, a cup — a mug will do — PG Tips tea bags and a packet of digestive biscuits. That’s all I need in the trailer.”
