Pierce Brosnan & Helen Mirren Talk Toxic ‘MobLand’ Marriage, Murder, Madness & What’s Next

Helen Mirren is brandishing an enormous, shiny carving knife. With a wicked little smile, she leans over her on-screen husband Pierce Brosnan, the blade hovering close to his throat.

As her MobLand character Maeve Harrigan, she’s already (probably) been dropping antifreeze in her beloved hubby Conrad’s tea and, so far in the show, we’ve seen best friends bumped off, the couple’s eldest son chain-sawed to death and, in the Season 2 premiere, a full-on massacre at the dog track. This couple are, shall we say, complicated.

Now, Mirren swoops in with her (actually fake) knife and rather un-murderously uses it to cut the (also fake) Sunday roast on the table. She and Brosnan are so in sync, such a perfectly dead-pan double act, that everyone in the room breaks into laughter. After all, it’s something special to be in the presence of acting royalty — Dame Mirren, who, among many epic roles, played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, and Pierce Brosnan, the actual former 007.

Mirren and Brosnan could have met on set some 46 years ago, only they never crossed paths while filming The Long Good Friday. In fact, they wouldn’t work together directly until The Thursday Murder Club, which premiered just last year, in which Mirren plays a retired MI6 agent and Brosnan a former union leader, solving crimes together in a retirement community.

It was on that set that they got chatting about a script they’d both been sent about London gangsters, co-created by Guy Ritchie and Ronan Bennett, written by Jez Butterworth with Bennett and Esther Watson.

“Do you like it?” Brosnan and Mirren asked each other. And that was it, they were in.

Before the Season 1 shoot, the pair talked about their approach. They’d play it London mobster, with a South London-specific accent. But Ritchie had other ideas. About 20 minutes before the first shot, he told Brosnan, “Go Irish!” And Brosnan, being from Ireland, did just that. Then he called Mirren to break the news.

That first season proved a massive hit for Paramount+ — one of its biggest original series debuts ever — with 26 million global viewers and 8.8 million in just the first week.

WATCH: THE MOBLAND INTERVIEW WITH PIERCE BROSNAN AND HELEN MIRREN

As Mirren and Brosnan sit together now post-shoot, there’s a continuous stream of storytelling and shared jokes between them, and something about the many mutual friends and much shared history between stage and screen brings a familial quality. It’s probably part of the reason we easily believe that Maeve and Conrad are forever bonded, despite, and probably because of their mutual depravity.

Since Season 1 we’ve watched Maeve pour metaphorical poison in Conrad’s ear — sometimes he takes it on board, sometimes he doesn’t — while Conrad rules the roost, viciously stamping out anyone with even an imagined whiff of disloyalty. And top of his most-trusted list is Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy), his ‘head of security’ — a title that seems to include everything from crime scene clean-up to keeping Conrad and Maeve’s psychotic grandson Eddie (Anson Boon) in check. Harry’s wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt) is none too fond of the Harrigans, but she’s stuck with them, because Harry is friends-for-life with Conrad and Maeve’s second son Kevin (Paddy Considine), whom he met in prison years back.

As Season 1 rolled into Season 2, the ante was upped again and again by Conrad’s quick temper and his emerging cognitive decline, alongside Maeve’s increasingly deranged scheming. Horrifying family secrets emerged, and even worse, vile Eddie started dating Harry’s chronically-moody teenage daughter Gina (Teddie Allen). Kevin made a (probably insane) move to take over the family, and Conrad is wondering if Maeve’s poison stash is meant for him or his illegitimate daughter Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon). While the family holes up at their country estate in the Cotswolds, Harry’s keeping a foot in both camps, but Maeve is out for his blood, no matter what. Oh, and Jan tried to leave the whole mess behind and ended up getting catfished by a killer. But then luckily, she’s quite handy with a weapon herself…

MobLand’s Season 2 finale airs on Paramount + on November 20^th and with the show already renewed for Season 3, Brosnan and Mirren admit they’ve seen scripts for the first few Season 3 episodes. Will they tell us what’s coming? Probably not. But long may the MobLand chaos reign…

DEADLINE: I went down a Reddit rabbit hole about this show. People are very, very invested. So, my first question to you both would be, what’s your take on whether these two are pure psychopaths or what drives them? What made them this way?

HELEN MIRREN: We’ve talked a little bit about their backstory, haven’t we? Just between the two of us. It’s not something we particularly went into when we first started the project. When we first started, we just started, and just took every day as it came and didn’t really do much-

PIERCE BROSNAN: In-depth investigation. We were shooting from the hip.

MIRREN: Yes, absolutely.

BROSNAN: Guy [Ritchie] gave us five scripts and we both said, “Do you like it?” And we both said yes and we jumped.

MIRREN: Yes, we jumped. There was no time to have a really in-depth discussion. We didn’t have any rehearsal time or anything like that.

BROSNAN: We still don’t.

MIRREN: But over time, Pierce and I have been talking a little bit about where we think this relationship started. And obviously, it started in Ireland and it logistically makes sense that it would’ve been during the time of The Troubles, so that also makes sense for their two characters. They’re creatures of their life, if you like. And I guess I don’t think they have psychopathic… Do you think they do?

BROSNAN: I certainly don’t have it, no.

MIRREN: What an insult. How dare you.

BROSNAN: Just a lovely home in the Cotswolds, they’re a delightful family. They’re a little bit twisted here and there.

MIRREN [deadpan to BROSNAN]: get rid of her because I’m very offended. [Laughs]

DEADLINE: Well, there is the small matter of antifreeze poisoning and getting your son’s head chopped off with a chainsaw, but we’ll just gloss over that.

BROSNAN: That’s what makes it compelling.

Oh, she’s had it in for Harry ever since the beginning. I think she understands instinctively, the danger of Harry, the power of Harry… She’s not quite sure, if push came to shove, who would have final say.

Helen Mirren

MIRREN: Yes. And also, you don’t want to investigate these things too much. It’s not a modern psychopathic drama, it’s a Jacobean tragedy, a comedy-tragedy. And you don’t want to psychologically pull these things apart too much. It’s a sort of wonderful, mad ride. It’s like going on Magic Mountain in Disneyland. You pay your money and you take the ride.

BROSNAN: Guy set the tone for it. His style of directing is, you go out, you rehearse it and you think, “Oh, that’s OK.” And he says, “OK, let’s shoot. Going in 5… going in 4.” And you shoot it.

MIRREN: And bang, you’re in it.

BROSNAN: You’re in it. And you might have flubbed a line, or you might have got something misplaced, but he keeps shooting, so you’re moving very fast.

MIRREN: It’s a great energy.

DEADLINE: Helen, in the past, you’ve said that you are lucky if you get two takes, that’s the pace this moves at. Does your stage experience feed into the way that you operate on this kind of a fast-moving set?

MIRREN: I think absolutely.

BROSNAN: I would say yes. We’re both from the stage. I mean, Dame Helen certainly has a wealth of stage experience. I was in quite a few good plays in the day. And this is the closest to going back to the theater for me, in the sense that you have broad scenes, rich scenes to play, you shoot them very fast. And you’re surrounded by brilliant actors.

MIRREN: Great young actors.

BROSNAN: So, it’s an ensemble.

MIRREN: Who, with or without our personal background, they are all in it and up for it, aren’t they? I mean, maybe they’re following our guide, I don’t know, but there’s no messing around.

BROSNAN: Everyone’s ready to go. Once the trap’s up, you’re in, go out there. And of course, the writing of Jez Butterworth, we always go back to that because his text is so rich and so nuanced. And like Helen says, it’s a Jacobian tragedy-comedy and there’s a wealth of humor in there to be had in the broad strokes.

BROSNAN: So, it’s an ensemble.

MIRREN: And a weird poetry. There is a poetry in there.

BROSNAN: There is a lyrical, nuanced rhythm to his speech.

MIRREN: Dark poetry.

DEADLINE: I love that you mentioned Magic Mountain before, because I actually had ‘roller coaster’ written in my notes.

MIRREN: It’s a roller coaster in the dark.

DEADLINE: It’s really funny at times. Are there moments where you crack up on set? Because some of the lines you get to say are just such zingers.

MIRREN: They are, they are.

BROSNAN: You nailed them so brilliantly.

MIRREN: So do you, Pierce. You really have a big emotional explosion so brilliantly.

BROSNAN: Thank you, thank you. But I do love your tone of phrases as Maeve.

DEADLINE: I liked your analogy about “the trap goes up” and everyone’s ready. It’s so pertinent because Season 2, Episode 1 at the dog track, that scene directed by Guy Ritchie is wild. Conrad’s on the back foot. I think the only thing that matters to him is whether Maeve respects him in that moment. Because she gives him a look of pride.

BROSNAN: Yes.

MIRREN: Yes, absolutely. We improvised. I improvised the line as we were leaving. They never used it because I think he didn’t want us exiting, but I improvised the line as we were walking out hand in hand. I said, “I f**king love you.” It’s like, “At last he’s back. My man, I’ve got my man.”

BROSNAN: Conrad needs Maeve. He needs Maeve and they both need each other. They’re joined at the hip in this kind of cataclysmic life of theirs. And Guy revels in it. I mean, that was a fabulous day.

MIRREN: That was a great day, wasn’t it? So fun, it was fantastic.

BROSNAN: We came back from lunch on that particular day and Guy said to Helen and I, “Well, I’m just going to stand over there. I want to show you what you’re going to do.” I was like, “OK.” We were standing there with all the lads, all the bad guys. And Guy came in and played Helen, and then he played me and started shooting everybody. He was blocking the scene for us.

DEADLINE: How was he at playing you Helen?

MIRREN: Well, it was a Bob the Builder version of Maeve.

BROSNAN: He’s always there in his braces [suspenders]. Ga-da, ga-da, ga-da [shooting noises] He went all around the room, ga-da, ga-da, ga-da.

MIRREN: He loved it. You could tell he was dying to be in it himself.

DEADLINE: There was a recent event in London about the show, and there was some talk that somebody is going to challenge Harry in Season 3. Now, why do I think that might be Maeve? Because she just would love to see him dead.

MIRREN: Oh, she’s had it in for Harry ever since the beginning. I think she understands instinctively, the danger of Harry, the power of Harry, and the danger of him. She’s not quite sure, if push came to shove, who would have final say, whether it be with Conrad or with the family in general. And I think although he’s unbelievably valuable to the family, sometimes you have to be aware of giving people too much power within your world. Do you know what I mean?

BROSNAN: Oh, yeah. As Conrad, I know very much what you mean.

MIRREN: They can take over. Anyway, we’ll see where that goes. We don’t know. It’s a great, fabulous adventure, the whole thing, so we absolutely have no idea where we’re going.

BROSNAN: We have the first three episodes of the third season, which is 10 episodes.

DEADLINE: Do you often get the script and go, “Will the bullet be between my eyes this time?”

MIRREN: “Am I still alive at the end?” All the time.

DEADLINE: What happens in Season 2 in Ireland with Eddie and Gina is such a Maeve-coded twisted mess. Do we think Conrad knows what really went on, or is he closing his eyes to it?

BROSNAN: It’s six of one and a half a dozen of the other. And because his mental faculty is somewhat diminishing here, and I have no idea where Jez is going to take this road. And I haven’t asked him. I don’t want to know, really. But at the same time, there’s ways of playing it where you as the actor know, and you as Conrad know what’s going on around you. You have to be aware. It’s basically Maeve. As much as I love her, she is lethal.

DEADLINE: Could she ever do anything bad enough to break them up?

MIRREN: Yes. I think there is a point at which Conrad would cut her off, cut her out. Although she’s done heinous things in and around the family, I don’t know, actually. I don’t know, I don’t really want to talk about that.

BROSNAN: It’s best not to know.

MIRREN: Yes, play it as it comes.

BROSNAN: You really can’t turn the corner until you get there.

DEADLINE: My thought when Conrad went to the neurologist and they said, “Your impulse control is depleted,” I thought, maybe it was always like this.”

MIRREN: It’s so great to watch Pierce do those scenes. You know it’s coming, because obviously, you’ve read the script and you learned the lines and now we’re in the scene. And I love it when Pierce… It’s like watching this volcano erupt. It’s like Mount Etna erupting and you know it’s coming. I love sitting in that living room and thinking, oh, Pierce is going to erupt. It’s going to be so fantastic. And it always is. He just commands it, it’s fabulous to watch.

DEADLINE: I listened to a podcast with you Helen where you talked about how sometimes, playing a character, you would go into it imagining they were drunk. Is that a factor with Maeve?

MIRREN: Absolutely. And luckily she normally is drunk all the time.

BROSNAN: Sauced. It’s a good one.

MIRREN: It’s liberating.

BROSNAN: Yeah, it is liberating if you feel like you’re tanked up as the character in that particular scene. It gives you a rhythm, and it gives you a kind of safe place to pick your way through the scene, as it were.

MIRREN: Yes, it just opens up all kinds of possibilities. When you’re drunk, you don’t care about anything.

The second season was tough because the scripts were coming in late and everyone was under the gun… but we get on really well. I mean, Helen and I were cast, and then it was always going to be, “Who’s playing Harry? Who’s it going to be?” When Tom Hardy came onto the stage, we couldn’t be happier.

Pierce Brosnan

BROSNAN: They’re animals. I mean, Conrad is an animal. He’s this kind of bull of a man who’s not quite in control.

MIRREN: A bull or panther?

BROSNAN: Panthers are very sleek.

MIRREN: Yeah, maybe he’s more bull. But he’s a little more adroit than a bull. Although bulls in the ring are incredibly adroit, actually, when you watch them in a bullfight. They’re incredible.

BROSNAN: They’re very nimble. Do you have an image for Maeve? When we were doing The Thursday Murder Club and you and I both said, “Well, let’s do this,” we were sitting there one morning, having a cup of tea. You were on your laptop and you said, “This is what I’m thinking about for Maeve.” And Helen opened up her laptop and there was this photograph of this Australian monster.

MIRREN: A blonde lady, yes.

BROSNAN: A blonde lady, yeah. With peroxide blonde, white hair.

MIRREN: Yes, white hair. Nails black, all in black otherwise.

BROSNAN: I remember thinking, “Oh my god, she’s got her character already. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

DEADLINE: I was going to ask you, actually, did either of you look at real-life criminals as some kind of inspiration, or even fictional criminals?

BROSNAN: You did.

MIRREN: I did, yes. A little bit. But the thing is to… It’s kind of useful, but really what you do is invent there and then on the spot, and allow, as Pierce said, allow the text to guide you, lead you, inspire you. That’s your jumping off of this, really, rather than some sort of theoretical study of the criminal mind. We’re not in that world. It’s not a documentary, docudrama, of any sort of… You’re in the world of imagination, a kind of excessive gothic world. And I think honestly, that’s the great entertainment of it. And it’s undoubtedly entertaining.

BROSNAN: Absolutely, utterly, yes. And they’re compelling characters and everyone likes to play. Everyone likes to give performance. It is one of those shows where you can give a performance, play a performance.

MIRREN: And how strong all the characters are as well. I love how strong all the women are. All the female characters have real agency, real energy, real complication. None of them are there just as a sort of cipher of any sort. And likewise, all the male characters. The chaps, Paul [Emmett J. Scanlan]’s character. Obviously, Anson’s character. They’re all such individual, interesting characters on their own. None of them are fillers at all.

DEADLINE: Paul, he’s such a character, but he could have just been just some minor, lackey person, given a different writer.

MIRREN: Yes. And I think he’s going to really appear more and more.

BROSNAN: Absolutely. He’s loved, he’s adored. Top man.

DEADLINE: When there were mutterings that Tom Hardy wouldn’t come back for Season 3 due to some rumored disagreements, both of you spoke up in support of him on social media. So, it’s obviously a close-knit cast?

BROSNAN: Very much so. That was a real storm in a teacup. It really blindsided me when I read the reports. I thought, “What the heck is going on?” Because the second season was tough because the scripts were coming in late and everyone was under the gun. We had a first season which is really tight and wonderful and magnificent and fresh and new. It’s sometimes hard to really just keep it on track, but we get on really well. I mean, Helen and I were cast, and then it was always going to be, “Who’s playing Harry? Who’s it going to be?” When Tom Hardy came onto the stage, we couldn’t be happier.

DEADLINE: It’s hard to imagine anyone else in that role.

MIRREN: No, no, no. Absolutely not.

DEADLINE: As Harry he has this stillness and it’s in great contrast to the chaos around him. Did you know he was going to play it like that?

MIRREN: No, no. That is his incredible power. It’s spellbinding. I can’t think of the right way to put it, but backwards and coming forwards. The stillness of Tom, the power of Tom is fantastic. And it’s so great against Maeve, Conrad, Eddie, Seraphina, who are all such big, big, mad characters.

DEADLINE: Looking forward, at the end of Season 2 and into Season 3, what’s it going to take to keep these two at top of the power dynamic in the family? Because it is a rocky situation right now.

MIRREN: Well, money, I guess.

BROSNAN: Money, love prevails.

MIRREN: It’s not just money, is it? It’s power.

BROSNAN: It’s power, the lust for power. And fear of dying. You don’t want to die. Mortality is circling the wagons here. And they know about death.