But also the question of whether or he felt safe if he went and lived that life, would the CIA knock him off if he went and did that? They were questions that I was asking at the time.Don't F**k With Cats is not the first Netflix original true-crime documentary to cause controversy. Whether or not his ego could accept that, whether he would feel like he would then be eaten alive from the inside if he went and lived that life. 'The questions that I was asking myself about Philby at the time, I suppose, were the offer that Nicholas makes to him-which is confess and come live your days out in a lovely country home and you'll be well looked after. 'I don't think he wanted to,' Pearce says.

A Spy Among Friends doesn't offer a definitive answer, but the show is framed by conversations Philby has with his friend and fellow British spy, Nicholas Elliot (played by Damian Lewis), in Beirut, where Elliot offers Philby amnesty in the UK if he confesses.įor Pearce, he played Philby as a man who didn't want to leave the UK for Soviet Russia. Whether or not Kim Philby truly wanted to defect is lost to history. That was a way in for me-there was something mundane and ordinary about the way they communicated with each other that felt a bit more human than some of the bigger ideological stuff that was part of the story.' She wrote a book which covers that period and also looks at some of the letters back and forth between the two of them. Eleanor, Pearce says, 'was with in Beirut when left, and brought her over to Moscow with him-and then that relationship fell apart. Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved, a memoir written by Eleanor Brewer, Philby's American wife, was key for Pearce in understanding his role. 'It was a fascinating, fascinating journey.' He actually did this,'' Pearce tells T&C. 'I found myself every few weeks going, 'Wow. Sam TaylorĪs an actor portraying a historical figure, Pearce remained surprised by the real Philby's actions throughout production on the show. 'I think that that's endlessly fascinating about people who do spectacular things in the world, about whom you want to know more-the traitor is an extreme, an extreme path to go down,' he adds.ĭamian Lewis plays Nicholas Elliot and Guy Pearce plays Kim Philby in A Spy Among Friends. 'People want to understand what kind of psychological position are you in to do that? And why would you do that? And who else are you? 'Once you get past all the establishment points of view, or the traditional reactions to a traitor, people want to know more,' he says. Viewers remain curious about Philby, Carey believes, because of his status as a traitor.

What I was trying to imagine was really a state of mind that was beginning to change-and Philby's grip on his superpower beginning to slip away, and be replaced by indifference.' 'But that said, it's based in truth and conversations with Ben and my own research as well.

'We know nothing about it so I can make anything I want up,' he jokes to Town & Country. The decision to focus on Philby's defection, rather than his choice to spy for the Soviets, was a straightforward one for the show's creator and writer Alexander Carey. Not much is known about what happened to Philby after he left the UK, which makes his story ripe for dramatization. Based on Ben Macintyre's book of the same name, A Spy Among Friends seeks to understand why Philby fled to the Soviet Union, and how he got away with being a double agent for so long.

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