Sep 05, 2026 8:00pm IST
Sir Gary Oldman on Effortlessly Slipping Back Into His ‘Slow Horses’ Character: ‘I Could Do Jackson Lamb In An Instant’
Sir Gary Oldman has had a nearly five-decade-long career as an actor, and has played some iconic characters, such as Count Dracula, Sirius Black in “Harry Potter” and Commissioner James Gordon to Christopher Nolan’s Batman in “The Dark Knight” trilogy. But the character he’s played for the longest, most continuous and uninterrupted time has been MI5 spy Jackson Lamb on Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” which is currently poised to drop its sixth season.
Since April 2022, “Slow Horses” has been swifter than most shows of its time, releasing six seasons of six episodes each in three years. That means the 68-year-old actor has spent a major part of the last three years in character.
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He says, “It's been interesting playing a character like this, like the lead in something. I've done it with ‘Harry Potter’, and I've done it with the ‘Batman’ trilogy, but that was sort of infrequent. It's not as continuous as this. And we're all very comfortable now in these characters. I could literally do Jackson Lamb in an instant, right now. It’s like you carry the DNA of the thing around with you. It does get under your skin a bit. It's not that I am thinking of or conscious of Jackson Lamb in my everyday life or when I'm not playing him. But he's there, you know? I can switch him on now.”
Now, Jackson Lamb of Slough House is one peculiar man. His office is a mess; he himself is rather unkempt, with greasy hair and a mean mouth. And Oldman has become so synonymous with the character that he feels the need to clarify he isn’t like that in real life, lest “Slow Horses” hound his co-actors about the truth. “I don't smell, just for people who are wondering! Because people ask Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden, ‘Does he smell? Well, I don't smell. It's all smoke and mirrors, you know? It's all makeup and hair gel.’”
Jackson Lamb’s most talked-about trait—other than his ability to pull his Slow Horses out of tough spots by leveraging those incredible, Cold War-trained espionage skills—is that he eats with abandon and farts unabashedly. Naturally, the question on everyone’s mind is how much of Jackson Lamb has seeped into Gary Oldman’s daily life. Has he picked up any of his not-so-savory habits?
“Well, I would hope not!” remarks the actor. “I do like junk food occasionally. I try to avoid it, but I do like junk food. I don't smoke. I don't drink anymore. I'm much softer than him, too. And because Jackson Lamb has no filter, he'll be very, very direct with people. But I don't want confrontation. Life's too short! And maybe I liked to rough it up a bit when I was younger, but now I don't want to hurt people's feelings or make them feel less than or uncomfortable. As for Lamb, there's a side of him that actually takes pleasure in that. So, I hope I've not picked up anything. Oh, and I haven't farted since 1971, so…!”
Season 6 puts Jackson Lamb’s team in hot water with someone systematically targeting Slough House members, one by one. Oldman is joined this season by Jack Lowden and Kristin Scott Thomas alongside Saskia Reeves, Christopher Chung, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Rosalind Eleazar, Joanna Scanlan, Samuel West, Ruth Bradley, Tom Brooke, Jonathan Pryce, Hugo Weaving, with Olivia Cooke returning after Season 1 and Lenny Rush as the newest addition.
“Slow Horses” Season 6 premieres on Apple TV globally on September 16, 2026, with its first episode, followed by one episode weekly until October 21, 2026.
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