Eddie Redmayne says he nearly ended up in hot water off-set whilst filming new Sky Atlantic show The Day of the Jackal.

Speaking to Sky News about the challenges of modernising Frederick Forsyth’s acclaimed novel, the Oscar-winning actor said it took months of intensive preparation to play a character that assumes a range of different ages and nationalities.

“What’s interesting about the Jackal is in some ways he is an actor and this whole series was a kind of actor’s playground,” he explained.

“I am a sucker for process… so it was languages, it was prosthetics, different costumes… and then all the gun work as well… I had about three or four months prepping, and it was pretty fun.”

From the first episode, the actor was required to casually be able to construct a gun out of the internal workings of a wheelie case. While he’d already been given advanced weapons training, his eagerness to take props home to practice could have nearly ended in his arrest.

“There is a moment at which the Jackal constructs this rifle…it is a beautiful bit of prop design…and I’m a really shoddy prop actor, so in Budapest, I asked the prop master if I could take home this case with me to work on it in the hotel,” he said.

“I was in the midst of eating some goulash and I suddenly went ‘Argh’ as I realised that I had left this gigantic sniper’s rifle – and the hotel was basically the equivalent of Trafalgar Square – pointing out a window and it was about to be the turndown service.

“I remember running down the corridor and the person that works in the hotel pushing down the towels [trolley] and some extra little toiletries and I just barged through the door and deconstructed this thing… otherwise that could have been a moment because it looked pretty persuasive.”

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Keeping the action mostly contained onscreen, the star acknowledges it is a risky gamble to attempt a modern reboot of a much-loved classic.

He explained: “I loved it since I was a kid and so when the scripts arrived in my inbox there was definitely a moment of trepidation.”

Forsyth’s acclaimed novel has had many lives since it came out in the early 70s, but the 1973 film version is how most people will remember the cat and mouse thriller, including its leading man.

“The original film was very much a binary sense of good and evil,” Redmayne said.

“We live in a world now, certainly in social media, in which things dictate that there is a right and a wrong and the grey territory is harder to navigate, I suppose… the series makes some sort of gestures towards that.”

In the 10-part TV Sky Atlantic series, viewers will see that the Jackal is still an elite assassin carrying out a seemingly impossible hit. But, in this version, James Bond star Lashana Lynch plays an intelligence officer hunting him down.

The show takes in the rise of right-wing extremism, tech megalomaniacs and themes of assassination.

With the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, and a terrifying cycle of violence and assassination in the Middle East, there is something that feels eerily prescient about the timing of the modern reboot.

“What the series does [show] is that there’s ambiguity in everyone and I feel that that’s kind of where we’re at slightly in the world,” Redmayne said.

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For the actor, the final pulse-raising moment will be finding out what fans and his family make of the drama, not that he’ll be tuning in personally.

“Truth be told, nothing would pain me more than watching myself on screen, so I won’t be doing that… but I will be encouraging my family to watch it… it was my dad’s favourite film,” he said.

The Day of the Jackal is out on Sky Atlantic and NOW on 7 November.

It’s easy to see why Anora, the film currently creating a lot of awards buzz, is being described as a modern day Pretty Woman.

It tells the story of a young woman, a sex worker, who ends up falling in love with a very rich man; this time round, he’s the son of a Russian oligarch.

But the similarities end there. More than 30 years on from Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ famous Hollywood ending, Anora takes the sugar-coating away from the realities of sex work.

It is one of those rare films that has already impressed critics – taking the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and now leading the nominations at the Gotham Awards – but will also appeal to a wider audience looking for something fun and smart, too.

It is the latest story from writer-director Sean Baker, a filmmaker who often focuses on marginalised people and has covered sex work in several of his previous works, from a retired porn star in Red Rocket to a transgender sex worker in Tangerine, and a character who solicits sex work online in The Florida Project.

The theme was never intentional, he tells Sky News, but after discovering more about the industry he realised he wanted to tell these stories.

“I never imagined me making five films in a row focused on sex work,” he says. “It just happened to be that when I started doing research on the first one, I met sex workers, became friends with sex workers, and discovered that there were a million stories to be told in that world. And each one can be individual and very different, being that there’s so many aspects of sex work, so one led to the next.

“I don’t know if it will continue, I’m not sure, it has to happen organically though – I’d never want it to be a shtick of mine, you know, I want it to be something I’m inspired to do and there has to be a reason behind it.”

‘The sex work community is amazing’

Mikey Madison, who plays the lead character Anora – or Ani for short – is now tipped for best actress nominations come awards season next year.

She says she immersed herself in the world of her character when preparing for the role.

“I think that I went into the research not with much knowledge about sex work, and so I was able to learn a lot and educate myself in a way that I don’t know I would have if it weren’t for this film,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have that experience because the sex work community is amazing and I’ve made so many incredible friends.”

But that wasn’t the only prep Madison had to do. She’s listed in the credits as helping to choreograph her character’s dances, and she also had to learn Russian – though admits she’s out of practise again now.

“My Duolingo app has been bothering me trying to get me back into it. I think I just haven’t had a chance to practise any of it, but on the last handful of days of shooting, I was able to listen to pretty full conversations and understand what they were talking about. And at this point, I think it’s gone, but maybe I’ll be able to redevelop it.”

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When Anora competed at Cannes in May it won the Palme d’Or, the top prize for the best feature film.

Baker says the win was far more than just a tick off his bucket list.

“I think it was the bucket list! I mean, that was it,” he says. “It’s been incredible, it really has been, and I really didn’t expect it – we were just so happy to be in competition at Cannes, and next thing you know we’re at the awards ceremony, and next thing you know I’m up on stage and George Lucas is handing me the Palme d’Or.”

“So, yeah, it’s life changing.”

Anora is out in cinemas in the UK today

Tiger King star Joe Exotic has announced he is engaged to a fellow prison inmate. 

The 61-year-old, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado, revealed on X that he plans to marry 33-year-old Jorge Marquez.

“He is so amazing and is from Mexico,” he wrote. “Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we [will] be leaving America when we both get out.

“Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”

Exotic rose to fame on the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King, which followed the rivalry between his zoo and a big cat sanctuary run by Carole Baskin.

He is serving a 21-year prison sentence after trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin, who had accused him of treating his animals poorly.

Prosecutors said Exotic had offered $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill his rival, telling them: “Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.”

Exotic has always denied the accusations, and his lawyers said he was not being serious.

The 61-year-old was also convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.

His zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, has since closed down.

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Exotic is reported to have said he has submitted a marriage application to the federal prison to wed Mr Marquez.

Exotic famously had an unofficial three-way marriage with long-time partner John Finlay and then 19-year-old Travis Maldonado. Mr Maldonado and Exotic later officially married in 2015, but Finlay became estranged.

In October 2017, Mr Maldonado died from a self-inflicted, accidental gunshot wound.

Two months later, Exotic married Dillon Passage, but Passage later announced he was filing for divorce.