Entertainment
Eddie Redmayne says preparing for The Day of the Jackal role almost ended in off-set disaster
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.
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Eddie Redmayne’s kids want him to play a ‘goodie’.
“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.
The Jackal getting out of one of his disguises. Pic: Sky UK
Pic: Sky UK/ Carnival Film & Television Limited 2024
“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.”
Lashana Lynch plays an intelligence officer hunting down the Jackal. Pic: Sky UK
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.”
Redmayne alongside co-star Ursula Cobero. Pic: Sky UK/ Carnival Film & Television Ltd 2024
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.
The Day Of The Jackal cast at the London premiere. Pic: PA
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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.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet executives, donning Halloween costumes, faced questions from concerned employees at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, following comments on the company’s earnings call suggesting that more cost cuts are coming.
“There is a reality to it,” said Brian Ong, vice president of Google recruiting, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by CNBC. “We are hiring less than we did a couple of years ago.”
Ong, who was specifically responding to a question about retention and promotion opportunities, added that fewer positions are open and geographic hiring has changed, “so you may see fewer roles available where you are.”
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
The meeting came after Alphabet reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and revenue Tuesday, sparking a rally in the stock. On a call with investors, CFO Anat Ashkenazi, who recently succeeded Ruth Porat, proclaimed she wanted to “push a little further” with cost savings across the company.
Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, wore a starfish costume to the meeting, while Ashkenazi sported a jersey of former Indiana Pacers star Reggie Miller. CEO Sundar Pichai wore a black t-shirt that read “ERROR 404 COSTUME NOT FOUND” with an image of a pixelated dinosaur.
Ashkenazi said one of her key priorities in the new role would be to make more cuts as Google expands its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025.
It’s a theme that began in 2023, when the economy and market turned, and has continued since. Google has been restructuring its workforce to move more quickly in the AI arms race, where it faces increased competition. That’s included layoffs, organizational shake-ups, and has led to workers feeling a “decline in morale,” as CNBC previously reported.
Over the last couple of months, Google has made cuts to its marketing, cloud and security teams in Silicon Valley, as well as in its trust and safety unit.
Google is far from alone. Dropbox this week announced it will lay off 20% of its global workforce, while Amazon continues shuttering various projects. Within Google, employees have expressed concern that the company is preparing for more layoffs, possibly after the end of the year, according to internal correspondence viewed by CNBC.
Pichai joked that the quarterly call was perfect preparation for Ashkenazi ahead of the company meeting.
“I was telling Anat yesterday, earnings calls are a piece of cake compared to TGIF the next day,” Pichai said, to laughs from attendees.
Some employee comments and questions included praise for “another great quarter,” success in chip advancements and improvements in Google’s hit AI note-taking tool NotebookLM. However, other questions expressed fear of what greater cost efficiencies would mean for the workforce.
“What exactly was meant by the comments on further efficiencies in headcount”? one question asked, pointing to Ashkenazi’s comments from the call.
Ashkenazi didn’t share any more details but said employees are “one of the most important assets we have.” She said that the company is investing in people and that it hired 1,000 new graduates in the third quarter.
‘Extraordinary period of capex advancement’
Pichai, who’s been preaching efficiency for almost two years, chimed in to echo past sentiment.
“If you have to do something new and it’s going to take 10 people, if you can find a way to do it with eight people by making smart trade-offs somewhere and aligning teams better, that’s an example of finding efficiencies in headcount as well,” Pichai said.
In response to another question about ongoing layoffs and reorganizations and what might be coming in the future, Pichai said, “If we are making companywide decisions, we’ll definitely let you know.”
He said the company is spending heavily on AI at the moment, but the need to ramp up those expenses won’t last forever.
“We are going through an extraordinary period of capex advancement,” Pichai said. “When you have these technology shifts, at the earlier stages, you invest disproportionately and then the curve gets better and that’s the transition as an industry we are working through.”
He added that not all of the cuts are decided on by top executives.
“It’s not like all of these decisions are centrally done at a company level,” he said. “And so, at the scale of our company, there could be moments where there are small groups of people impacted.”
Ashkenazi on Tuesday mentioned that one way to get more cost efficiency is by using AI internally. The company said 25% of new code is now generated by AI.
In response to a question about productivity, Brian Saluzzo, head of “Core” developers, said that while the 25% refers to low-level tasks, leadership is in the midst of “expanding to more complex areas” within the company.
“Core” refers to the teams that build the technical foundation underlying Google’s flagship products. In May, CNBC reported that Google laid off more than 200 employees from its Core engineering teams, in a reorganization that included rehiring some roles in India and Mexico.
Pichai followed up by saying, “In this transition moment, across all functions, everywhere in the company, it’s worth challenging us to think where we can use AI to be more productive.”
He added that through 2025, the workforce should “strive to do more” and “help customers around the world take those learnings as well.”
Environment
Tesla hires celebrity ambassador despite Elon Musk saying they don’t pay for endorsements
Tesla has hired a celebrity ambassador, a departure from Elon Musk’s policy of not paying for celebrity endorsements.
Musk has often bragged about the fact that Tesla doesn’t pay for celebrity endorsements in contrast to other automakers who hire celebrity brand ambassadors to promote their cars.
Much like advertising, Musk seems to be abandoning this strategy.
Tesla announced that it hired Olympic shooter Kim Ye-ji, whose performance at the Paris Olympics this summer went viral, to be the automaker’s brand ambassador in Korea.
Kim said about her new partnership with Tesla:
I’m very excited to work with Tesla, who have recognized me. I hope to convey a positive message together with Tesla.”
Here are a few pictures released to announce her new partnership with Tesla:
Kim’s agency said that her relationship with Tesla started from CEO Elon Musk tweeting about her viral performance at the Olympics:
“The relationship between Kim Ye-ji and Tesla developed after Elon Musk mentioned her. The company said that Kim is Tesla Korea’s first brand ambassador.”
She is not only Tesla Korea’s first ambassador, but she is the first known paid celebrity ambassador for Tesla globally.
The policy change is not entirely surprising since the policy of Musk not paying celebrities to endorse Tesla’s products was often attached to the automaker’s strategy not to advertise.
Musk went as far as to say that he “hates advertising,” and Tesla started advertising last year.
The change in strategy coincidently, or not, came after Musk bought Twitter, a company relying on advertising, and Tesla even started to advertise on Twitter, now called X.
Tesla sales in Korea haven’t been amazing, but the country’s auto market greatly favors domestic brands. The American automaker does fairly well for a foreign brand with the Model Y becoming the best-selling imported vehicle in Korea during the first half of 2024.
Although, it amounted to just over 10,000 units.
Electrek’s Take
It’s a change of strategy, and Elon certainly can’t claim that Tesla doesn’t pay for celebrities to endorse its products, but it is probably a smart move due to the fact that Koreans prefer domestic brands.
Kim could help create a deeper level of attachment to the Tesla brand, but I don’t really know. I’m just speculating.
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