How much are you trying to balance the action pieces with reality?

Knightley: [To Barton] How much are we balancing reality?

Barton: Well, it’s a tricky balancing act, isn’t it?

Knightley: Yes, it is.

Barton: I would say we’re not always balancing it.

Knightley: It’s a foot off the floor. A good foot off the floor, sometimes two feet off the floor.

Barton: A couple of meters off the floor! We get talked about a lot with “Slow Horses,” because obviously [they’re both] London spy shows. I think the big difference between us and them is ostensibly “Slow Horses” takes place in the real world, and I don’t think we do. There are obviously recognizable elements of the real world, but fundamentally it’s more me taking a chapter out of the James Bond or “Mission Impossible” book, where you can have these almost flights of fantasy. We have our cake and eat it too, basically.

Knightley: That’s the idea, isn’t it.

Barton: With the prime minister’s wife, my argument is always I don’t actually know what Keir Starmer’s wife looks like.

Knightley: When we were shooting, it was Keir Starmer’s wife [Starmer resigned in June], and we were all like, “Actually, I don’t know her name particularly, and I don’t know what she looks like.” So we were all very pleased about that, because we were like, “See? She could be doing anything.”