Rory Kinnear hails 'funny and serious' Honey
Rory Kinnear has explained what drew him to starring in Honey, the new BBC series.
Rory Kinnear loved straddling the line between "funny and serious" in Honey.
The 48-year-old actor stars alongside Ann Skelly and Nate Mann in Honey, the new espionage TV series, and Rory has explained why he jumped at the chance to appear in the Emma Moran-created show.
He told the BBC: "I simply knew within the first scene that Emma was really remarkable and I wanted to sidle up to her career on the rise, rather than when it's finally gone so stratospheric that she wouldn't be interested in me!
"It's a very difficult sell to hit funny and serious, to hit funny and clever, and to hit funny and dramatically propulsive. Emma's got her eye on all of those, all at the same time."
Honey is set during the Cold War, but Rory believes the issues are still relatable to a modern audience.
The actor explained: "For me, the central themes are about identity and who we are.
"Obviously, in a world in which no one is allowed to be themselves, how do you know who you are? How do you hold on to yourself?
"That is the historic part of 1982 East Berlin. But in terms of the UK or around the world in 2026, it’s that challenge of looking inwards when you feel like you're having to be someone else. How can you be yourself when everybody wants you to be something else? And how can you make yourself happy as well as others? That all feels just as relevant today as it was then."
Rory's on-screen character, Graham, works for the British government as the Press Attache to the embassy in Berlin.
Asked where Graham's morals lie, the actor replied: "Graham is very proud of the life that Britain has given him.
"He's very proud of protecting the freedoms that he believes are sacrosanct, that the West has. He sees what communism has tried to do in the countries where it has power as terribly pernicious.
"He has enough information now from having worked in Berlin to see the effect that it has on the people under it."
