Posted in: TV | Tagged: Maigret

Maigret Stars Wainwright & Okwok on Opening Up Creative Opportunities

Maigret stars Benjamin Wainwright and Shaniqua Okwok on showrunner Patrick Harbinson and the creative opportunities a younger Maigret brings.

When Patrick Harbinson adapted Maigret for modern audiences, there was the obvious scrutiny from creative changes to the setting, right down to the actor cast in the title role, something Doctor Who fans are also grossly familiar with. As the younger Benjamin Wainwright (The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim) was cast, Harbinson made the conscious decision to depict the character in his youth and rising through the ranks of the Paris Police Judiciaire as Chief Inspector. Like the previous incarnations, the new Jules Maigret will also rely on his team of detectives, called La Crim, to work with him on cases, including Det. Berthe Janvier (Shaniqua Okwok), an adaptation of Georges Simenon's original works. Wainwright and Okwok spoke to Bleeding Cool about providing context for how Harbinson works, and what Wainwright can explore in a younger version of Maigret that his predecessors haven't done before.

Maigret Stars Benjamin Wainwright and Shaniqua Okwok on Showrunner Patrick Harbinson's Versatility, Modernizing, and Character's Youth

BC: What was Patrick Harbinson like as a creative, and how did he drive the show in modernizing it?

Okwok: We're so lucky to have Patrick. There's something to be said when you're creating a show that has gone before. It's almost like, "Why create the show again? Why are we doing it? What is the reason? Why does this have a purpose now?" Patrick was clear on his why, and so it meant that we were safe on set when he would say, "I don't think this is Janvier" or "Could you try the line like this, exactly as it's written?" He was clear on the show that he wanted to create.

It's great to have someone who is leading the ship, because otherwise, you get all this chaos, and the show ends up being a product that isn't very good, but we have a great show, because that comes from the top, which is Patrick who did so much research and knew the world, people, and individuals he wanted to create. He cared about every character, whether that was Maigret or someone who was only coming for a day.

[Patrick] cares about all those characters, the stories, and how they fit into the world. If we didn't have him, I think we'd have a completely different show, and that's not just because of the writing, but him as a spirit, as someone so kind who really listens to everyone. He's great at listening and respecting what you have to bring to the table, so it was very collaborative, and we're fortunate to have Patrick steering the ship with us.

Wainwright: To echo everything Shaniqua said, Patrick's experience on things like 24 and Homeland, he knows how to bring a character to the screen and make you care about it.

Okwok: Mm-hmm.

Wainwright: We were fortunate that he wrote, showran, and then directed episodes one and two because we felt very safe with him.

Okwok: "Safe," that's a good word.

Wainwright: What he wrote was what he wanted. We didn't often diverge far from what he wrote before, because he writes with such precision and economy, and the days when we were pushing back slightly against what he had written, oftentimes after 40 minutes of doing the scene, we would come back to what he'd written. He would have stayed quiet throughout and let us do it our way, and then by the time we'd realized the scene was about what he'd said, he would just be like, "Okay," and he was so…

Okwok: Humble.

Wainwright: He was so humble and had such a lovely presence on set. He knows how to get the best out of people, and he was probably the person smiling widest and laughing loudest most days. When that's the big boss, you hope he's happy with the product, for one, but it's great to have all that energy on set. As far as "modernizing," he recognized what's not been in previous iterations of Maigret is the humor and the wit, and we've only seen people have a problem with this Maigret, because it's contemporary. Simenon was writing contemporary Maigret stories at the time; he never intended them as period pieces. What Patrick has done is a lot simpler and less invasive than what people think. He's given us modern Paris in the same way Simenon, if he were still writing with mobile phones and GPS. He's embraced all those complications and kept the essence of Maigret, and that's a high-wire act to pull off, and he has.

Benjamin, what are the advantages of playing Maigret in his youth, and what was the most difficult aspect of capturing his essence?

Wainwright: This Maigret, as I said, is in his late thirties, like me. He's only just taken on the mantle of Chief Inspector. Everything feels a bit new. He's got all these new authorities to engage with, new powers perhaps, but also a lot of press attention that often gets in the way of his solving a case. He'd much prefer to operate quietly in the shadows, but there are all these things suddenly coming at him, and he doesn't necessarily know how to handle them. He reacts sometimes with moodiness, sometimes with aggression. He's trying to hold on to his strict moral code while also showing some humanity, levity, and humor as young people do. That's what we try and combat the stresses of life with, and I got the opportunity to have a bit of a twinkle in the eye, a bit more than perhaps other Maigrets have had the opportunity to do who have gone down the path of a very staid, very ruminative, and slow-moving and thinking Maigret. This is a Maigret, who tends to act a little bit more before he thinks, and that causes all sorts of problems for himself, but it's a delight as an actor to be a little bit out of control. Long story short, it allows me to lose control a bit more.

Maigret, which also stars Stefanie Martini, Natalie Armin, Reda Elazouar, Blake Harrison, Kerrie Hayes, and Rob Kazinsky, airs Sundays through November 9th on MASTERPIECE Mystery! on PBS and is available to stream via PBS and PBS MASTERPIECE on Prime Video.

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