How to Get Cast on ‘The Day of the Jackal’

The Day of the Jackal is a 10-part TV miniseries following the Jackal, an assassin for hire, as he hunts his prey and tries not to get caught. Hot on his trail is MI6 officer Bianca Pullman, who becomes obsessed with tracking down this deadly but illusive hitman.

Playing the title role is Oscar winner Redmayne, who told The Hollywood Reporter that he was immediately drawn to the character: “One of the appeals is he [the Jackal] is an actor, and he’s relatively accomplished as an actor. He’s also a quite ingenious makeup artist and linguist and physical transformer, and I found joy in the fact he was perhaps more comfortable when playing other characters. There’s a celebration in this character of performance.”

On Season 1, Bond star Lashana Lynch plays the Jackal’s main pursuer, intelligence officer Bianca. She told Red magazine what attracted her to the character: “She just has a bite that is ugly and ferocious sometimes, and just makes you want to root for her. But it also makes you terrified for her choices, which is just so fun to play.” 

Rounding out the cast are a top team of supporting actors including Úrsula Corberó, Eleanor Matsuura, Chukwudi Iwuji, Khalid Abdalla, Lia Williams, and Charles Dance. 

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The Day of the Jackal is based on Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling 1971 novel of the same name. The book has been adapted for the screen before, notably into a classic 1973 movie starring Edward Fox, in which his Jackal plots to kill French president Charles de Gaulle.

“I loved the original movie and the Frederick Forsyth book,” Redmayne said in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So when the first three scripts arrived in my inbox, there was a level of hesitation because you don’t want to butcher something you love.” 

But, he added, “I read the first episode or two of this series and I found it so propulsive and compelling and the character so enigmatic, that I just wanted to know what happened next.”

The new TV version is produced by the UK’s Carnival Films, most famous for making Downton Abbey. Writer Ronan Bennett (Top Boy) was hired to update the book, introducing modern-day elements such as tech billionaires and extreme right-wing politics, while also staying true to the pace of the original. 

Directors included Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones) and Anu Menon (Killing Eve), with Sky in the UK and Peacock in the US acting as co-producers and broadcasters. Redmayne and Lynch also stepped up as executive producers, with Redmayne calling the project “a year and a half’s worth of an all-consuming commitment.”

It seems that hard work paid off: In the UK, Jackal became Sky’s top-rated original of all time after just a week on air, and Season 2 has already been commissioned. The Day of the Jackal will return but (spoiler alert!) the death of Lynch’s character in the last episode means the casting department still have some work to do before production can start again.

Part of Jackal’s allure is its array of glamorous locations. As well as London and Spain, the show drops into Sweden, Germany, Northern Ireland, New York, and Afghanistan – even if many of the scenes were actually shot in London, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria. 

Redmayne told The Hollywood Reporter that the Jackal’s globetrotting made production far from simple. “It made the logistics incredibly complex, particularly when you’re filming with four different directors and jumping between blocks and trying to keep the character centered and detailed,” he said. “It was definitely a needle that needed threading, but part of the challenge.”

Filming hasn’t yet begun for Season 2, but considering that the shoot for the first season took roughly seven months plus another 12 months in postproduction before it came out in autumn 2024, it’s likely the earliest fans can expect the new season is 2026.

The casting directors for the first season of The Day of the Jackal were the BAFTA-winning, powerhouse duo Martin Ware (Baby Reindeer) and the legendary Nina Gold. Their approach balanced well-established actors like Redmayne and Lynch with new and emerging talent, ensuring a fresh and dynamic ensemble.

Madrid native Jon Arias, who plays the Jackal’s Spanish brother-in-law, told London Beautiful Life he got the role after sending in a self-tape, and then “lots of months went by.” He was doing a play in Argentina when his agent rang to say that he’d got the part. His friend Corberó, who plays the Jackal’s wife, was offered the role straightaway, but, as she told MovieZine, she actually asked for an audition because she had “many questions,” mainly about the kind of dialect she’d have to use!

Gold talked to Backstage about her general process, calling auditions a “safe space to try stuff out.” When it comes to finding the next big thing, she said she’s always looking. “I go to the theatre a lot and I see people in mainstream theatre as well as weird small-scale fringe theatre,” she said. “I also go to drama schools and shows by drama groups a lot as well. I’m looking in all sorts of different places for people, trying to see people actually doing some acting.”

Keep an eye out on Backstage’s casting pages for more information about audition opportunities. 

You’re primed and ready to show the Jackal creatives what you’ve got, but what about some final words of advice for when you’re actually in the room?

Ware recently told Spotlight about a common mistake actors make when auditioning: “I think with some less experienced young actors, the nervousness can mean that they don’t always listen to notes. They’ll do a scene through and then you might give them a few ideas or a few ways to change it, and they’re just in a place where they aren’t listening and then they don’t enact that thing. This is hard to do because, of course, getting nervous before an audition is normal and, sometimes, helpful. Just be able to come in with an idea of something and then be ready to listen and change things up.”  

Although Redmayne didn’t have to audition for his Jackal role, he told Backstage in 2015 why that hiring process has its drawbacks. “Being cast without auditioning is a weird one for actors. In some ways it’s a dream, but if you have a bit of self-doubt, which most of us do, you think, What if I turn up on day one, open my mouth, and they say, ‘You’re not going to do it like that, are you?’ In some sense you want to audition because [then] you’ve shown the people in charge some sense of what you’re going to do.”

Talking to BAFTA in 2016, Redmayne shared “the best piece of audition advice I’ve ever got.” He described often leaving auditions “nervous and frustrated having given an eighth of what I felt I could give.” Then director Joe Wright told him how American actors “ran the room,” asking to run lines, redoing takes if they weren’t happy, and only leaving when they’d done their best. Redmayne said it changed the way he approached auditions from then on. 

Finally, remember that sometimes auditioning can be a good idea even when it goes badly. In his own words, Redmayne told Happy Sad Confused podcast that he did a “catastrophically bad” audition for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens – but the casting director was none other than Gold. As so often in acting, what goes around comes around.

So why not take a shot? Good luck!