There are few actors who can make a room feel more intelligent simply by walking into it. Jonathan Pryce has spent decades playing kings, popes, spies, judges, revolutionaries, and men who know considerably more than they’re willing to reveal—and, as David Cartwright in Slow Horses, he’s earned an Emmy nomination for bringing something especially complicated to the screen: a man whose greatest weapon may once have been his memory, and whose greatest vulnerability is that he can no longer fully trust it. In “Scars,” the Season 5 finale, Pryce delivers a performance that is as heartbreaking as it is quietly formidable, turning Cartwright’s unraveling into one of the series’ most powerful stories.
In this conversation with Awards Buzz’s Sari Cohen, he reflects on the scenes that have stayed with him, the responsibility of portraying dementia with honesty and dignity, and the unseen life he created for a man whose history stretches far beyond what the audience is told.
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