In 'Monsieur Spade', Clive Owen channels Humphrey Bogart

LONDON — Getting a phone call to play Sam Spade seems destined for Clive Owen. The protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, “The Maltese Falcon,” has appeared on screen in many versions, most famously in 1941 played by Humphrey Bogart. But Owen's performance as the hardline detective in the limited series “Monsieur Spade,” from creators Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, reimagines the character beyond Hammett's own writing.

“It's one of the favorite things I've ever done,” Owen says in an interview at London's Charlotte Street Hotel. “I'm a crazy Bogart fan. I have an original poster for 'The Maltese Falcon'. When Scott called me, I sent him a photo of my poster and said, 'You've come to the right person.'”

Clive Owen calls himself a “crazy Bogart fan.” Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in 1941's “The Maltese Falcon.”

(Jennifer McCord / for The Times)

The AMC series, which premieres Sunday, came about after producer Carlo Martinelli obtained Sam Spade's rights to the Hammett property and approached Frank, creator of “The Queen's Gambit” and Netflix's “Godless.” , to write an original show based on the detective. At first, Frank wasn't sure. But he soon realized that there was something compelling about deconstructing an icon later in his life.

“What if Sam Spade grew up, the guy who smokes, drinks and has relationships with inappropriate women? What would happen to that guy?” says Frank, who set the series 20 years after the events of “The Maltese Falcon,” with Spade semi-retired in the south of France. “With this kind of male American hero, what is the reality? If you live like this, he gives you emphysema.”

After teaming up with “Oz” creator Fontana, who suggested scheduling the story until the end of the Algerian War in the early '60s, the writers immediately settled on Spade.

“Clive was pretty much the only person we got to see playing him,” says Frank. “When you start writing, you always say, 'Well, let's make a list.' As I remember, our list never went beyond Clive.”

Although Owen seems like an obvious choice for a noir thriller, he hasn't had the chance to fully explore the genre. Several years ago, the British actor was cast as Raymond Chandler's famous fictional detective Philip Marlowe, but he says the studio failed to secure a good enough script. The project “kind of fizzled out,” as Owen says. With “Monsieur Spade,” Owen relished the opportunity to be a part of something nostalgic and new at the same time.

Clive Owen with his hands on his chin in a dark room with a beam of light on his face.

“Scott and I had lunch in New York after he started writing to talk about early scripts,” Owen says. And I told him: 'Don't be scared.' But I listen to a lot of Bogart and I want to base my voice on him. I'm not going to do a bad Bogart impersonation; It's just the rhythm, the intonation.' And he said, 'That's very strange because as I'm writing this, I have to listen to Bogart say the dialogue.'”

Owen recruited his assistant to record all of Bogart's lines from “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca” in voice memos on his phone. Every morning, before and during filming, Owen listened to the dialogue and studied the cadence and speed of the actor's speech.

“He talks very fast,” Owen says of Bogart. “You think he's pretty laconic. You think he has it easy. But he is super agile vocally. He breaks the dialogue with great ease. What I love about Bogart is that he doesn't milk anything, he doesn't overdo it. If he has good dialogue, he breaks it down and lets the rhythm do the work.”

Owen was cast almost a year before production, which took place in 2022. He had recently starred in two very different series, Stephen King's television adaptation of “Lisey's Story” for Apple TV+ and FX's “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” in which he played Bill Clinton. He was intense in preparing him to play Spade, something he says he does with every project. He worked with a dialect coach to improve his American accent and also had to consider where the show would take place, in Bozouls, France.

A man stands in the open driver's side door of a small brown and white car.

“I thought, 'I have plenty of time. I'm going to learn French,'” Owen says. “I started with a classical French teacher and spent a lot of time learning things that don't apply. I didn't need to know the grammar. I'm not going to have an exam. I needed to be able to pronounce the lines, so I learned it phonetically. “I learned French the same way I learned the American accent.”

The six episodes, which follow a new Sam Spade mystery, were filmed near Montpellier and in Bozouls, as well as in a studio outside Paris. Owen says he didn't prepare much physically beyond going to the gym “a little bit” because he knew he would do nude swimming scenes. But he remained deeply immersed in dialogue preparation even when filming began.

“What's remarkable about Clive's performance is that he suggests Bogart, but he never imitates, never parodies,” Fontana says. “He Not only does he have an American accent but he also speaks French. So he was juggling three balls all the time, in every scene.”

Frank remembers “routinely” going over the script on set because Owen practiced his lines so frequently. The actor would question the dialogue or ask questions about intent.

“It's always helpful because it comes from him really thinking about the character and always understanding the story,” Frank says. “You hope to find the actor who makes the material come to life. [where] “One plus one equals three, and that is certainly Clive.”

For Owen, serious preparation means he'll feel more comfortable once the camera is rolling. He wanted each line to “seem like the most natural thing in the world.” He focused on embracing the duality of the writing, which is both realistic and heightened due to the noir style.

Clive Owen leaning on a reflection of himself.

“It's great to have dialogue that's smarter than you'd say,” Owen says. “But you have to make it as easy as possible and I loved that. It's a joy for an actor when you get a really good script, where you feel like you have to live up to it instead of trying to make it work.”

That approach characterizes much of Owen's career, which began in British television in the early '90s. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and is a trained stage actor, which he says reflects his belief that You have to be as equipped as possible. Filming, for Owen, is practical.

“Listen, there are no rules,” he says. “Some actors don't prepare, but they can take another actor off the screen with what they do. But if you have done theater, you prepare yourself. If you like [to work with] people like Steven Soderbergh or Scott Frank, you have to come prepared because they don't do a lot of takes.”

While making the FX limited series Murder at the End of the World, Owen had sessions with creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij every Sunday to discuss the upcoming week. Marling, who calls Owen's preparation “fierce,” remembers going over each scene “with a fine-toothed comb.”

“Sometimes these sessions lasted hours, but it seemed like they went by in 20 minutes,” he says. “And that's because his grades were always brilliant and never came from a place of ego. Sometimes he literally took off the lines. Because she always approached it from a place that was true to the story and honest to the expression of the character.”

Owen joined the series as tech billionaire Andy Ronson because he loved the way Marling and Batmanglij “broke all the rules” in their storytelling. The finale aired last month. “It seemed relevant to me and it's not like all those murder mysteries we've seen before,” he says. “There's something very refreshing when people are bold like that.”

A man wearing glasses and a dark cardigan sits at the head of a table next to a woman and two other men.

Initially, Owen's character seems necessary, but the story's unexpected twists allowed the actor to get closer to him without basing Andy on a particular real-life figure.

“I just took a look at those people and how they behave,” the actor says. “With all those guys there must come a point where you become paranoid about who you can trust. You are that powerful. And no one else around you is as powerful. So trusting people would be quite difficult and that seemed to be the key for me. You’re probably looking over your shoulder all the time.”

Marling initially considered Owen for the role because he has historically been called upon to play what she calls “the seer.” She noted his performances in films like “Inside Man” and “Children of Men” when she chose Andy.

“I think he's often called upon to play that because he has those qualities as a person: a fierce intelligence, a deep curiosity, and a relentless drive to discover,” Marling says. “He is first and foremost a character detective, and he won't be satisfied until he discovers the truth of what motivates that person. And he is never what you think he will be.”

Over the last decade, Owen has become an essential part of the television landscape, although he was known primarily as a movie star. His role as Dr. John W. Thackery on Steven Soderbergh's “The Knick,” which ran for two seasons from 2014 to 2015, is one of the defining television characters of the era. But for Owen, the shocking series finale was the final end for Thackery, who apparently died while undergoing surgery on himself.

“They had some crazy ideas [about going back to it], but I always knew how I was going to leave the program,” he says. “I was there for two seasons and that's how it was going to end at the end, which I loved.”

Owen's focus on television since then has not been intentional; He says his career choices are defined by the quality of the work, not the medium. He admits he gets sent “quite a bit” when it comes to scripts, but he tends to be picky. “I'm lucky to have options,” he says. “And sometimes I don't read much, sometimes three pages.”

Clive Owen in a white shirt and dark pants leans his head against a door.

Owen will next star in Martin Campbell's action thriller “Cleaner,” which filmed last fall and also stars Daisy Ridley. He doesn't have a next project, although he doesn't mind the uncertainty. “One of the joys is that you never know where the next thing will take you,” he says. But that hasn't stopped him from imagining more stories for Sam Spade.

“Scott and I loved it so much,” says Owen. “I think we want to wait and see how this goes, but we've already talked about ideas.”

Frank agrees that there could be more seasons, potentially in different locations around the world. “There's certainly a lot of different things you can do with this character,” Frank says. “It would be fun to visit again.”

“Clive is learning Mandarin right now,” Fontana adds, jokingly. Or maybe it's not.