“Even though I don’t mix with drug dealers and dodgy art dealers, I know a hundred-and-one Jackie Prices,” explains Catherine Zeta-Jones of playing the glamorous, tough and resourceful title character of Prime’s new series, Kill Jackie, which marks the first time the Swansea-born Oscar-winner has used her own accent for a role.
“When the idea came to me to make her not just Welsh, but from my hometown, I knew exactly how I would play her,” continues Zeta-Jones (57), who also earned her first ever executive producer credit on the series adapted from Nick Harkaway’s novel, The Price You Pay.
“Her body language, the voice, the bluntness, that zero filter, ‘my way or the highway’ kind of attitude - something just clicked.”
Co-written by Tom Butterworth (brother of top playwright, Jez) and Dublin-born screenwriter Conor Keane, bringing this project from page to screen also involved a gender flip from Jack to Jackie for the central character, a former cocaine dealer who has successfully invested their ill-gotten millions in high-end artworks after barely escaping the drug trade alive.
Twenty years on, Jackie maintains her glamourous, globe-trotting lifestyle by holding tax-dodging (but perfectly legal) auctions for uber-rich art aficionados, although she has her own exacting rules about whom she will sell to, often leaving millions on the table after taking a dislike to the highest bidder.
Having grown bored with her comfortable, unchallenging lifestyle, Jackie is secretly delighted when one particularly psychotic would-be buyer takes exception to being snubbed, hiring a team of ruthless assassins known as The Seven Demons to exact revenge.
With her life on the line, Jackie is forced to go on the run while attempting to turn the tables on those seeking to destroy her empire.
“I’ve never been an executive producer before, so it’s been amazing to be at the grassroots of this show,” reveals Zeta-Jones of her behind-the-scenes role on the new series, which also stars Daniel Ings as Jackie’s straight-laced tax lawyer/crush, Sam, who joins her on the lam along with her personal assistant, Charlie (Hattie Hook).
When the idea came to me to make Jackie not just Welsh, but from my hometown, I knew exactly how I would play her
— Catherine Zeta-Jones
“It was a great idea to make the main character a woman - the craziness of a woman being in that world, and where it could go. Playing it at my age was just great too. I think it’s something really fresh that we haven’t seen before.”
Providing a lot of the comic relief amid the attempted assassinations and violence, Sam is a man very much out of his depth who’s not afraid to let Jackie know exactly how anxious and upset he is about their ever-worsening situation.
“One of the things that drew me to the role is that there’s a real kind of lack of earnestness to Sam,” explains Ings, who also starred in Netflix crime series The Gentleman and Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms.
“He isn’t cool, you know? And when he wants to be cool, it just doesn’t work whatsoever. So yeah, I suppose he begins as the audience’s eyes and ears.
“Similarly, you know that when the audience is watching an entertaining show like this, they’re secretly thinking it would be kind of fun to get involved in that world - to run around with guns etc.
“So Sam kind of becomes the audience’s journey through that as well, this sort of wish fulfilment in a nice, safe, entertaining, non-real way.”
While the assassins’ attempts to Kill Jackie find the titular anti-heroine flitting between various scenic locales in London, Bilbao, San Sebastián and Lisbon, the eight-part series also afforded Catherine Zeta-Jones the opportunity to film in her hometown for the first time ever for an episode in which Jackie revisits her humble roots.
“It was the first time I’d ever filmed in Wales,” explains the Mumbles-born actress of breaking yet more new ground in a screen career which now spans four decades and includes her ongoing role in the Netflix hit Wednesday, an Oscar-winning turn in 2003 movie musical Chicago, her swashbuckling performance in the Zorro films and a breakthrough role in 1990s TV hit The Darling Buds of May.
“Coincidentally, I just did another movie with Anthony Hopkins [A Visit To Grandpa, adapted from the Dylan Thomas short story] in north Wales, so I’ve finally got to use my Welsh accent while filming in Wales twice in the space of two years. Which is crazy.
“It was great to go back to Swansea, back to streets that I remember. The first thing I did was go to Johnnies, my favourite fish and chip shop, and Joe’s Ice Cream – their Welsh classic vanilla is phenomenal and I highly recommend people head to Swansea for them!
“We filmed very close to where I went to dancing school and where my grandmother was brought up, nearby to where my auntie went to church – my childhood was all in this area.
“People know me there and the people who lived in the street where we filmed were very sweet: they were very quiet while we were shooting but then said, ‘Hiya, Cath’. They’re genuinely proud of me there, and it makes my heart soar.”
The Swansea-set episode is also meaningful in the context of the story at hand, allowing the audience to learn more about Jackie’s backstory and her unconventional route into the drug trade via a family tragedy - as well as the chance to meet her amusingly deadbeat dad, Owain (Bill Paterson).
“You get to see where she comes from and see her in a vulnerable way,” enthuses Zeta-Jones on how the series walks a fine line between comedically violent, action-adventure fantasy and real, character-based emotional stakes.
“I think, once you get an audience to come on a ride with you, and they can connect with you, then you can push the humour and the violence.
“And there is violence - it’s not gratuitous violence, but they are psychopathic assassins, and we’re able to flip it with something that takes the edge off. It’s that Tom and Jerry thing: knock them down and they’re going to get right back up again.”
Laughing, the star adds: “My mother’s going to be really worried that I swear so much in this. I know she’s going to say to me, ‘Why do you have to use bad language all the bloody time?!’.
“I’m just gonna have to tell her, ‘Well, unlike you Mam, a lot of people do!’”
Finally, when asked if Kill Jackie might make it to Ireland should it prove enough of a hit with viewers for a second series to be commissioned, Zeta-Jones and Ings are both enthusiastic.
“Ooh, yeah,” coos Zeta-Jones at the prospect of filming another Jackie Price-centric crime caper on our shores.
“I’d love to come. If I’m going to spend any time away from home, let it be Ireland, because it feels like home. The people are so fabulous, and of course the crews are great too. All our crews were Irish on Wednesday.
“We both love filming there,” agrees Ings, who spent a lot of time in the north while shooting A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms.
“We’ll have to steal something,” muses Zeta-Jones, already thinking about what might bring Jackie and Sam here.
“What about if we steal one of those fantastic thoroughbred stud horses?”
“Oh - nice!” approves Ings, clearly onboard with the idea.
With a mischievous gleam in her eye, his co-star adds: “Well hey, since I’m an executive producer now, maybe I’ll just put it in my notes.”
Kill Jackie is available on Prime from today
