#090216

I. Last night I dreamt of the strength of women bearing the weight of the sky, parading in the heavens while I watched them glide by.

It was not unlike the way I move across the old linoleum of my kitchen floor in the evening

cooking dinner to tempos in three-minute intervals, mindful - movements - must flow with the rhythms - ever

      unpredictable.

II. My neighbors are practically all strangers

   I fancy their curiosity    as they walk past my open window on    a weeknight

back to their homes where they will bear their own skies with as much grace as a girl dancing her burdens into blessings with kitchen utensils and a perfectly good pair of tired feet, just as earnest, just as willful, just as brave

(but do they know the music will change?

   do they know    their steps must always

There's something in John le Carré's writing and the world he creates that is intrinsically British. He's a great analyst of our national psyche, as much as a master storyteller of espionage thrillers. His 1993 novel The Night Manager has long been among the favourites of Hugh Laurie, who had been trying to get involved in an adaptation for years. In the autumn of 2014, Hugh and I signed up to join the six-part television series for the BBC and AMC: Hugh would play the arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper, described by Le Carré as 'the worst man in the world', with myself as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier, the night manager of the title, who is sent to infiltrate Roper's crew. The producer Stephen Garrett suggested the Oscar winning Danish director Susanne Bier to direct. Sometimes the best interpreters of the British experience are not British, and we all thought Susanne would find both the human and universal truths within the drama.

That November, I met Susanne in London for the first time. In Le Carré's novel, Leonard Burr is an intelligence operative working on the fringes of MI6 who recruits Jonathan Pine. Burr is a kind of barrel-chested Yorkshireman – very funny, practical, unimpeachably decent, a moral crusader, a man you'd want to have a pint with. But the first thing Susanne said to me was: 'I think Burr should be a woman.' 'That changes things,' I thought (rather obviously). 'I think it should be Olivia Colman,' she said. 'The only thing is, Olivia is pregnant.' It was an incredible idea. Still more incredible that Olivia was not only willing, but keen to do this during her second trimester.

It was going to be a gruelling shoot, spanning four locations – Switzerland, London, Morocco and Majorca – cramming six hours of story into 75 days. But all she wanted to do was to be on her feet. Thus Angela Burr was born, and the part was rewritten to incorporate Olivia's pregnancy, which I believe adds to the story because it makes her courage even more extraordinary. Burr continues her work and pursuit of Roper with a total selflessness and an unwavering strength, without any regard for her own safety, security or health.

When people say that someone is a good person, it sometimes suggests they might be a pushover. Olivia is a good person and she is absolutely no pushover. She is instinctively warm, but in her work she has shown how powerful she can be – take a film like Tyrannosaur, in which she has such depth and breadth. She's no-nonsense, and has very little vanity. There are some great scenes in The Night Manager where she gets ambushed by the higher-ups, the Whitehall mandarins of the intelligence services. She's surrounded by men in pinstripe suits, and you can sense a nasty, latent misogyny. At first, her appearance makes her seem vulnerable, in a traditionally male-dominated world – but she stands up to them, uncowed by their bullish threats. She's not to be railroaded. There's something really wonderful about the way she plays that.

A confrontation between Roper and Burr – Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman – towards the end is thrilling. In that moment they are so opposite: on the one hand, here's a sophisticated man in a cream linen suit, who seems to have the world at his feet, who never breaks a sweat; and on the other, there's Angela Burr, heavily pregnant, who has him cornered. Contrast this slippery Machiavellian character, opaque in all his dealings, with Burr – direct, clear, clean. She has appeared to be the underdog for so long, but appearances can be deceiving.

John le Carré himself (or David Cornwell, as he's otherwise known) offered his own opinion on Olivia during a script meeting in March last year. We all sat around a small table in a drafty anteroom behind a council hall in Holborn, and listened to him talk about the intricate and specific nature of agent-running: delicate, sensitive, often strangely parental – the intelligence officer co-ordinating from home must have a deep understanding of the physical and psychological stress of the agent. He loved the idea that Burr, as a woman, was somehow looking after Pine, watching over him. 'I think the transformation of Leonard Burr into Angela Burr – as embodied by Olivia Colman – is a stroke of genius,' he said. This from the man who was once in the Circus (his name for MI6) himself; this from the man who knew the game inside out. 'It's the best asset that this production has.'

SHINee - 090216 Orientation at Honam University