“I Don’t Like Bond”: 7 Things We Learned From The Man From U.N.C.L.E Set

Does Guy Ritchie hate James Bond? Has Henry Cavill hit on his technique to play Clark Kent? Is Armie Hammer a ladies’ man? Yahoo! learnt the answers to all these questions and more on the London set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. But, if we’re honest, only the scantest details on the highly secretive spy reboot itself…

But like a riddle wrapped in a mystery trapped in an enigma, there’s doubtless plenty to glean from the words of those involved in bringing to the big screen TV’s most notoriously camp spy franchise of the 60s. Here are 7 facts we learnt on the set of Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1. Guy Ritchie doesn’t like modern Bond

“I don’t like Bond,” Ritchie told us. The sensationalists in us want to leave it at that, but there’s a reason: “I like period pieces because you can create a world. Bond today doesn’t appeal to my aesthetic. So The Man from U.N.C.L.E. appealed from that point of view in the same way Sherlock Holmes did.”

In fact, his attraction to the 60s Gentleman Spy world of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was such that he had to rewrite the project from scratch with that aesthetic in mind. “The script I got I didn’t like at all,” he says. “Steven Soderbergh’s script just wasn’t for me. I just couldn’t see it. I liked the idea of Bond in the 60s, but this has its own brand.”

2. But he loves 60s Bond

“Clearly I do quite like Bond, because I’m inspired by the Bond of the 60s,” he insisted. The influence was obvious, in the style and swagger of the sets and a certain edge present in the Sean Connery era. “I fancy the initial idea of Bond, where if you watch the early ones they just felt like they were making it up as they went along. Sean Connery had such a tone that no one else really recaptured.” Early Sean Connery, Ritchie says, influences the character of Napoleon Solo in his reboot.

3. None of the cast has seen the show…

Ritchie was honest about his memory of the show when the idea for the project first surfaced. “I couldn’t really remember any particular episode, but I remember the tone and remember liking it. That was enough for me, really.”

Henry Cavill, who plays Solo, a conman turned CIA agent (above), hasn’t taken any time to watch the original. “But I’ve heard wonderful things about it,” he insists. “I haven’t seen it professionally because Guy’s in charge of the tone and style of the movie, and we just do what he says. I’ll watch it afterwards for sure.”

Alicia Vikander, meanwhile, has only vague memories of mid-afternoon reruns on Swedish TV. She plays a new character, Gaby Teller, who doesn’t appear in the original show. “The one in my family who was most excited I got the part was my dad,” she laughs. “He’s seen every episode.”

4. …Except Armie Hammer

Leave it to Armie Hammer (above, right) to do his homework. He plays Illya Kuryakin, a KGB operative forced to team up with Solo at the height of the Cold War. He “missed the boat” on the show originally, he says, “but after I got the job I went back and flipped through them on DVD, which made for a couple of good weekends.”

He can even give you a pretty neat precis of the ones worth seeing: “The first season’s not so good. It’s black-and-white and they just start the show without introducing anyone. The second season they switched to colour and it’s better. The third season’s good, too, and then the fourth season is a mess. An actual mess. They stopped the show it was such a mess.”

5. Hammer has changed his character

We wondered if Armie’s Kuryakin would be as much of a ladies’ man as the original. “The original Illya was very much a ladies’ man, to the point that there’d be strange instances that would happen on the show,” he recounts. “They’d be walking down a street and he’d stop a lady and be like, ‘Your make-up…’ And he’d fix her make-up or her hair and go, ‘Now you’re beautiful,’ and just walk away. You’re like, ‘Who was that girl?’ He never explains it and you never see her again.”

He laughs: “Not so much of that in this movie.”

6. Cavill’s big takeaway from Guy Ritchie might influence Clark Kent

We didn’t see much of Superman as Clark Kent in Man of Steel, but it seems as though we’ll be seeing a lot more when Batman vs. Superman comes around in 2015. We asked Cavill what he’d learnt from his director on this film, and while his answer obviously relates to Napoleon Solo, we can’t help thinking it reminds us of a certain Daily Planet reporter… You be the judge:

“The one thing I learnt in particular was applying the right kind of humour to situations to make a character more likeable,” Cavill revealed. “Someone who’s just too cool, and who never gets anything wrong, is less likeable than someone who just makes little mistakes here and there and makes kind of a fool of himself every now and then. I learnt that from Guy.”

7. Guy Ritchie has a Command Centre

It’s the world’s biggest, and seemingly most comfortable, trailer. We were there on a night shoot, with rain and stormy wind battering us all, but Guy was snugly indoors, in the warm, surrounded by his key team and a bank of monitors. “He’s got a Mobile Command Center with all the monitors and walkie talkies and all that stuff,” confirms Hammer, though Cavill insists it doesn’t keep him at arm’s length from on-set goings on. “He has this warm area which we all congregate in, then we disappear off and stand atop a building there’s no point him being up there when he can communicate via walkie-talkie and watch monitors.”

“He’s plugged in,” adds Hammer. “He’s watching us now,” Cavill laughs.

‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E’ is released in the UK on the 14 August 2015. Watch the trailer below…

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Words: Joe Utichi