Roddy Ho is calling all his co-workers at Slough House in the opening moments of Slow Horses season 4 episode 1, but no one is answering. Is there a big emergency? Nope, Roddy is just attempting to figure out where everyone else is, as he waits at a chicken restaurant for what he believes to be the Slough House Christmas party. It's only when he finally gets hold of Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar) that he figures out what's going on: Lamb (Gary Oldman) played a trick on him, telling him there was a Christmas party.
But how did Roddy really feel about the whole situation? We got to talk with Christopher Chung, who plays Roddy in the Apple TV Plus spy drama, and asked him about his character's outlook on the prank that opens Slow Horses season 4.
"What I really like about Roddy in that scene particularly is the way he manages to spin doctor it so quickly," Chung said. "I think in his mind he's going to the Christmas party to grace the rest of the Slow Horses with his presence. And really, you know, as Louisa reveals to him, the jokes on him. But no matter how much of a joke it is, he always manages to spin it in his mind to come out on top. You know, his 'you have to be in the game to get played, so whatever.' It's a great exhibition of his arrogance and complete naivete of where he stands in Slough House."
Roddy's ability to be in his own world is further emphasized moments later, when he is walking down the street, headphones on, and a bomb goes off that sets the main plot of the season into motion — which Chung teased as being filled with "more action" and "exceptionally heart-pulling scenes" — but he barely registers the explosion.
Chung says a big resource in getting a better understanding of Roddy is reading the original books by Mick Herron that Slow Horses is based on. He read the first book to get as much of Roddy as he could before his audition, and then once he landed the part he continued with the series so he could get a sense of where his character was heading. But Heron's unique way of writing Ho in the books proved invaluable for how Chung would play the Slough House computer wiz.
"Mick writes the books in so much detail, so I find that they're really quite useful. Particularly with Roddy because he writes Roddy from his internal monologue, he's like the only character he does that with," Chung said. "It's really useful to get in the brain of Ho."
To find out what else happens to Ho and the rest of Slough House, tune in for Slow Horses season 4 on Apple TV Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday.
