It seems to have restarted the debate that audiences won't be able to follow a complicated story - do you agree with that, and were you conscious of that at all?
No, I just loved the book and it is complicated but I don't personally feel you need to worry that much about being able to follow every twist and turn. It's a facile comparison but if you think of The West Wing where the plot can be zipping along quite quickly but it doesn't matter as long as you follow the characters. The spy story is complicated but the human story is quite straightforward.
Could you talk a little about the casting process? Did you audition or was it a case of asking the actors?
It was easy and it was hard. I said to myself that we wouldn't do any casting until we had George Smiley and that took quite a while. It was the producer Tim Bevan who came up with the idea of asking Gary and it was the perfect choice. A totally different soul and face than Alec Guinness and I could clearly see him doing the part. So we met and we fell in love and we thought that this will be fantastic to work together. And then it was quite easy to get the other characters in place. The source material and the project itself attracted the actors. I think 99% are our first choices.
Was John le Carre on board for the film?
One of the things that calmed us down was that after we knew Tomas was on board we then knew that le Carre was on board too and had given us his blessing. We met him and he was very kind and generous and we thought that if he's happy for us to give it a try, that's okay then.
And we used him a lot as well. He said that if we ever wanted to use him just to call him anytime and we used that possibility a lot. He's been updated all through the process and I think he likes it.
He's in one of the scenes isn't he?
He is. Just briefly.
What sort of notes did he give you?
He never gave script notes, it was more if we went to him and said 'We're thinking about doing this, does that feel right?' and he would comment and was very supportive.
He was great on details, something like 'There would never be a red carpet in that kind of corridor.' Very specific notes on details, he would be very useful for that. Like, 'You would never write your name on a paper.'
Can you tell us about your approach to the production design?
When you start doing a film it's as if you're expecting a baby, you see babies everywhere or if you're about to buy a car you see cars everywhere. So, okay - I'm doing the film about Britain in the early 70s and your eyes start to pick up colours, a car on the street, TV shows and you start collecting it in your head and then we have the fantastic Maria Jokovich, the designer. I had a few very interesting meetings with Paul Smith, the fashion designer, who is a fantastic designer and a generous person and we were spit-balling about those years and he had his ideas and his input. And we had the fantastic cinematographer (Hoyte Van Hoytema) who was with me on Let the Right One In and we know each other very well. I don't think we had any mantra other than 'Wet Tweed.'
When you start doing a film it's as if you're expecting a baby...
I wanted to ask a question about one particular scene - the reveal of the mole. It's done in a very unfussy, unsensational way in one simple camera move. Can you talk about the pacing of the film and that scene in particular?
The complication of the ending of the film is quite subtle. To have the proper escalation there we couldn't put too much energy into the revelation of the mole because that would be too thriller-ish or too fantastic. So we pushed the emotions later and later.
What was behind the decision not to cast or show Smiley's wife and Karla?
It's prompted by the book. Ann [Smiley's wife] is a very important character who doesn't take up many pages and we thought that if we had one or two scenes with her that might actually be weaker than keeping her hidden from the audience, altogether which makes her more mysterious. And the same with Karla. We liked the fact that the two most important people in Smiley's life are Karla and Ann and if we hide them from the audience then they would have a sort of magnetic power.