Oscar nominee Clive Owen channels Humphrey Bogart in his new miniseries “Monsieur Spade.”
“I’ve got an original ‘Maltese Falcon’ poster, so that’s how much of a fan I am,” Owen, 59, told The Post.
“I’m a big fan of noir, and a huge Bogart fan. So, when [creator Scott Frank] approached me about doing a spin on Sam Spade, it was a quick, easy, ‘Yes.’”
Premiering Jan. 14 at 9 p.m. on AMC (and streaming on AMC+, and Acorn TV), the six-episode miniseries follows Sam Spade (Owen), the legendary sleuth who first appeared in the 1930 novel “The Maltese Falcon” and the 1941 movie of the same name, played by Humphrey Bogart.
In the original story, Spade is a private investigator in San Francisco in the 1940s.
In “Monsieur Spade,” he’s retired in the idyllic French countryside in the 1960s. But, his days of action aren’t behind him, because he soon gets embroiled in drama that involves the murder of nuns. Stanley Weber (“Outlander”) co-stars as Jean-Pierre, a war veteran, and Chiara Mastroianni co-stars as Gabrielle, his late wife.
“I lifted all [Humphrey Bogart’s] dialogue from ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ and all his dialogue from ‘Casablanca,’ and put it on one audio file,” Owen said. “That’s what got me in the groove every day.”
“Because we were shooting in the south of France, mainly with French actors, it was important for me to keep grounding it in the original source material,” he said. “Bogart was a big help… it was to do with rhythm and dialogue. One thing I discovered, which I didn’t know until I really looked at it, is that you think of Bogart as being quite laconic, quite cool, and laid back.
“But he’s actually nimble and rips through dialogue. He can do long speeches and make it feel easy. But, he’s really putting pace on it. When I unearthed that, I called Scott, and said, ‘I think it’s important that we don’t hang about with it. We do this fast.’”
Owen said that noir is a personal favorite for him.
“What I love about this genre and this kind of character is that they’re so contained. They don’t over express everything,” he said. “The reason Sam Spade has stood the test of time is he’s a very moral guy, but everything is cool and contained and not overdone. That’s the kind of acting I like anyway, but this material lends itself to not overdoing it, really.”
Nevertheless, when fans approach him in public, he said it’s usually about his 2006 dystopian movie, “Children of Men.”
“That seems to be a film that’s stood the test of time, over the years. All these years later, people still want to talk to me about it.”
He said it varies, though, and he’s still asked about “Inside Man” and “Closer,” for which he won a Golden Globe in 2005.
“I keep it in my office,” he said about his trophy. “But to be honest with you, it’s low down near the floor. Because I’ve occasionally done Zooms, and you could see it in the background, and I didn’t like that.
“It looked like I was subtly trying to show off. So, I put it near the floor.”
Although most of Owen’s roles are in serious dramas, he said there’s still one thing on his check list that he hasn’t done.
“I’ve done lots of characters that have humor within them, but I’ve never done and out-and-out comedy,” he said. “I’ve occasionally been sent them. They just haven’t appealed to me; they’re not my kind of humor.
“I suppose it would be great to do … not necessarily a broad comedy, I just mean something that is there to make people laugh.
“I would like to do that, at some point.”
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