The BBC has announced that Diego Calva, Camila Morrone, Indira Varma, Paul Chahidi and Hayley Squires will join Tom Hiddleston in series two of The Night Manager.
The new cast members will star alongside Hiddleston, who will reprise his role as Jonathan Pine, the night manager of a Cairo hotel who becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of intrigue and deception.
The first series of The Night Manager, which aired in 2016, was based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré. The show received widespread critical acclaim and won several awards, including three Golden Globes, two Emmys, and three BAFTAs.
Charlotte Moore, the BBC TV chief, announced the new series in April 2024, saying, “After years of fervent speculation, I’m incredibly excited to confirm that The Night Manager is returning to the BBC for two more series.”
The Night Manager series one was a huge hit for the BBC, with over 10 million viewers in the UK and millions more internationally. The series was directed by Susanne Bier and starred Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, and Elizabeth Debicki. It followed Pine, a former British soldier, who is recruited by a Foreign Office task force to infiltrate the inner circle of an arms dealer.
The new series of The Night Manager will be written by David Farr, the creator and writer of series one, and will be directed by BAFTA winner Georgi Banks-Davies. It will be produced by The Ink Factory, the production company run by le Carré’s sons, Stephen and Simon Cornwell.
Farr has said that he thought long and hard about writing the second series, which will extend the story beyond le Carré’s original novel. He explained, “I did not tread lightly into extending The Night Manager beyond the original book, but an idea came to me a couple of years ago which felt truthful to that unique world of dark corners and shady identities.”
While the plot of series two is being kept under wraps, it will pick up eight years after the events of the first series and has been described as a “new and more deadly challenge” for Pine.
The Night Manager series two will film across London and South America and is expected to begin production in 2024.
