How do you see that transition between the first book and The Silkworm? Can you give us an overview of what The Silkworm is about?
The three books, Cuckoo’s Calling, Silkworm and Career of Evil, all feel like they have very different tones and they’re set in very different worlds.
Whereas in Cuckoo’s Calling they moved in a kind of young society, The Silkworm is set in the publishing world, which is presumably something that JK Rowling knows quite a lot about. It exists more in the imagination and the grotesque, rather than the social realism of The Cuckoo’s Calling.
How does Robin’s character move from the first book to the second book? Is she on her own journey now?
When we first meet Robin in Cuckoo’s Calling, she’s quite recently moved to London and is at the beginning of her finding herself as an adult in the career she actually wants. It’s her first steps into becoming the person that she wants to be.
At the end of The Cuckoo’s Calling Robin is no longer a temporary secretary, she’s a full-time secretary, so she’s got a slight promotion. But by the end of The Silkworm, she’s on a journey into proving that she is more than just a secretary – she’s not just vaguely interested, she wants to be on the ground. She’s smart and she’s intuitive and she wants to put those skills into practice. She wants to be a detective.
When we move to The Silkworm from The Cuckoo’s Calling we are moved to another side of London life. What was it like taking the characters into these new environments for the second story?
We’d been filming in Soho a lot and bits of Kensington and east London for The Cuckoo’s Calling. When we were filming on the rooftop of the publishers, I realised that I myself hadn’t been to that part of London for a while, and you stand there going, God, London is actually beautiful, it’s epic. The skyline of the buildings next to the River Thames has such a grandeur and a beauty to it – it’s very different to Catford!
Is it true that you shot some scenes at the publishers of the Galbraith books?
Yes, going there was great, because we definitely saw a copy of Silkworm there.
What was a good scene from The Silkworm that indicates the differences between The Cuckoo’s Calling and this new story?
The Roper Chard party feels like Strike and Robin are entering a different world than we’ve seen them in previously, one of glamour. That was interesting to shoot.
There’s a lovely scene that you do at the bar, which shows her in a slightly different light.
Yeah, quite savvy and self-confident. Showing a far more knowing side of Robin than we’ve already seen.
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