An Interview with Hugh Bonneville
In the gripping British crime drama The Gold, Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) plays by-the-book investigator Brian Boyce, who leads a daunting investigation into one of the largest thefts in British history, the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery.
In a 2025 interview, MASTERPIECE talked to Bonneville about topics ranging from portraying the real Brian Boyce, the lasting impact of Brink’s-Mat, his early memories of Downton Abbey to what’s next for him.
- 1.
Impressions of the Brinks-Mat Robbery
I was at college at the time and I do remember the front-page story of …this bold robbery. As the story unfolds, we discover that these guys got lucky. They thought they were going to get £10 million in cash, and in fact they ended up with £26 million in gold bars, which is all well and good if you know what to do with gold bars, which they didn’t.
I knew of the story, but not the detail of it. And what really fascinated me across both Seasons 1 and 2 [of The Gold] is the ripple effect of that gold getting out into society, it being smelted, and then the money that resulted from it being laundered. A lot of the money was laundered through one of the over 120 companies that the bent lawyers set up to filter the money across society. That becomes a sort of symbol of really what the story’s about, the Thatcher era of new money breaking through and challenging the old social structure.
I became aware gradually, investigating or reading about this story. You realize that the impact of it has rippled out across society over decades. The tagline being, if we’re wearing a ring or a gold chain, it’s probably got some Brink’s-Mat in it.
- 2.
On Meeting the Real-Life Brian Boyce
The character that emerged from the page was pretty much like the character I met in real life. Neil Forsyth, our showrunner, comes from a journalistic background himself and had done a lot of research and I think had drawn a lot on Brian Boyce’s own experience in telling this story. But when I met [Brian], I wasn’t in any way trying to do an impersonation of him, I just wanted to know how he ticked and how he ran the team.
I really got this sense of a man, a proper old-fashioned, as we would say, “copper”, an old policeman on the beat who’d done his time pounding the streets of London and had worked his way up through the ranks of being a detective, and was hugely respected within the force.
- 3.
The Origins of Downton Abbey: How Hugh Landed the Role
I was doing a movie that [Julian Fellowes] had written and I was directing called From Time to Time starring Maggie Smith. In between setups, I was asking [Julian], like any writer, “Have you got lots of projects on the go?” He was telling me about two or three of them, and he said, “Actually I’ve got one on that’s based on the world of Gosford Park.” And he said, “It’s going to be about this country house around the time of before the first World War and the golden age of those sorts of houses.…And the father figure, who I can see you playing, for instance, but he’s got three daughters of marriageable age. You probably think you’re too young for that.”
And I said, “Well, no, no. We can stretch reality, and I’m not too proud to say I’m older than I am.” About 10 months later, the script came through and I couldn’t put it down. I was very lucky to be in on the ground floor.
I can remember having talked to Julian and [producer] Gareth Neame at a meeting, and as I left, I said, “Out of interest, who are you talking to play the mother, Violet Crawley?” And they said, “We’re talking to Maggie Smith.” And I remember saying, “Well, good luck with that. That’s not going to happen, is it?” And the rest is history.
- 4.
A New Endeavor: Writing a Children’s Book
In [an early draft of] my memoir [Playing Under the Piano: From Downton to Darkest Peru]… I realized that I’d written a huge amount about childhood, particularly a 10-year period where we lived in southeast London.
My agent’s colleague said, “What about writing a children’s book?” I said, “Absolutely not. I haven’t got a wizard in a hinterland or a chocolate factory or anything like that.” And I said, “Why do you think I should?” And she said, “When you were writing about your childhood, was it true that the circus came to town every year and parked up on the heathland and the children from the school would come and join your school for a month or so? And that sometimes they came on an elephant?” And I said, “Completely true. It was very exciting.”
And she said, “Is it also true that you dug a grave for your sister because you thought her time had come and you ought to get rid of her?” And I said, “Completely.” She said, “Well, there’s a good start for a children’s story.”
I thought, “Well, maybe my life in southeast London wasn’t quite as dull as I thought.” And so I just explored a few stories from memory and I really enjoyed the process. I’m going to write two more. And the first book comes out [in the UK] in October, Rory Sparkes and the Elephant in the Room.
