Christopher Chung, who plays Roddy Ho in Slow Horses, is a team player. Season 5 of the Apple TV+ show is just getting started as part of the 2025 TV schedule, and Ho is already key to the plot of the new season. Chung has been part of the Slough House team since the show debuted, and in a recent interview, I asked him about working with Sir Gary Oldman. It turns out it was a moment after he thought the cameras had stopped that made him truly understand his character, which in turn produced one of Ho’s best lines.
Gary Oldman Keeps Everyone On Their Toes
If you’re a fan of Slow Horses, you know just how funny Jackson Lamb (Oldman) can be. His stinging insults to his subordinates, his flatulence and general disregard for social norms have made Lamb one of the best roles in Oldman's stellar career. The other actors of the show must deal with this by not cracking up, a task many would find impossible. Chung, who has also been part of another iconic franchise, Doctor Who, admits that it’s a point of pride not to breakL
It's kind of like a standoff as actors: who's going to break first? And obviously, Sir Gary is Gary Oldman, so you don't want to ever [breakl]. Sometimes his acting is so good, I don't know if we've stopped the take or not. So I just kind of keep playing as if we were continuing the scene.
It’s times like that, Chris Chung said, that produced one line in Season 1 that he’s immensely proud of:
Sometimes those moments that come out are the best ones. Like in Season 1, when River [Jack Lowden] tells me why I'm in Slough House. [Director] James Horsell kept the camera rolling, and I came out with, ‘they tried to cage me up, but you can't cage a dragon.’
If there is any line in the show’s history that more accurately sums up the character of Ho’s, I can’t think of it. In one sentence, Chris Chung completely embodies everything about Ho’s. Amazingly, it was all improvised. The actor explained:
That wasn't scripted. That was just something that kind of came out of my head in the moment. That was that specific moment where I was like, ‘Oh, I know the character now.’
Not only was the line a revelation for Chung, but it really helped define and encapsulate who Ho is to the show’s audience.
Season 5 Looks To Feature Way More ‘Uncaged Dragon’ Moments
We’re only two episodes into Slow Horses Season 5, which you can watch with an Apple+ subscription, and Ho and his mysterious girlfriend are at the center of the action. Lady Di (Kristen Scott Thomas) and The Park are suspicious, the others at Slough House are suspicious, and an unknown group seems to be targeting him for an unknown reason.
I’ve been a fan of Ho’s since the beginning (as a character, because as a person, he seems impossible), so I am really excited to see where this season takes the computer hacker that hates everyone. Even in the first scene of this season of the best show on Apple TV+, as Ho dances his way to work, we’ve seen another side of the prickly character, and it’s going to be fun to watch this all play out.
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