“He’s kind of a closed book and I wanted to know what was written on the pages,” Lester told UPI.
1 of 2 | Adrian Lester can now be seen in “Ponies.” Photo courtesy of Peacock
Primary Colors and The Sandman actor Adrian Lester says Dane Walter, the CIA handler he plays on the thriller, Ponies, is a secretive man who makes himself deliberately hard to read, even when he likes someone.
“He’s intriguing. He’s kind of a closed book and I wanted to know what was written on the pages. You get a glimpse of that later on and without the promise of that, I think it wouldn’t have interested me so much,” Lester, 57, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“I knew going in that [show-runner] David [Iserson] was playing with the idea of Dane seeing a psychiatrist and seeing the cracks underneath the surface. But you wouldn’t see them otherwise,” the British actor said.
“I felt that Dane was the kind of character you wouldn’t even know what his true intentions are. He could look at you and smile and speak and you’d be thinking: ‘Does he like me? Does he mean what he’s saying? Is this real?’ He has to have that about him. The ultimate spy.”
The eight-episode series is streaming now on Peacock.
It is set in 1977 U.S.S.R. and follows Bea (Emilia Clarke) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson), dubiously dubbed “Persons of No Interest” or “ponies,” who become CIA operatives after their spy husbands Chris and Tom are killed.
Dane is their trainer and supervisor.
“Bea and Twila are doing it for a reason, for a very solid purpose, to find out what happened to their husbands, maybe to get some vengeance, to get some revenge, maybe to do something good for the country, as well,” Lester said.
“If they get to the point where they realize there is no answer, it isn’t all good. It’s very, very murky, then what do they do?” he added.
“And you believe characters like that would head home. You think so. But Dane’s the kind of character who, even when he realizes that the mask of morality is something you can’t really afford to wear properly as a spy, he’s still there doing the work.”
While Dane is a seasoned professional, the women he’s sending on dangerous missions are not.
They are smart, brave and enthusiastic, but also vulnerable and unsophisticated.
Because of the nature of their jobs, Dane can’t invest himself too deeply in their well-being.
“You get too attached to people and it hurts. You don’t want them to disappear and you see how he feels about [Bea’s dead husband] Chris. That really hurts him,” Lester said.
“But, I think, although he doesn’t want to care about them. I think you believe that if they were in trouble, he’d be someone they would go to because he does have more answers than he gives, and he is capable of, hopefully, keeping them safe,” he added.
“But it’s a very dangerous world and, in order for the audience to worry about our two leads properly, the audience has to believe, in many ways, that they have got no one but each other. So, however we structure the drama, however it’s written, however much Dane cares, you have to believe that Twila and Bea really only have each other and then the energy of the show starts to work on another level.”
Emilia Clarke, Haley Lu Richardson arrive at ‘Ponies’ premiere
Emilia Clarke (R) and Haley Lu Richardson arrive on the red carpet for Peacock’s “Ponies” New York premiere at Whitby Hotel on January 14, 2026 in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
