We've long known that Jason Isaacs can do anything he turns his mind to. And now he's taking on another big challenge, playing movie icon Cary Grant – or at least the person he was in his private life, Archibald Alexander Leach – in a new ITV/BritBox bio-drama called Archie.
Jeff Pope, who has form with based-on-truth stories via Philomena and Stan & Ollie, wrote the script and will produce.
Archie will kick off with his birth in Bristol in 1904 and tell the story of a childhood spent in extreme poverty, dealing with his father’s adultery and the loss of older brother John. At 14, he joined music hall act the Bob Pender Troupe and moved to the States and, soon after, Cary Grant was born.
The show will intercut scenes from 1961 when, at the height of his fame, Grant was desperately unhappy in his private life after two failed marriages. Grant then began wooing TV star Dyan Cannon, who was 30 years his junior and didn’t immediately fall for his charms. He married her in 1965 and retired from film acting one year later.
"There was only one Cary Grant and I’d never be foolish enough to try to step into his iconic shoes," said Isaacs. "Archie Leach, on the other hand, couldn’t be further from the character he invented to save himself."
"Cary Grant became one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century, beloved by presidents and paupers,” Pope comments. “The key to everything, lay in his childhood."
Isaacs is currently at work opposite Tom Holland in Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room.