If you like your spy thrillers slinky, sexy and stuffed to the gills with outrageously charismatic people, Black Bag is an absolute must-see. Directed by a bang-on-form Steven Soderbergh with the twisty-turny plotting of an ultra-modern John le Carré potboiler, plenty of wry wit and a keen eye for hot people stabbing each other in the back, it’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation.
One of its secret weapons is its array of seductive but discreet locations – mostly in London, but also in Zurich – as shadows for its spooks to lurk in. There are exclusive nightclubs, tech-laden offices, Michelin-worthy restaurants, and possibly for the first time in spy movie history, a Pret a Manger. Look out, too, for a humble fishing lake to take on major significance.
What is Black Bag about?
The movie’s set-up has glacier-cool British intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) on the hunt for a traitor within his team. A powerful espionage McGuffin called ‘Cerberus’ has gone missing and in the wrong hands it could spell disaster for the nation. To spice things up, the small group of suspects include George’s own wife Kathryn Woodhouse (Cate Blanchett), a fellow agent with whom he is besotted. But will he hesitate to murder her if she turns out to be the mole? Probably not.
The film’s location manager Emily Wright shared the intel with on how its world of secret agents was assembled via a patchwork of unexpected London and European locales in the summer of last year. (Minor spoilers follow)
London locations
The opening club scene – The Scotch of St James
The movie opens with George walking into a London club, across the dancefloor and back out again – all in an epic one-shot and filmed at Mayfair’s The Scotch of St James club. ‘It really matches the glamour and sophistication [of the film],’ says Wright. The scene, involving dozens of dolled-up extras, a packed dance floor and complex blocking, was captured in a hurry one evening before the club opened for real. ‘They agreed to open a bit later and it gave us a couple of hours to get the shot,’ says Wright.
The spies’ HQ – a Whitechapel office block
The real National Cyber Security Centre is based in London’s Victoria. Obviously, shooting on location in one of Britain’s most top-secret buildings wasn’t an option, so team Black Bag decamped a few miles east and used repurposed offices instead. ‘We looked at about 80 different places,’ says Wright. ‘Stephen loves to shoot with natural light, so that was a really important factor [in our choices].’
Most productions would be tempted to build the NCSC’s bleeding-edge surveillance set-up, complete with wall-to-wall monitors, on a sound stage. Not Black Bag. ‘We used another office building for the amazing surveillance set. So we used three main office buildings, and the exterior was another one.’
The Woodhouse home – Islington and Pinewood Studios
The movie’s hero location is the Woodhouses’ Wallpaper*-worthy townhouse. An early dinner-party scene sets the plot in motion in gripping fashion, while the house’s distinctive exterior features, too. ‘The exterior is this beautiful street in Islington and the interior is on a stage,’ says Wright. ‘To get the views out of the windows in the house, we recreated the street on a soundstage. We brought a couple of residents down to the Pinewood to see their houses recreated and they had a beautiful reaction.’
The pub scene – The Cadogan Arms in Chelsea
Prior to the dinner party at George and Kathryn’s house, the team of agents – Zoe (Naomie Harris), Clarissa (Marisa Abela), James (Regé-Jean Page) and Freddie (Tom Burke) – congregate for a slightly nervy pint. ‘It’s such an elegant, traditional pub,’ says Wright of the choice of boozer, Chelsea’s Cadogan Arms. ‘Our [production] designer suggested it because he’d been there and loved the lighting.’
The cinema date – Regent Street Cinema
A key plot point revolves around a cinema ticket stub. The actual picture house that hosts George and Kathryn’s pivotal date night is the historic Regent Street Cinema. ‘The rake of the seating is quite steep,’ says Wright, ‘so you get a good view of the characters.’ It wasn’t lost on Soderbergh and his crew that the venue is also the birthplace of British cinema. ‘There was a buzz about the place that we were filming.’
The dead drop – Broadgate Plaza, EC2
Yes, Cate Blanchett goes to Pret A Manger. At least, she does in Black Bag – we can’t vouch for her tuna and cucumber baguette habit IRL – when Kathryn executes a dead drop at the coffee station in the City. ‘We had this café scene in the script, and the designer joked: “Well, shall we just use Pret?”,’ says Wright. Broadgate Plaza offered a ‘grand and architecturally striking’ location for the scene. ‘It’s a public space but has that “hidden in plain sight” thing too.’ says Wright.
The spy chief’s lunch meeting – Mayha in Marylebone
One scene sees the spy’s big boss Arthur Steiglitz, fittingly played by ex-007 Pierce Brosnan, making a horrifying lunch choice (again, no spoilers). The scene was filmed in Japanese restaurant Mayha, where absolutely none of the menu options are horrifying. ‘We wanted somewhere fancy for him to go for lunch,’ says Wright, ‘and we used this beautiful restaurant for a day’.
The hotel rendezvous – The Zetter Clerkenwell
No spoilers but Black Bag features an illicit hotel rendezvous between two of its characters. The hotel used, The Zetter, aligns with the film’s philosophy of picking elegant but unobtrusive spots where covert ops can go down unnoticed. ‘It’s the undercover nature of it that drew us to the Zetter,’ says Wright. ‘It doesn’t look too much like a hotel. You don’t really know that it’s there.’
Buckinghamshire
The fishing lake – Great Missenden
George Woodhouse’s love of fishing ties in nicely with his day job of luring his fellow spooks into revealing themselves. The lake itself – and its boat house – were found on a private estate in Great Missenden, about 40 minutes from London. ‘I don’t think the boat house was originally in the script, but we saw it and it just lends itself so well to the character,’ says Wright. ‘There’s a main road probably about 200 meters away, but it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere.’
Switzerland locations
The night scene – Münsterbridge, Zurich
Cate Blanchett’s spy lands in the Swiss city of Zurich for a top-secret assignment the nature of which we’re not about to disclose. Look out for her crossing this historic bridge across the Limmat River by night ahead of her fateful rendezvous.
The meet – Hotel Storchen Zurich
The meeting itself was filmed outside this 64-room boutique hotel on Zurich’s Weinplatz. The hotel’s name first appears in records as long ago as 1357, so it’s a suitably historic spot for a Kathryn’s potentially history-changing mission.
Read our review of Black Bag here.
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