Charles Dance doesn’t enter a room so much as he looms into it—a silhouette cut from stormclouds and Shakespearean scorn. Even over Zoom, there’s something unshakably regal about the man, like he could dismiss a tech issue with a wave of his hand and the WiFi would obey. Which makes it all the more fun to watch him get swept up in the lunacy of Rabbit Hole, the paranoid espionage series on Paramount+ where Dance squares off with Kiefer Sutherland in what might as well be an Edwardian buddy comedy wrapped in a Black Mirror fever dream.
"They drip-feed the information to us," Dance says, describing the show’s writers with something like admiration or maybe resignation. "Which is quite a frightening way to work. But it keeps you on your toes. You turn left, and they go, 'Wait till you turn left and then we’ll tell you.'"
Dance, who seems biologically incapable of phoning it in, plays a character he admits not fully understanding during filming—a paranoid string-puller in a world of deepfakes, AI, and weaponized data. It’s a role that, in lesser hands, would collapse under its own twisty nonsense. With Dance, it becomes a grim ballet.
And then suddenly: comedy. Yes, Dance does funny. If you haven’t noticed, it’s because the industry hasn’t let him. "If you’re seen doing something reasonably successfully, the odds are you'll be asked to do it again," he shrugs. Which is a poetic way of saying: play enough brooding monarchs and no one wants to see you eat eggs with Kiefer Sutherland.
But in Rabbit Hole, they do exactly that. And the result is a dry, muttering rapport that borders on vaudeville. "There's nothing like making somebody laugh," Dance says. "I try to bring humor into the worst of characters if I possibly can."
It helps that the show mirrors reality just enough to be terrifying. AI-fueled paranoia, algorithmic truth-bending, a media landscape where right-wing spin drowns out nuance—Dance doesn’t need to reach far for inspiration. "Little Britain is rapidly going down the toilet," he sighs, referring to the state of UK politics. "You can't believe what anybody says."
He tells a story—grim and weirdly sweet—about running into Albert Finney during the early days of voice work for animation. Finney, always a step ahead, clocked the future. "He just looked at me and said, 'The writing's on the wall, kid.'"
That was thirty years ago.
Now, with Rabbit Hole, the writing's in bold font, blinking red.
Dance has had no fewer than seven projects drop within the past year, a feat he seems mildly horrified by. "Really? Seven?" he asks. Still, he insists he doesn’t bring the roles home. "That way lies madness. It would fuck up any relationship if you did that. Especially if you play some of the characters that I've played."
And while he claims he’s not as choosy as he could be, there's a flicker of humility that betrays how seriously he takes the work. "Despite the way I speak," he says, almost sheepishly, "I come from the other side of the tracks. My mother was a servant at the age of 13."
Which maybe explains the whole vibe: the simmering rage, the immaculate diction, the ghost of a glass eye with a smiley face from Last Action Hero hovering just behind the curtain.
The man has played kings, monsters, and now—maybe—a tragic clown in a surveillance state circus. Whatever he is, he’s still on his toes, still turning left, still waiting to see what happens next.
We should all be so lucky.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
