'Bridgerton' star Luke Thompson on facing scrutiny in 'The Lives of Others'

Luke Thompson talks about reuniting with director Robert Icke for his stage adaptation of surveillance thriller The Lives of Others.

Summary

• Luke Thompson is starring in The Lives of Others with Keira Knightley and Stephen Dillane
• The show has been adapted from the 2007 film by acclaimed theatre director Robert Icke
• Robert Icke and Luke Thompson have previously worked together on Hamlet and Oresteia

For the millions of viewers who tuned in to see Benedict Bridgerton fall in love with maid Sophie in the megahit Netflix series, it may be a surprise to learn that Luke Thompson’s casting was something of a “curveball”.

The accomplished actor was focused on his stage career when he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2013, cutting his teeth with Shakespeare at The Globe, as well as plays such as Jessica Swale’s Blue Stockings and Nina Raine’s Tiger Country.

Fast forward more than a decade, and Thompson is one of the most recognisable men in Netflix’s raft of original series, after stepping into the spotlight as Bridgerton’s romantic lead for season four. It is a series that Thompson is immensely proud of, and he likens the screen opportunity to being given a “huge vat of petrol” to ignite his career.

His schedule is significantly more hectic these days, but Thompson couldn’t say no when director Robert Icke came to him with a script for his stage adaptation of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2007 film The Lives of Others, asking him to play the idealistic playwright Georg Dreyman, who is working in the highly oppressive East Germany of the 1980s.

“When I see stuff that Rob’s made, I always finish [his scripts] thinking, ‘Oh, he’s done it again,’” Thompson chuckles. The pair have worked together on two previous occasions: Oresteia in 2015 and Hamlet in 2017, when Thompson starred as Laertes opposite Andrew Scott’s Prince of Denmark.

Thompson has a vague memory of watching the Academy Award-winning film, but was “taking the script on its own merits” when he said yes. Keira Knightley had already signed on to play Georg’s partner, the celebrated actress Christa-Maria Sieland, and Game of Thrones actor Stephen Dillane was yet to be cast as Stasi operative Gerd Wiesler, who bugs their home and scrutinises every aspect of their lives for evidence of dissent.

Thompson is clear that the production won’t be a “museum piece”, believing innovation is the key to success on stage. Instead, he hopes they’ve “managed to keep true to the spirit of the original, but also bring something new to it”.

He remains tight-lipped on the specifics of how Icke is adapting this story about state-induced anxiety, surveillance, and censorship, although we do know there will be original music from acclaimed composer Max Richter. Thompson also quips that there won’t be any big clocks on stage, as in Icke’s Oresteia, Oedipus, and Romeo and Juliet, the latter performed earlier this year with Sadie Sink.

More interesting for him is the way Icke is exploring the contradictions inherent within The Lives of Others: the conflict between ideology and conscience, art and survival, privilege and resistance. “He understands that for things to feel tense or moving or funny, it’s about being quite grey, and as soon as you’re being told exactly what to think and feel, it can put you off,” Thompson reflects. “He’s really interested in trying to load the scales on each side, and there’s space for that ambiguity. The play is about a lot of people being ripped apart by competing impulses, decisions, and thoughts — and nowhere is that more appropriate than in the GDR [German Democratic Republic]. As a country, it’s a contradiction.”

The play captures a specific moment in German history, yet Thompson believes the modern-day resonance is plain to see. “It’s about a time when there was a lot of doubt in a political system, which is not necessarily unfamiliar, and there’s an end of days feel to it,” Thompson says. Then there’s the surveillance element. “We all have thoughts about how terrible it is that our phones are listening to us, but when there’s a robbery and we want the CCTV, we’re really pleased that we have it. Surveillance can also feel like being looked after. That ambiguity is alive today, just as it is in the play.”

Thompson has spent time considering the conflict within his own character, asking questions in the rehearsal room like: how was it possible to be a successful writer working in a communist state? “They used these writers as a sort of golden goose,” he explains. Dreyman is “a walking advert for the GDR, but then the play happens to him”.

He also likes that the piece poses the question: does theatre change anything? His own answer is obvious — “theatre is essential” — but he thinks it’s important that The Lives of Others asks, “is it actually a vehicle for change, or just a mirror of whatever you give it? It’s a really interesting problem that is taken to pieces.”

Thomson’s dedication to the stage is clear throughout our conversation. “I just want to work with people who want to get on with the work,” he says. “To work with people who take it seriously. Keira and Stephen, in particular, are two people I admire hugely for that.”

Collaborating with the right directors is also very important to him. It’s a “people job” and “you have to hold on to those ones you really trust”. He continues: “If you trust a director, they can ask you to do anything.” It’s an unsurprising admission from an actor who worked with auteur director Ivo Van Hove on the controversial 2023 production A Little Life, which sparked debate for its scenes of self-harm and sexual abuse.

Thompson agrees that the production demanded more trust in his director than most shows. Surely nothing can be too nerve-racking on stage for him now? He ponders his answer. “I think acting looks very different from an audience’s perspective. When we first ran A Little Life in the rehearsal room, yes it was pretty upsetting. But it is also fun, which is maybe a slightly awkward thing to say. Acting is make-believe and it’s always fun to play make-believe — even with very dangerous or horrible situations.” Yet he appreciates that “there’s as many different answers to that question as there are actors”.

Combining his dual passions for stage and screen, Thompson’s upcoming film project is the star-studded Simon Stone (another theatre director) film Elsinore about the actor Ian Charleson, who performed in an historic run of Hamlet at the National Theatre while he was seriously ill with AIDS. Thompson filmed his scenes in the middle of the gruelling Bridgerton season four press tour, and admits that “it was a maelstrom of activity”.

Interestingly, the film reunites Thompson with his 2017 Hamlet co-star Scott, who plays the lead role of Charleson. “It’s a beautiful story. One of my favourite things about the film is that it absolutely gives an unflinching look at that time of history and at the illness. But it’s also a film about doing a play, and what that requires.”

Thompson turns reflective again, as he considers the power of doing a movie that is such a love letter to theatre — not only in its subject matter, but through the sheer force of acting talent who signed on (among them Johnny Flynn, Billie Piper, and Olivia Colman). “It’s a time that’s worth celebrating,” he says. “I think there is something about theatre that is unassailable.”

Book The Lives of Others tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article will appear in the November 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: in rehearsals for The Lives of Others, in Oresteia with Jessica Brown Findlay, in A Little Life with James Norton. (Photos by Manuel Harlan, Jan Versweyevld)