Idris Elba and cast take viewers on a journey with 'Hijack'

Idris Elba is known for taking risks within roles.

Over the course of his career, he’s played a wide array of characters.

Then the script for “Hijack” crossed his path and the character of Sam Nelson was beginning to come to life.

The Apple TV+ series, “Hijack,” is a tense thriller that follows the journey of a hijacked plane as it makes its way to London over a seven-hour flight, and authorities on the ground scramble for answers.

Oh, it’s also told in real time.

The series is written by George Kay and Jim Field Smith is the director. Both are also executive producers.

Starring alongside Elba is Archie Panjabi and Max Beesley.

Elba says getting the project on his radar is thanks to an alignment of timings.

“The idea came and George had the idea. At the same junction I was looking at Apple and I had a deal that I was trying to figure out what we were going to do together,” Elba says. “This came as just an idea from George and then the scripts came. I knew really much very early when I sat with George and talked about what we were trying to achieve and what the story and the perspective of this story was. For me, as a producer and a talent, I was sort of interested in doing something that hit the mark in television. I love television, I love making television, I have done for years. I play in the film space as well and I think the sort of merger between film and what is film and what is television has gotten smaller, that sort of line. And working with George was a joy. I was a fan of his work and wanted to make that happen.”

Filming the series did have its challenges.

Smith says the biggest challenge for he as a director is that the show is almost exclusively set inside of an airplane.

“There’s two problems with that,” Smith explains. “One is to make it engaging dramatically and not make it feel dull and flat, and the other thing is to make it feel like you are actually in an airplane that’s moving through the sky. So, it was sort of definitely very, very challenging, but we had a very talented team that figured out how to solve both of those issues. And I sort of heaped problem on top of problem by saying we didn’t really want to break this place apart, we wanted to move around the plane and never break through the skin of it, and we didn’t.”

While Elba was on the plane, Panjabi and Beesley’s character are on the ground offering support during this intense hijacking.

Panjabi says she was interested in hearing how it all came about.

“Zahar’s character first learns about the hijacking and gets together all the authorities and starts a big investigation,” Panjabi says. “We were in a room that, not as narrow as the aircraft, but it was still probably about three times the size of the stage, and the room just got bigger and bigger as it became more tense. Those were stressful scenes though, we all had to stay in one position, we couldn’t move because of the number of people in the room, we were watching the monitor like a dart, which was the aircraft, and really like intense scenes.”

Beesley says he was hooked on the series when he ready the script for the first three episodes.

He was drawn to how his character became more involved with each episode.

“There are so many wonderful nuances for me to play as well as a professional policeman, but also from a personal point of view, being involved in Sam’s ex-wife, played by Christine Adams,” Beesley says. “We get very subtle reminders of that on the picture frame, there’s pictures of Sam with the family and he’s obviously handsome and he’s got a vibe about him. I think that policemen, while they’re so tenacious and professional and very good at their jobs, their personal lives are very discombobulated, if you like. So, there was something interesting there for me to get hold of.”

The role was physically demanding for Elba inside of the airplane.

Elba says the action sequences were designed to take place throughout the plane.

“Sam does a lot of sneaking around the plane, you know. Me sneaking on a plane is like, ‘Bro, what you doing?’ The fight sequences were certainly hard to shoot. They were choreographed within the space, if we hurt ourselves, we just took a breather and carried on, because not to say that we didn’t care but it’s just we didn’t try and change the choreography not to hurt ourselves because, in this instance, the fight sequences were based on what would we do rather than this is a fight sequence, you know. And one of the memorable ones for me is the one with Neil’s character, and this gun and this tiny kitchen space — I’m a big man. It just wasn’t easy to move around and fight this guy, especially if my character is not a fighter, he’s fighting out of desperation and he’s frightened of getting shot.”