Damian Lewis & Guy Pearce on A Spy Among Friends and Playing Duplicitous Characters

Imagine finding out your best friend of nearly thirty years had completely betrayed you and everyone else they loved, for the entirety of your friendship. That’s the concept behind MGM ’s newest thriller series, A Spy Among Friends, except the tensions are racketed to an all-time high: not only are Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) friends, but also intelligence officers for the UK’s MI6, and Philby is one of the most notorious double agents in history, supplying information to the KGB. A Spy Among Friends follows the two men in the aftermath of Philby being found out, and subsequently pursued, by British intelligence in the 1960s, flipping back and forth between the beginnings of Philby and Elliott’s friendship and the present, where Elliott is being questioned about his attempts to bring Philby into custody in Beirut, where he escaped and eventually defected to the Soviet Union. The truth is twisted and obscured as the series follows the two men throughout their lives, quest