Night Manager producer Simon Cornwell says he would be ‘arrested’ if Trump watches second series

John Le Carre’s son Simon Cornwell has said he’d be “arrested on entry” to the United States if President Donald Trump watches the second season of The Night Manager.

The returning instalment of the much-loved spy thriller follows Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) as he delves into a web of institutional corruption and arms trafficking in Columbia.

When asked by The Times whether Trump would dislike the series because it “sheds light on a world that he’s part of” Cornwell replied: “Exactly, and expounds all kinds of woke, liberal positions.”

Barack Obama was in office when The Night Manager first aired in 2016 and reportedly held a screening of the show at the White House.

When asked if he thought Trump would follow suit with season two, Cornwell said the programme “would be profoundly not his thing.”

Back in 2015, Trump told People that his “guilty pleasure” was watching himself appear on the comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (SNL).

"[It] got great ratings. The best ratings in years. It was a terrific success. I enjoyed doing it," he said at the time.

open image in gallery

However, the president later lost his love for the programme, following a series of sketches parodying his administration.

As the second season of The Night Manager goes beyond Le Carre’s source text, screenwriter David Farr has become the first non-family member to be trusted with creating a story in the author’s universe.

However, Cornwell said that even the first season of The Night Manager had also deviated “a long way from the book”.

Changes were made “not only with my dad’s blessing, but his active encouragement,” Cornwell assured.

Le Carre died, aged 89, after a brief illness, in December 2020.

open image in gallery

It comes as Hiddleston confirmed this week that The Night Manager would return for a third series in the near future after the sixth and final episode airs on Sunday night (1 February).

He reassured viewers that the wait for the next season would not be as long as the previous ten-year gap between series one and two.

“We always constructed this one as the beginning of a twelve episode story,” he said. “Actually, it gave us greater scope in terms of imagining where the story might go.”

He added: “I think we like trilogies. There’s something satisfying about trilogies narratively…It’s booked in. We’re going to do it.”

The Night Manager season two concludes on Sunday, 1 February at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.