Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) tries to save the lives of the passengers of a plane that's hijacked. Photos: Handout
When actress Archie Panjabi was sent the script for the first three episodes of Hijack, the 51-year-old couldn’t put it down.
At the end of reading the third part, the former Good Wife star wanted to continue reading but didn’t have any more pages.
“So, I phoned up my agent and said I need to read four to seven. And she said, ‘Do you not want to do it?’
“I said, ‘No, I’d love to do it. I just need to know what happens to the passengers’,” she said during an online press conference from London.
“That’s when I thought, this is a brilliant script, it’s really thrilling and it’s going to have audiences at the edge of their seat,” added Archie, who plays a counter terrorism officer in the Apple TV+ original.
Archie Panjabi (seated) as Zahra Gahfoor, a counter terrorism officer who is on the ground when the plane is hijacked and becomes part of the investigation.
The seven-part thriller, which unfolds minute-by-minute in real time, follows passengers on a seven-hour flight to London that is hijacked soon after taking off from Dubai.
In that linear timeline, too, authorities on the ground are trying to figure out what is going on in the air, with next to no information to work with as all communication with the plane has been cut off.
Fortunately, one of the passengers on the flight – Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) – decides to use his skill as a corporate negotiator to outwit the hijackers as well as send covert messages about the situation to the ground.
For Elba, who stands at a towering 189cm, a chance to play a cerebral fella who thinks things through rather than someone who uses his size and strength to fight his way out of tough situation made Sam all the more appealing to him.
“All my life, I’ve been told, ‘You’re a big lad’ and you know, I’ve taken on roles that sort of feed into that a little bit.
“This particular time, I was really interested in playing against that. Even though Sam is where he is, he isn’t always the sort of hero in that sense.
“He’s quite vulnerable... he’s got lots going on internally with his family. And I was really interested in that,” said the 50-year-old star, previously seen on television in the critically acclaimed series The Wire and the mini-series Luther.
Idris Elba (left) and Archie Panjabi at a press event to promote the television series 'Hijack' on June 26, 2023 in London. Photo: AP
Nonetheless, Elba’s size mattered during filming as every scene on the plane was shot in a confined space of an actual plane.
Additionally, Hijack was filmed over three months, “in the middle of the summer” with as many people as the scene required, plus seven more behind the camera.
But again, Elba – who is also one of the series’ producer – said that the challenge of filming on an authentic Airbus A330 (albeit one that has been “retired”) was interesting to him.
“The fact that we didn’t break the plane apart and this is a real plane, just in a studio, the confinement of that just really applied to the drama.
“Even for the crew figuring out how we can do this top shot without taking the roof off... it all sort of led into the claustrophobia of it.
“So, the crew, the actors, everyone was sort of tight, where it was almost like watching a documentary being made while being in the documentary,” explained Elba
Ironically the idea for a plane hijack started when executive producer and writer George Kay was riding the Eurostar train, which travels through the Channel Tunnel at a speed of 160kph, when he was working in France.
“I was in the Eurostar tunnel and the train stopped quite abruptly. Even though I knew everything was all right, it flashed through my mind, ‘What if there’s something sinister?’
“And I looked around the carriage at my fellow passengers and thought about who are the people we travel with.
“It got me thinking about what would happen if a random group of people was brought together into an intense situation that they had no idea was coming.”
Expanding on the idea, Kay knew he wanted to set his story on a plane as it is “a microcosm of society” with its class structure – the first class, business class and economy.
“So, what happens to those characters and the class system when it’s suddenly thrown into a hijacking (situation)? And among the passengers are the hijackers, but who are they?
“That’s a great treat as a writer. If we rely on the fact that we don’t know who we travel with, we can start to create suspicion.
“Is the guy who’s tapping on the armrest of his seat nervous because he hates flying, or is he nervous because he’s about to hijack an airplane? Playing on prejudice is key,” Kay added in the production notes.
While both Elba and Archie said that they still love flying, Elba noted that being involved in Hijack has made him more aware whenever he steps onto a plane.
“I know, for me, I am more informed about airplanes now, which is weird,” he said.
“But I love flying. I love travelling. And I’ve always, always, said hello to staff on planes and off planes.
“So, yeah, it just felt interesting to be on a plane again after making this show.”
Hijack is available on Apple TV+.
