Dan Stevens knew little about Watergate before being cast in Gaslit, a new prestige drama about the 1970s American scandal that toppled a president and shook America. The 39-year-old actor, of early Downton Abbey fame, might now be sitting in his very own Los Angeles garden but, as with many Brits, his knowledge of the affair extended only to the most superficial stuff. “I knew it spawned the gate-suffix,” says Stevens, over Zoom. He’s wearing a jazzy Paul Smith shirt, behind him lush leaves and that Hollywood sunshine. “But you quickly realise there’s a universality to that stupid level of corruption. It’s found in every administration in every country in the world; it just so happens that these guys got caught.” He sees glaring parallels with the British government, or as he put it in a now viral One Show segment: “You’ve got a criminal for a leader who is wrapped in a messy war, embroiled in a stupid scandal, surrounded by ambitious idiots and really should resign… Oh no I’m sorry that’s the intro to Boris Johnson.”
Also starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn, the five-part series – based on the highly successful Slow Burn podcast – sees the often-told story of nefarious political espionage rerun once more, but through the experiences of characters who might otherwise have been considered minor players in a story of high-level Washington rot and paranoia.
