‘Rogue Agent’ Star James Norton on Playing a Serial Con Artist, His New Production Company and His Plans to Direct

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman James Norton is no stranger to playing less than salubrious characters thanks to his turns as psychopath Tommy Lee Royce in “Happy Valley” and a Russian mafia boss’s son in “McMafia.” In “Rogue Agent” he once again steps into the skin of a man whose moral compass is, to put it lightly, skewed.

Based on a true story, “Rogue Agent” tells the almost unbelievable tale of Robert Freegard, a British car salesman who seduced at least seven women and exploited many more (including two men) in the 1990s by claiming he was an MI5 spy looking for new recruits.As well as conning his victims out of more than a million pounds, Freegard also isolated them from their families, made them undertake bizarre “training missions,” such as sleeping in the street for days at a time, and persuaded them to go on the run with him, claiming they were being pursued by terrorists.

One woman even gave birth to two of his children while believing she was in hiding from the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was a role, Norton says, he knew he wanted to play as soon as he read the deeply researched but never published article by journalist and producer Michael Bronner (“The Mauritanian”). “I read it, devoured it, loved it,” says Norton who soon decided he wanted to produce the film himself.

He brought on former Black Bear Pictures exec Kitty Kaletsky and together they formed the London-based Rabbit Track Pictures to make the feature, which also stars Gemma Arterton (“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”) as a victim of Freegard’s who ultimately brings him down.“It’s clear why it’s so compelling,” Norton says of his desire to bring the article to the screen. “It’s this story no one has ever heard before, and no one can quite believe is real..