Yan England’s Rematch recreates the 1997 match between reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov and IBM super computer Deep Blue. The six-part series features Christian Cooke playing the Russian Grandmaster.
The role called for intense research and provided insights. “I learned that I’m not very good at chess,” Christian says laughing. Speaking over a video call from London, Christian says he watched documentaries and read books by Kasparov in preparation for his role.
“With that material and the script I started to get a sense of who he was as a person. Single-mindedness, drive, ambition and tenacity were some of the adjectives that came to mind when I thought about Kasparov.”
Kasparov’s intense focus and precision was compelling and challenging, says the 37-year-old actor. “When you’re playing something as focused as chess, you have to concentrate specifically on the board in front of you, on the table the board is on, and on the person sitting opposite you.”
That, Christian said is a practical line of sight. “You’re not moving around, you’re not interacting with props or people. That innately results in a specific type of focus, which is the same focus a chess player has in real life. I just tried to personify that intensity.”
For the chess scenes, Christian says they worked with chess master Malcolm Pein in England and a Hungarian Grandmaster who was on set every day.
Precipice of change
Rematch revisits a pivotal moment in the history of AI. “It was the precipice of this huge change. Now, 30 years later, we’re standing at the precipice of another large leap forward. Human beings didn’t know what they were in for back then, with the advent of personal computing and the Internet. The digital age was just taking shape, and now AI is becoming a part of people’s lives.”
There is a parallel to the present moment, says Christian. “It’s going to be interesting to try and get a grip on how we want technology to affect our lives versus what we want to stay the same.”
Kasparov’s story is both a cautionary tale and a celebration of human ambition, says Christian. “It’s incredible what one human being can achieve when playing against a computer that could do 200 million moves a second. It’s a celebration of what the human mind is capable of, but also, a cautionary tale as Kasparov was ultimately beaten by the computer. I don’t know what that means for humanity in general, going forward, in terms of technology, but hopefully we can learn to work with it instead of against it, or hopefully we won’t let it work against us, who knows?”
Intimidating and motivating
It is always intimidating to play a real person, Christian says. “That also provides motivation to buckle down and get on with it. Sometimes what scares us is also what drives us and that was true for Garry. He was probably intimidated by the prospect of a computer being better than him. But it’s what drove him to take the challenge.”