Toby Jones interview: Britain’s most versatile actor discusses Conrad, Sherlock and Brexit

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “I know Mark Gatiss a bit and he texted me to say, ‘we’ve written this part for you and I think you’re going to like it’,” says Jones in his usual understated manner. “So I was excited to read it and he’s written such a fantastic character, it was kind of un-turn-downable really.” Culverton Smith, an expert in tropical diseases turned poisoner, appears in the Conan Doyle story The Dying Detective, but Jones, who finished filming his scenes with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman last month, has signed a confidentiality agreement about disclosing any details of the updating of a story originally written in 1913. Even if they don’t understand, they’re being expected to.” Before the updated Sherlock, Jones can be seen in the sort of costume that Holmes and his creator, Conan Doyle, would recognise – in the BBC’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 classic The Secret Agent, in which Jones takes the title role of the spy-cum-agent provocateur Adolf Verloc. open image in gallery Toby Jones plays Verloc in ‘The Secret Agent’ “I read the book at school but I had forgotten it”, says Jones, the son of veteran actor Freddie Jones.