From chessboard intensity to questions of AI and identity, ‘Rematch’ finds Christian Cooke at a career-defining intersection of craft and relevance.
From his breakout roles in Cemetery Junction, directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Peter Kosminsky’s BAFTA-nominated drama, The Promise, to appearing in films like Point Blank, Love, Rosie, Romeo and Juliet and recent Sundance winner Plainclothes (out later this year), Christian Cooke has steadily built a career that blends commercial success with independent edge. Now, with Rematch on Disney+, he tackles one of his most demanding and thought-provoking roles to date: stepping into the mind of Garry Kasparov.
Christian Cooke stars in Rematch, a Disney+ series where chess and artificial intelligence collide in one of his boldest performances. An opportunity to explore the boundaries of artificial intelligence and the human challenges both on the board and in life.
As he read the script, Christian Cooke realised this wasn’t just a story about a game. In the series, he steps into the shoes of Kasparov during his legendary clash with Deep Blue. “It’s fascinating when, as an actor, you get the chance to be part of retelling a historical event. Gary Kasparov was a genius — at the time, the youngest ever chess world champion — and to many people is still considered the greatest chess player of all time. So it’s enticing for an actor to step into big shoes like that, but it’s also quite intimidating. But sometimes I think what scares you is also what draws you to a project.”
On playing Kasparov and how he prepared for the role, Christian shares: “I did as much research as I could. I read books, I watched documentaries, I watched a lot of footage of him online. I didn’t really want to imitate him as I thought that was perhaps dangerous territory. I really just wanted to capture the spirit of who Gary was, which was someone who’s very focussed, single minded, passionate about winning, and in this case beating Deep Blue”.
As the conversation unfolds, Cooke takes us behind the scenes: long hours with Hungarian grandmaster Gergely Antal, rehearsing moves with almost surgical precision. “A lot of what we did was learning how to capture and move the pieces to make us look like professionals and look like we had spent thousands of hours at a chessboard handling chess pieces. We would shoot these long, extended takes so we would have to learn 30 or 40 moves at a time. It was a really intense memory exercise”.
“We’re on the precipice of a huge technological leap and we don’t really know where it’s taking us”
Christian Cooke
The series offers a look almost at the birth of AI and what has developed since, and it’s eye-opening to see how Kasparov’s story resonates with the current challenges of our digital age. “I think it’s interesting to look back just 30 years ago to where it all started. It was the start of home computing, the start of intelligent computing. And in just that short period of time, how far we’ve come is extraordinary. Gary was somebody that was always really progressive minded and encouraging of technological advancement. Playing against computers is something that has benefitted chess players, by allowing them to improve by practicing against them”.
Speaking about what people can take away from Rematch, Christian comments: “I hope it makes people think about the importance of human contact and our need for human interaction. And I hope it makes people aware of the precipice that we’re all standing on, this huge technological advancement that we’re about to see take place. If the show makes people reassess their relationship with technology and AI and think about how they want to interact with it going forward, then that’s a positive”.
When asked about working between the UK and US, he sums it up naturally: “Every job you do as an actor is different, but essentially, between action and cut, it’s all the same. Maybe in the US there are sometimes more resources, but your approach to the work is the same”.
The most important thing to Cooke is “the quality of the writing. It can be a big action film or a small film that’s set in a single location with two characters. It really just depends on whether the story is interesting. Is the writing good, is the story being told in an effective, filmic way, can you imagine the film in your head? It’s not even about the size of the part, sometimes you’ll take a small part in something because the writing is really good and the project and the people involved are worth it”.
Christian describes what led him to also start writing and directing: “I’ve always wanted to make my own films. I knew that I wanted to direct when I was young, I grew up on the set of a drama show that I was on for several years as a kid, and I was just always obsessed with what each department did. I was always going to the camera department and asking them questions and really wanting to understand the technical side of filmmaking. And so I came at directing through wanting to tell stories with pictures and being interested in photography and how you tell a story with a camera. Then I started to write and to make short films and then eventually I made my first feature, Embers, which will be out later this year. It’s about continuing to be tenacious with your own ideas, no one’s going to hand them to you, you have to just keep going and working hard at trying to get things off the ground. I’ve got a couple of other films in development and a TV show so I’m excited for whatever comes next”.
We ask Christian about his personal style. He laughs and confesses: “I’m not someone who sets trends. I usually just copy whatever I think looks cool on other people”.
As our conversation draws to a close, Cooke reflects: “I think acting can often feel like quite a passive profession. You’re waiting for roles or you’re acting in someone else’s production and you’re reading scripts that other people send you. It’s brilliant. I love it, and I’ll do it until the day I die, hopefully. But I love getting up every day and sitting at my computer and working on a script of my own. That’s something that gives me a lot of pleasure and fulfillment and helps me feel, at least in my own small way, that I’m trying to steer my own ship.”
It’s clear that Christian Cooke is not only an actor and filmmaker driven by craft, but also by conviction. He’s someone who finds meaning in stories—whether he’s interpreting them or writing them, a performer who continues to evolve without ever losing sight of who he is.
Rematch is now available to stream on ‘Disney+.
