If the cast of Prime Video’s new action comedy Ride or Die wasn’t starry enough with its two leads being Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer, the series also features Love Actually legend Bill Nighy in a key role.
Nighy plays a character known only as The Director in the action-adventure comedy series that follows a secret assassin, Judith (Waddingham), and her relationship with her best friend Debbie (Spencer) after a hit goes wrong.
Speaking exclusively with Radio Times, Waddingham and Spencer teased what we can expect from Nighy’s role.
“He is the director of my character’s agency,” Waddingham said of Nighy’s character. “He is the lord high executioner of all, and just reigns with a delicate, elegant level of fear. There really wasn’t anyone else who could have played this role. His economy of movement on screen is so compelling, and he just had all of us eating out of the palm of his hand.”
“And he was the person that she [creator Tessa Coates] had written the role for,” Spencer added. “And listen, we’ve done this so much, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to get her hopes up, so I’m not going to say anything one way or the other if that’s who she wants.’
“But then I realised she wanted me and she wanted Hannah, and she got both of us, so you know why not dream big to get Bill, and thank God he said yes too.”
Spencer then realised that all three of them bought Coates’s pitch “in the room”, adding that Nighy “could have easily said no”, but Coates had written it for him, and he clearly was compelled by what he heard of the character and the series.
The synopsis for Ride or Die says that it “follows best friends Debbie Claybourne (Spencer) and Judith Burton (Waddingham) who thought they knew everything about each other, except Judith turns out to be an international assassin.”
The synopsis continues: “When a mysterious figure emerges from Judith’s past and a hit goes horribly wrong, both of their worlds are turned upside down as they’re forced to go on the run together. It’s a race against time and a road trip across Europe, with law enforcement, highly trained assassins, and some very dangerous criminals at their heels.”
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Alongside the central trio, the six-part run also stars Ed Skrein, Sylvia Hoeks, Calam Lynch, Savannah Steyn and Jamie Parker.
Ride or Die will be available to stream on Prime Video from Wednesday 15 July 2026. Sign up for Amazon Prime for £8.99 a month.
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