Pierce Brosnan Profile: Theatre Roots, TV & Playing the Ruthless Conrad Harrigan in ‘MobLand S2’

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Guy Ritchie’s MobLand follows Harry Da Souza (Tom Hardy) , a streetwise fixer caught between two powerful crime families: the Harrigans and the Stevensons. With Tom Hardy at the center of the feud, the Paramount+ crime drama blends family politics, shifting loyalties, and hard-boiled underworld strategy with Ritchie’s signature swagger. Pierce Brosnan plays Conrad Harrigan, the calculating patriarch of the Harrigan criminal empire, opposite Helen Mirren’s formidable, yet equally ruthless strategist, Maeve.

MobLand Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of a fractured crime empire, with Conrad Harrigan forced to reckon with the consequences of decisions that shattered his family’s fragile unity. Tom Hardy returns as the unflinching fixer Harry Da Souza, whose loyalty is tested as new enemies emerge from the shadows, while Helen Mirren’s Maeve Harrigan steps further into the power vacuum left by internal chaos.

This season’s arc centers on succession, betrayal, and the cost of legacy — as the Harrigans fight, not just rivals, but each other, to determine who truly controls the throne. Season 2 was written by Jez Butterworth and Esther Watson.

Pierce Brosnan opens up about his acting career, his film and television roles, and eventually molding the crime boss character of Conrad Harrigan.

One thing for certain, is that everything in Season 2 of MobLand has been amplified – the violence, the stakes, the relationships.

Dame Helen Mirren and Piercen Brosnan are consuimate acting professionals. “We go to work each day and we get into costume. Maeve appears and Conrad appears,” says Bronson. Then they really get into character. “She’s got a wicked tongue in her head,” he continues.

Johnny Flynn plays Frankie in MobLand, season 2

Frankie (Johnny Flynn) Photo by Luke Varley/ Paramount+

Breaking into a career in acting

Pierce describes his early days at the Oval House Theatre in London as a professional actor, when he was about seventeen.

“The Oval House Theatre was my introduction to the theatre and the world of the arts. I never thought about being an actor, but I went to acting workshops. We did workshops on The Little Prince. And I played the Little Prince in Southwark Cathedral.”

He describes The Oval House as a “a hotbed of theatre and music.” He quit his then job as a commercial artist and started his experimental street theatre company which produced children’s plays. He did that for about three years before enrolling in the Drama Centre in London to train as a professional actor. It is the same place where Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, and Michael Fassbender earned their acting accolades.

I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew there was something in me, a tiny bit of gold dust that I could polish.
I loved the movies, and I had a romantic notion of movies

Pierce recalls his first television role in The Professionals. “I was on surveillance in the back of a minibus, listening on headphones. My line was, ‘Sounds like a kettle. Sounds like a kettle.'” He’s come a long way since then.

Fast forward a few decades and Brosnan lands his role as Conrad Harrigan in MobLand. Since Season 1 of the show had one of the biggest openers on the streamer, there was an immense pressure to live up to that success in Season 2. Pierce feels that pressure, but you could never see it on screen.

“Yes, you do feel the pressure because success brings that on. You want it to be successful and you want to keep that temperament and value of work. We have a great writer in Jez Butterworth, and Jez really brings this incredibly nuanced, textured, lyrical, heightened drama of writing to us. I think even Guy Ritchie was quite surprised.”

Even Guy Ritchie was taken aback by a second season of MobLand. Pierce Brosnan doesn’t question it. He just gets on with the work. Season 3 will begin filming in a few months, so the fate of the Harrigans and Stevensons has yet to be sealed.

Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan, Photo by Jordan Strauss/ January Images for Paramount+

Entering the MobLand world

Pierce doesn’t regularly converse with he showrunners or writers, so he has no idea where his character is going to go. “The scripts come in and you’re bedazzled by the writing, and happy that you’re still alive as a character. She hasn’t got me yet.”

Interestingly, Brosnan isn’t overly concerned with having an extensive backstory for his character. He just learns his lines and performs them on set.

Before Season 1, his agent sent him five episodes of MobLand. He liked them and decided he wanted to work with Guy Ritchie.

Pierce Brosnan was working on The Thursday Murder Club with Helen Mirren at the time who was also reading the scripts. She decided that if Pierce signed onto MobLand, so would she.

Toby Jones plays Colin Tattersall In MobLand season 2

Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones) Photo by Sophie Mutevelian/ Paramount+

Becoming Conrad

Pierce Brosnan’s initial conversations with Guy Ritchie about his role were sparse at best. “We started talking about where the character was from – South London, Irish. And then he said, ‘Listen, don’t worry about it. Put it out of your mind. Fifteen minutes on the day, we’ll sort it out.'”

Pierce felt somewhat liberated by this scant brief. Guy Ritchie is also well known for revising entire scenes minutes before the cameras start rolling so actors are always ready to compromise..

“Guy said, ‘Listen, just go Irish. Go mad.’ And this was fifteen minutes before the very first take.” Nothing like a bit of pressure to activate those acting chops.

Brosnan’s instinct was to speak with Kerry Irish accent which he perfected on the day. His preperatory tools were his father, who was from Kerry, a dialect coach, and some YouTube videos of an Irish politician who spoke with a Kerry accent.

On Day 1 of shooting, he met Tom Hardy for the first time. “We just met about an hour beforehand. Hugged each other and said, ‘Let’s get into this.'” It was a three page walk and talk scene. Guy Ritchie directing. Full crew.

“I’m looking at this guy with a flat hat and this Kerry accent. And there’s a piece of text that I had. It’s Conrad. And it said, ‘If I’m bigger than you, stronger than you, I’ll eat you. Or I’ll f*ck you and then I’ll eat you. I kept repeating this as I was wandering around the field with five minutes before the very first shot. That’s how the accent came about. So that’s how Conrad was born,” recalls the actor.

Guy Ritchie moves very fast. He films shots in one or two takes.

“He gave me such freedom with playing this role. And again, the lyrical text by Jez Butterworth is so like a Jacobean tragedy.”

However, Pierce did find Conrad exhausting at times because he has these explosive fits of rage.

Paddy Considine plays Kevin Harrigan in Mobland Season 2 on Paramount Plus

Gakbu (Stewart Scudamore) and Kevin Harrigan (Paddy Considine) Photo by Luke Varley/ Paramount+

Comparison to other roles

Pierce Brosnan has enjoyed a decades-long successful career, mainly playing erudite, smooth-talking characters. Conrad Harrigan is explosive, crass, and volatile – the complete antithesis. He describes the experience as “liberating.”

“I’m having the time of my life. It’s nice to be an unexpected surprise. And to be free of an image that one has created for oneself and a style of performance,” he notes.

Pierce came to Los Angeles in 1982 to star in Remington Steele. “I was trying to be Cary Grant. So I just dived into the world of Cary Grant and tried to reproduce that alacrity of speech and tonality and tip of the tongue, timing,” the actor recalls.

Brosnan continued to play a variety of roles like Desmond Doyle in Evelyn and Julian Noble in The Matador to demonstrate his acting range. He didn’t want to be typecast.

“When I was trained as an actor at the Drama Centre, I was led to believe that I could play many different roles and have as many different personas on the stage as possible, with transformation.”

“I like to work. So I’ll go off and make something like ‘Giant’ or ‘Four Letters of Love’ or smaller pieces. I’ve never felt like I have to wait around for the great piece of drama or writing or wanting to be blessed or anointed by some great director,” he declares.

Bond. James Bond

Pierce Brosnan played the eponymous spy James Bond in four films – Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day. He has officially gained superstar status and could move on to the next level of his career.

During that period, he formed Irish Dreamtime and made ten movies through MGM. The first one was The Nephew, set on an island off Ireland, where he played Joe Brady. He moved onto The Thomas Crown Affair and The Matador.

Concluding Thoughts on MobLand Season 2

MobLand Season 2 promises to be bigger and grander than Season 1. There are more complex and more brilliant characters coming on the scene, starting with Johnny Flynn (Toby Jones).

Conrad is beginning to fracture with a diagnosis which makes him even more unpredictable and dangerous. Maeve and Conrad’s relationship is tested and she explores more senior roles in the Harrigan empire. Some characters disappear – starting with a large tranche of the Stevenson clan.