Mayra Cavendish

Mayra Cavendish moves through the polished, dangerous world of The Night Manager as someone whose loyalties are not immediately legible. She speaks carefully, watches more than she talks, and seems to know more about the people around her than she lets on — a fixture of the arms-trade circles the story circles back to again and again.

Indira Varma has a gift for stillness that makes ambiguity feel like information rather than absence, and the show's tangle of financiers and fixers gives her plenty of room to use it. She never overplays a scene, which is precisely why you keep watching her instead of whoever is talking.