Although Chung has found success in showbiz, he still wants to keep his job as a personal trainer at a gym in London. — Photos: JEREMIE SOUTEYRAT/The New York Times
Christopher Chung still works as a personal trainer at Fred’s Gym in the Hampstead neighbourhood of London.
He’s loyal to a handful of clients.
But sitting with him at the Horseshoe, a pub next door to the gym, one can’t shake the sense that his life is about to change in ways that could make those sweaty sessions a distant memory.
Chung plays Roddy Ho, the arrogant, clueless, borderline sociopathic computer expert in the hit series Slow Horses.
The fifth and latest season is when Ho gets his close-up in a storyline whose fiendish plot twists are best left unspoiled for devotees of this much-loved British spy series.
For Chung, 37, it’s a heady moment in a slow-burn career that has taken him from his native Australia to New York, and London, where he worked in musical theatre and on the BBC series Waterloo Road before being cast in Slow Horses in 2020.
Chung plays Roddy Ho, the arrogant, clueless, borderline sociopathic computer expert in the hit series 'Slow Horses'.
But taking centre stage in an ensemble cast that features Gary Oldman as the cunning, slovenly, flatulent intelligence officer Jackson Lamb is a tall order.
It’s even more daunting in a series that has managed to keep its pulse-pounding drama and off-kilter charm through so many seasons, chronicling a group of misfits who’ve been cast to the fringes of MI5, Britain’s domestic counterterrorism and security agency.
“This is the moment where shows can falter and be like, ‘Yeah, it’s just not as good as it was,’ or ‘They tried something here and it just didn’t land’,” Chung said over a crab salad and sparkling water.
“I always think of Ho as the seasoning in the series. A lot of him is a lot. Enough of him is just right.”
Mission critical
Witty, smooth and self-aware, Chung is almost the antithesis of Ho.
But he has inhabited the character long enough to have developed sympathy for him.
Having researched computer hackers for the role, Chung said Ho had a trait common to the breed: a belief that he is acting for the greater good.
“But his greater good in his world is very different to the reality of the greater good for the actual world,” Chung said.
The good news for him is that, aside from Lamb, Ho remains the show’s most outlandish, off-putting and yet funniest character.
His job is also perhaps the most relatable: he’s the nerdy IT guy who can fix your laptop but will scold you for using your birth date as a password.
He fills the office fridge with energy drinks and tapes his name on them to scare off freeloading coworkers.
While his swashbuckling colleague River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is out chasing bad guys in the field, Ho is back at the office, stuffing himself with junk food while running searches on suspects’ credit ratings or staring at surveillance footage.
And there’s no doubt which job he thinks is more mission critical.
Chung stars opposite Oldman in five seasons of Slow Horses. — Handout
Mick Herron, the author of the bestselling books on which the series is based, said in an interview that he does no research before he starts writing.
As he put it, “research and I are not on speaking terms”.
But he agreed that, in a digital world, “Roddy is probably nearer to the work that is actually done,” even if “they’d probably keep him in a cupboard”.
In the early days of the series, when computers were less central, so was Ho.
Herron gave him only a skeletal backstory: His parents had emigrated from Hong Kong a decade before the territory was returned to Chinese control; he spent his teenage years obsessively playing Dungeons And Dragons; he had enough money to buy a house.
“I wanted to make him hard to like,” Herron said, noting that Ho also exhibited no capacity for growth. But in this, the writer came up short. “He is one of the most popular characters,” Herron said, “despite who he is, not because of who he is.”
Endearing rather than repellent
In London Rules, the 2018 book on which the new season is based, Ho’s lack of self- awareness takes on such swaggering dimensions that it becomes endearing rather than repellent.
Referring to a “neat little goatee” and baseball cap that make up his new look, Herron, channeling Ho, writes that he is “the complete package, the way Brad Pitt used to be, before the unpleasantness”.
Ho’s hidden talents include dancing, both in a nightclub and on the street, to a tune that only he can hear on his headphones.
Chung said he had told the show’s choreographer that it was important for Ho to be a good dancer.
Chung said he had told the show’s choreographer that it was important for Ho to be a good dancer.
“He shouldn’t be rubbish at it,” Chung said, “because the shtick is, he either goes to a dance class or he watches heaps of YouTube videos to get his moves down, so he can impress the ladies.
“It should be something where you’re laughing with him, not at him.”
In some ways, the showboating side of Ho makes him more like Chung, who spent much of his pretelevision career focusing on the stage.
In 2018, he appeared in Heathers, The Musical, in the West End of London and in Romeo And Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe.
In good shape
These days, Chung is recognised on the London subway, where fellow passengers sneak photos of him with their phones, but is not exactly Brad Pitt-level famous.
He gets to perform with Oldman (a joyful cutup on the set, despite his Oscar and knighthood) and Kristin Scott Thomas (a more austere figure whom Chung said he tried to crack up during interrogation scenes they played together this season, usually without success).
“He’s having the time of his life,” Herron said. “He’s terrific and audiences love him.”
He’s also ripped from all those sessions at Fred’s Gym, a job he says he wants to keep doing.
That’s not how Herron originally imagined Ho, he said, but it’s undoubtedly how Ho imagines himself.
“Chris,” Herron said, “is the Roddy that Roddy always wanted to be.”
Does Chung ever worry that he’s in too good shape to play an IT guy?
“There are people like this, that are kind of geeky, nerdy, really good at computers, but that are in incredible physical shape,” he said.
“I’ll send you some videos.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
Seasons One to Five of Slow Horses are available on Apple TV+.
