«I Knew I'd Be Watched»: Keira Knightley on Her Hacking Nightmare – and the New Stasi Spy Play The Lives of Others

As the Oscar-winning surveillance film The Lives of Others takes the stage, Knightley and co-star Luke Thompson discuss the paranoia at its heart, the cost of theatre tickets today, and their anger at ringtones in the stalls. «I've just realised I have very crunchy food,» she says. «How fitting that she has to consider the impact her lunch might have on my voice recording, when we're here to talk about people's lives.»

Keira Knightley apologizes by packing various tubs of carrot and salad sticks. "I just realized I have really crunchy food," she says. How fitting that when we're here to discuss other people's lives, he considers the effect his lunch might have on my audio recording, a new play in which the characters are divided between spies and spies.

The show, based on the 2006 Oscar-winning film and set in East Berlin in 1984, stars Knightley as Christa Maria, a theater actress in a relationship with director George, played by Luke Thompson. Overhearing them is Wiesler (Stephen Dylan), a Stasi officer whose principles are gradually challenged and weakened by his day-to-day exposure to the cultured couple.

Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck's original film opens with an interrogation scene in which a citizen is grilled under relentless persecution for 40 hours—the length of time it takes, according to Wiesler, for an interrogation suspect to break down. I've spent just a fortieth of that time with Knightley and Thompson bringing their leafy lunches to North London's Town Hall, where rehearsals are underway. But I'm still hoping to extract some details about what the play's visionary writer and director Robert Icke has up his sleeve. This is the man who introduced sliding-door-style alternate-reality scenes to Romeo and Juliet, put a countdown clock on stage in Oedipus (and others), and added Beach Boys to the Oresteia.

Today it turns out that interrogation techniques are not necessary. "It's quite a technical show," volunteered Thompson, the 38-year-old Bridgerton star who previously worked on Hamlet (with Andrew Scott as the Prince) and Oresteia with Ike. "Instead of different scenes, it's like one big set with people coming in and passing batons. It's almost musical." Which is odd, laughs Knightley, 41, "because Rob hates dancing. He's not a dancing guy."

He has some beans to spill. "We're in a rotational phase, so we're always moving," he says. This allows the audience to see Krista Maria and Georg at the same time as Stasi is eavesdropping. Thompson believes this gives the stage version an edge over film: "It's maybe even better to tell a story about watching a theater, because the audience is literally looking at what's happening. Whereas in a movie, there's the barrier of the screen."

Only when I ask if they're using new music from Max Richter's play during rehearsals does Thompson become remotely stubborn: "I don't know if I'm allowed to say that." "We use it in rehearsal, yeah. It's beautiful. Everyone's in the room: we're the sound designer, the costume designer, the video designer..." The video, no? One more hint. Ike used the screen in Orwell's influential 1984 adaptation with Duncan Macmillan. In Hamlet, the specter of the CCTV car was turned on. This is a convention that now seems in danger of being adopted. “Video can be deceptive,” Thompson admits. "But it's relevant here because it's all about monitoring."

The nature of surveillance in society has changed dramatically even in the two decades since the film's release. Knightley shows considerable faith in the priorities of the police: "You want a camera at the bus stop when they bust your bag." "You feel safer because of that surveillance. But then you ask, 'Who's checking me out?'

The same year The Lives of Others was published, he became part of the first wave of public figures to discover their phone messages had been hacked by newspapers. To what extent does this help him understand the kind of paranoia that dominates the play? "I have a personal experience of what it is. Then again, I knew my phone was going to be hacked because I had something tangible to show for it. There were stories. Or for me, it was mostly pictures. I knew I was being followed and then I could see that I was being followed. I didn't feel like I was going crazy. It's funny when the characters are in a world or when they don't know where they are."

Modern parallels have been part of the training room discussions. I mention the possibility that visitors to the US are now checking their social media accounts about immigration and Knightley's eyes light up. "Ah, but did it happen?" he asks. "Or are you saying that enough happens for people to self-censor? You don't even have to follow through on the threat. You just have to put it out there." "That's what's so clever and efficient about the Stasi," agrees Thompson. "The best way to create surveillance is for people to do it themselves." And not only through self-censorship: it is estimated that there is one informer for every 6.5 citizens in East Germany.

Topping the cast's reading list is Stasiland, Anna Funder's 2003 account of life in the German Democratic Republic. Funder called von Donnersmarck's film "excellent" as well as "a fantasy narrative that could not (and never) took place during the dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic". "Other Lives," he wrote in 2007, "doesn't do justice to the way totalitarian systems work because it has to leave room for its protagonist to act humanely (something such systems are designed to prevent). Another of his accusations is that the film inadvertently legitimizes an ongoing campaign by former Stasi agents to wash their reputations.

However, in at least one documented case, the film had a real real-world advantage. In 2014, 43 veterans of Israel's elite secret military intelligence unit, accused of participating in "government actions against Palestinians," protested that their government was guilty of "political persecution" for refusing to distinguish between "violent and non-violent Palestinians." An Israeli whistleblower cited the lives of others as the catalyst for his own awakening to the realization that he and his colleagues were "like oppressive intelligence in repressive regimes."

Not everyone sees von Donnersmark's photo as a force for good. When a journalist suggested it to actress Julie Christie in 2007, she replied, "I'm not sure I could watch a movie they gave an Oscar for that tells you what horrible people communists are." Thompson considers this. "There are characters who are speakers of something along these lines," he says. "But it's not just a political play. I think part of the fun is that the characters are mysterious and you never know where they're going to go. If what the audience takes away from the play is, 'Communists are terrible,' I feel like we've failed."

I wonder how they both feel about the standing ovations that have become ubiquitous in West End productions to the point of meaninglessness. Knightley thinks the price of the ticket could explain that. "I recently took my kids to see a musical and we really enjoyed it, but it cost so much that we were like, 'We're going to love this!'" With tickets for The Lives of Others priced at £225, she and Thompson can expect to see audiences on their feet every night.

"Oddly enough, the exchange between the actors and the audience during the applause is the least important or the most interesting moment," says Thompson. "If people see something good, it stays with them. Maybe we missed it — and that's why people get so excited."

"I love your optimism," Knightley says, wiping away the crumbs from his lunch. I go, maybe because the tickets are expensive. And you say, "That's because the play carries you!"

The Lives of Others runs from October 14 to January 9 at the Adelphi Theatre, London.